Elizabeth Furse: “this bill we are considering today--to provide disabled veterans the same cost-of-living-adjustment as we give Social…”

“this bill we are considering today--to provide disabled veterans the same cost-of-living-adjustment as we give Social Security recipients--represents one of the most important contracts we must honor. That contract is the one we have with disabled veterans of our military services to enable their COLA's to keep up with the consumer price index. In my view, simply keeping up with inflation as this bill does, is only a bare minimum of what we owe our disabled veterans. They deserve more. As disabled veterans age, their disabilities often cause problems at an increasing rate. Therefore, we absolutely must increase their COLA's with the rate of inflation and we really should do more for them. I believe our priorities are wrong when we are spending $15 billion more on airlift than necessary by buying the enormously expensive C-17 air cargo plane. Our priorities are wrong when we are signing up for 20 more B-2 bombers that the Department of Defense does not even want at an eventual cost of at least $30 billion. Rather than waste more taxpayer dollars on these outmoded cold war systems, it is far more important for us to attempt to repay the debt we owe our disabled veterans and their survivors. They have made tremendous sacrifices on our behalf and we do not do enough for them. Before I close, I want to pay tribute to my colleague, Mr. Montgomery. He has worked incredibly hard on behalf of our Nation's veterans for many, many years.”