Sheila Jackson Lee: “I ask my colleagues to support the program overall and my amendment. Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to…”

“I ask my colleagues to support the program overall and my amendment. Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to briefly explain Jackson Lee Amendment No. 34. Before I begin, let me express my appreciation and thanks to good friends, Chairman Calvert and Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz, for their hard and constructive work in shepherding this legislation to the floor. Chairman Calvert and I have worked together constructively for many years and he has always distinguished himself as one of the more bipartisan members of the House. And Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz has for years been one of the ablest Members of this body; I thank them both for their commitment to the important work of ensuring that our veterans receive the care and support they have earned from a grateful nation. Jackson Lee Amendment No. 34 makes a modest but important improvement to the bill by increasing the amount of funding for the ``Supportive Services for Veterans' Families'' account by $2 million, offset by a reduction of $2.5 million to the $4 billion allocated to the VA's ``Information Technology Systems'' account. Today, in our country, there are approximately 107,000 veterans (male and female) who are homeless on any given night. Any perhaps twice as many (200,000) experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year.…”