Kay Bailey Hutchison: “it is my pleasure today to bring the fiscal year 2006 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and related agencies bill…”

“it is my pleasure today to bring the fiscal year 2006 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and related agencies bill to the Senate for consideration. First, I would like to say that as a result of Chairman Cochran and Senator Byrd's leadership, we received an increase in our allocation from the very beginning of this process of over $1.2 billion above the President's request to assist the Department of Veterans Affairs. It was only through this increase that Senator Feinstein and I were able to take care of our Nation's veterans. This bill stays within our 302(b) allocation. It provides $12,116,611,000 for military construction and $70,710,881,000 for the Department of Veterans Affairs and $157,126,000 for related agencies. This bill bridges two significant funding gaps in fiscal year 2006 for the Department of Veterans Affairs. This is a total of $3.2 billion. First, the President's budget request included two legislative proposals for the VA's health system that would have increased the copayments for prescription drugs and instituted new enrollment fees, both of which were to be paid for by veterans. Revenue estimates for these proposals were approximately $1.2 billion. The administration reduced the VA's budget request by this amount. This bill does not include either of those two legislative proposals, and instead the subcommittee used all of its increased allocation to cover the $1.2 billion difference for VA health care.…”