Jay Rockefeller: “I maintain that thought. The reason I do is because the Senator from New Mexico voted for the Grassley-Exon amendment in…”

“I maintain that thought. The reason I do is because the Senator from New Mexico voted for the Grassley-Exon amendment in committee. In a sense, I thought it was a hangover amendment in fact because what happened was that now all of a sudden the Senator and some of his colleagues are looking up and saying, ``Gee. We did not do the right thing. Fifty percent of this money is going to be cut from defense. We don't want to do that. We want to cut it from Medicare, from veterans' benefits, and other things. So we come back and offer another amendment, even though he voted for the amendment in the Budget Committee.'' That is what I call cynical, because it is. Let us make two things clear. Veterans are a very important part of this country. And the only way health care reform is going to succeed, and succeed for veterans, is if veterans are included in health care reform. We have set aside $3.3 billion to upgrade the veterans' health care system, to allow it to be competitive to the nonveterans' health care system, so that the 24-plus million veterans who cannot now use veterans hospitals will be allowed to do so.”