Jay Rockefeller: “I thank the floor manager, and I thank the chairman of the committee who had a lot to say and who operates the committee…”

“I thank the floor manager, and I thank the chairman of the committee who had a lot to say and who operates the committee in a spirit which is very bipartisan and which is aimed at trying to solve problems. I say that at the beginning of every meeting and I say it here on the Senate floor. I rise to support the Murray-Byrd amendment. It responds to a VA funding shortfall that is in excess of $1 billion. I will get into that in a moment. What I have in my mind right now is about 5 days ago, I spent 2\1/2\ hours with 12 veterans, men and women who had come back from Iraq, one from Afghanistan--one several years ago, most of them within the last several months. They had sustained wounds and had healed some of those physical wounds. But what was particularly stunning to me was the degree of the psychological wounds, self-defined by them, after a period of relaxing. It takes time for veterans to open up when somebody with a dark suit and tie walks into their little circle. But they began to talk about their problems. They would not talk about what they had done because veterans do not do that. World War II veterans do not do that, Vietnam veterans do not do that, Operation Iraqi Freedom veterans do not do that. They talk about what hurts, the uncontrollable violence. They talk about deep depression. They talk about having no sense of the future. They talk about problems with their not being able to communicate with their wives--all kinds of problems.…”