This Memorial Day, we will unite as a country and take time to reflect on America’s heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country. We will honor, admire, and pay tribute to the fallen at veterans cemeteries all across the nation. As we hear taps being played, we will stand somber, imagining, if only for an instant, how there are those that have loved their country so much that they were willing to sacrifice their lives in order to promote the lives of others.  
 
We are a grateful and thankful nation. Everyday, we should recognize those who made the ultimate sacrifice on our behalf. Last December, a student sent me a poem she wrote to honor the sacrifice of our soldiers. She wrote, “A flag flies high red, white, and blue…all because a soldier came through.”

Brave American men and women have come through. For centuries, thousands of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen have worn the uniform of the United States military, accepting the responsibility of defending our freedom and personifying what the cost of freedom really is. As so many have rightly said, freedom is not free. President John F. Kennedy famously said: “The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.”

Those words carry a truth that describes our present-day heroes defending us all over the world, as well as our heroes that served our country in past conflicts. Recently, I was proud to honor two local World War II veterans, David Orr of Paso Robles and Frank McDermott of Bakersfield, who received long overdue military medals. While these men did not serve to receive medals, I was happy to help them obtain their medals because we were not only able to honor the soldier, we also honored their mission. This was a mission where we did not surrender.  Instead, freedom was victorious and the evil of tyranny was defeated.

On this Memorial Day, as we remember our fallen heroes, we must also remember our courageous soldiers fighting abroad today and our brave veterans who have come home after honorably serving our nation. We pray for their safety and support their mission. That is why so many of us support organizations that help our soldiers abroad, like the USO and Supplies for Soldiers, why we need to strengthen and support our veterans programs, and why the national veterans cemetery at Tejon Ranch must be completed as quickly as possible – so we can honor our own local heroes by laying them to rest in our community. We all can do a part in paying tribute to our heroes.

We can also do more. A freedom that many of us take for granted is being able to vote.  As we consider exercising that freedom, in particular in this upcoming historic November election, I will continue to work to pass the bipartisan Military Voting Protection (MVP) Act that I introduced in April to protect the votes of those military men and women who protect our very freedoms abroad. They fight to protect our freedoms and the least we can do is ensure their freedom to vote is upheld by ensuring their votes are counted, as ours at home are counted.

We are a blessed country. On this day, we pay tribute and realize, as we should everyday, that we forever live in their debt. Like the student said in her poem so simply to conclude, “Standing on guard for the US of A…that we may have freedom in every way…they are brave and strong for all of us…for them we thank, in God we trust.”