SENATOR HUTCHISON DISCUSSES THE DEPARTMENTS OF LABOR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, EDUCATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT

This bill is a bill that has been agreed to. We have worked on a bipartisan basis. We very quickly came to a conclusion in the conference on the Military Construction and Veterans' Administration bill. In fact, the President said right out that he would sign the bill, even though it is almost $4 billion more than he had requested, because he understands the urgency of both bills--Veterans' Administration and the Military Construction--and he knows that it is important to do it right away. So he said right up front that he would sign our bill. But he also said right up front that he would not sign the Labor and Health and Human Services bill. So there would be no reason--no common sense or substantive reason--to combine these two bills.

It is incomprehensible to me that the leadership in the House decided to do this. In fact, they also put the Defense appropriations bill as a part of the Labor and Health and Human Services bill, but the Democratic chairman of the Defense bill agreed with the Republican ranking member, and they were able to take the Defense bill out.

For the very same reason, we should be taking the Veterans-Military Construction bill out from under the bill the President has said he will veto. The President will sign the Defense bill and the Military Construction-Veterans bill.

Why not have this Congress come together and accomplish something? Two major parts of our Government--it happens that it is the two parts that fund our warriors who are in the field, in harm's way right now--those could be signed right away. Why not do it? I hope the Congress will come to its senses and move in a bipartisan way, swiftly, to do this very thing.

Let me talk about the bills themselves. Military construction: With the impending return of troops resulting from the current overseas rebasing effort through BRAC and the global war on terror, our service men and women are in a time of great transformation. The military construction section of our bill provides $21 billion for construction projects to support these moves and bring our troops home. I cannot emphasize enough that we must stay on schedule. It is important that the military services receive the facilities they need to bring our troops home, where they have better training facilities, a better quality of life for themselves and their families. From operational building to many childcare centers, we have necessary facilities in the bill to do that. Serv ice mem bers, families, and local communities across our country are counting on us.

Now, Congress set a deadline of 2011 for BRAC to be implemented. Yet we see Congress is dragging its feet in the funding requirements to implement the BRAC. We have given the Department their mandate. We must follow through with the money needed. Many of us have visited bases in Europe, Korea, and throughout the world. We know there are training constraints in many of those bases; that our service men and women are not able to stay in training. Sometimes it is a constraint in airspace. Sometimes it is an environmental problem. Sometimes it is a constraint in ground space and artillery space, so that we can be fully trained when we go into harm's way.

The reason the Department of Defense made the announcement after our Congress passed the overseas basing commission amendment to the Defense authorization bill--the reason the Department of Defense announced that 70,000 troops would be brought home from Germany and Korea is because they agreed that the training constraints would make it impossible for us to keep our troops fully trained for the combat into which they will be going. So it is important that we fund this, that we do it on a timely basis, and that we move swiftly on the military construction part of the bill.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is the other part of this unit. I know there is a concern over total discretionary spending in all of the appropriations bills. But the President has said he will sign this bill. With the money appropriated, the Department of Veterans Affairs will be able to address the needs of over 7 million veterans who count on us to provide the funds necessary for medical care, medical facilities, research, extended care facilities, and even cemeteries. The appropriations increases in the bill are in areas I support.

We will always do what is necessary to take care of our veterans and their health care needs. The research of the Veterans' Administration into prosthetics, severe trauma, and traumatic brain injury is cutting edge. Increasing resources in these programs is a good investment for our Nation's veterans and our Nation's future. We are asking the VA to expand research in several areas, including post-traumatic stress syndrome, gulf war illness, prosthetics, and geriatric care. These are the types of injuries the warriors of today are sustaining. These are the warriors in the war on terror. These are the injuries we should be looking for the very best ways to treat, and also the way to rehabilitate our injured warriors with better prostheses, better artificial arms and legs, so they can have a more normal life because they have given so much for our country.

I think every Member of Congress shares the desire to fairly compensate, medically treat, and honor our veterans. The Veterans' Administration provides the health care to address the illnesses or disabilities, physical or mental, including those illnesses that might manifest themselves decades after military service, which is something we also see happening. We always have, and always will, take care of our Nation's veterans. Every veteran should know we are committed to nothing less.

Mr. President, this Congress has shown its resolve time and again to care for our men and women in uniform, as well as the more than 7 million veterans. We owe them our gratitude. We will do our part to take care of them. I ask that we work together to put our serv ice mem bers and veterans first, to do what is best for them and our country.

Mr. President, I will make the point of order at the appropriate time to separate these two distinct bills. The Veterans-Military Construction bill and the Labor-Health and Human Services bill are separate bills. We have separate committees, and we have dealt with the two committees separately. There is no reason to put them together, particularly when the President has said he will sign the Veterans-Military Construction bill, and he will veto the Labor-Health and Human Services bill.

Why do we delay and put our military service men and women and their families and our veterans in a situation where they are in limbo? Why not pass the bill separately because the bill is ready to go? We have worked in a bipartisan way to assure that it is.

There is no common sense nor substantive reason to put these bills together. So I will leave it up to others to determine why the leadership in the House would have lumped these bills together. I will also say that I respect the Defense Appropriations Committee chairman and ranking member for coming together on a bipartisan basis to take their bill out because that is exactly what should have happened. I hope we will do the same thing for our military veterans and our service men and women who rely on the construction projects and military construction to provide the housing, training facilities, childcare centers, and health care centers, which are necessary for them and their families to have the quality care they so richly deserve for what they are doing for our country right now.

I yield the floor.

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