Jay Rockefeller: “I want to explain why I missed two votes early during yesterday's session, Senator DeMint's amendment No. 930 and…”

“I want to explain why I missed two votes early during yesterday's session, Senator DeMint's amendment No. 930 and Senator Coburn's amendment No. 918 on S. 761, America COMPETES Act, a bill that I cosponsored. I was confident that my vote would not change the outcome, and the DeMint amendment failed by a vote of 22 to 79 and the Coburn amendment failed by a vote of 27 to 67. If I had been able to come to the floor, I would have voted against both amendments, but the outcome would have been the same. The reason I missed the votes was that I was attending a very special hearing in the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee on mental health issues for our returning soldiers. The first panel included a recent Iraq veteran with PTSD, parents of an Iraq veteran who committed suicide after returning home, and parents of an Iraq veteran soldier who died of an overdose of his own prescription drugs while in VA care. One of the families had come from Iowa and the other from California to talk about the tragedy of each son's death and to seek ways to ensure that other families might avoid such tragedies. The Iraq veteran, a combat medic, spoke eloquently on his own problems acknowledging and treating his PTSD and the similar problems of fellow soldiers in his platoon. One father testified that after his son died of an overdose in VA care, he and his wife went to claim his son's personal effects, and the items were handed to them in a plastic garbage bag.”