Political Quotes

“Madam President, I will speak for a few minutes regarding amendment No. 4173, offered by Senators Sessions and McCaskill. While I understand the imperative of balancing the budget, an across- the-board amendment that sets an artificial ceiling for all discretionary spending is not the solution. If Sessions-McCaskill is adopted, the Senate will be forced to slash funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs and its related agencies--including Arlington National Cemetery--by $1.1 billion below the requested level. If we take medical care off the table--and I for one am not willing to cut medical care for vets--we put every other VA program at risk, including claims processing, medical and mental health research, and hospital and clinic maintenance and renovation. This would translate into an $862 million cut below this year's appropriation for non medical care VA programs. We are talking about a serious funding shortfall for essential VA programs. This year, the VA's budget request includes $460 million over fiscal year 2010 to hire more than 4,000 new claims processors. After years of budget requests that ignored the backlog of claims and the unacceptable wait times for vets to get disability benefits, we finally have a responsible budget request that doesn't simply expect Congress to fill the holes.…”