Political Quotes

“I'm hoping to convince my colleagues that, albeit what numbers you may have in this increasing and emerging epidemic of post-traumatic stress disorder, let me give a personal story that comes by way of my interaction often with veterans and, particularly, a post-traumatic stress disorder center that we were able to fund in a hospital that previously had not had the ability to serve Active Duty soldiers and veterans. It's a small hospital off the campus of our main Veterans Hospital in Houston, Texas, but we established a post-traumatic stress disorder center there that allowed veterans who may not have traditionally been at the Veterans Hospital, not because they did not have benefits, but for a variety of reasons, to find a comfort place to be treated for their post-traumatic stress disorder. And they were not just veterans of the Afghan and Iraq wars, but these were ones from the Persian Gulf, from Vietnam. And they could not thank the staff and could not thank the work that we had done to secure just a small amount of dollars, which this amendment does. This takes a small amount of dollars from a very large funding for, certainly, a commendable challenge, but it is one that I believe would benefit, as we seek to create a better quality of life for our soldiers, wherever they might be, and our veterans. This is a $500,000 deposit, if you will, on the high numbers of post- traumatic stress disorder.…”