Training and Rehabilitation for Disabled Veterans Enhancement Act of 2008

Mr. President, in honor of World Social Work Day, I rise today to introduce the Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young, Jr. Social Work Reinvestment Act. I am proud to sponsor this legislation that will improve the shortage of social workers as we move into an era of unprecedented healthcare and social service needs. Social workers play a critical role combating the social problems facing our Nation. We must have the workforce in place to make sure that our returning soldiers have access to mental health services, our elderly maintain their independence in the communities they live in, and abused children are placed in safe homes. This bill reinvests in social workers by providing grants to social workers, reviewing the current social workforce challenges, and determining how this shortage will affect the communities social workers serve. I am honored to introduce this bill named after two social visionaries, Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young. Dorothy Height, a pioneer of the civil rights movement, like me began her career as a case worker and continued to fight for social justice. Whitney Young, another trailblazer of the civil rights movement, also began his career transforming our social landscape as a social worker. He helped create President Johnson's War on Poverty and has served as President of the National Association of Social Workers. Congressman Towns introduced the companion bill in the House of Representatives last month.

As a social worker, I understand the critical role social workers place in the overall care of our populations. Social workers can be found in every facet of community life--in hospitals, mental health clinics, senior centers, and private agencies that serve individuals and families in need. Social workers are there to help struggling students, returning soldiers, and chronically ill. Oftentimes, social workers are the only available option for mental health care in rural and underserved urban areas. The number of adults over the age of 65 will double by the year 2030 and social workers will be at the forefront of providing compassionate care to this burgeoning community. Yet there will not be enough social workers to meet these needs. Today 30,000 social workers specialize in gerontology, but we will need 70,000 of these social workers by 2010. I want to make sure that when the aging tsunami hits us, we have the workforce in place to care for our aging family members, the Alzheimer patients, the disabled.

This bill is about reinvesting in social work. It provides grants that invest in social work education, research, and training. These grants will fund community based programs of excellence and provide scholarships to train the next generation of social workers. The bill also addresses how to recruit and retain new social workers, research the impact of social services, and foster ways to improve social workplace safety. This bill establishes a national coordination center that will allow social education, advocacy and research institutions to collaborate and work together. It will facilitate gathering and distributing social work research to make the most effective use of the information we have on how social work service can improve our social fabric. This bill also gives social work the attention is deserves. It creates a media campaign that will promote social work, and recognizes March as Social Work Awareness Month.

As a social worker, I have been on the frontlines of helping people cope with issues in their everyday lives. I started off fighting for abused children, making sure they were placed in safe homes. Today I am a social worker with power. I am proud to continue to fight every day for the long range

needs of the Nation, on the floor of the United States Senate and as the Chairwoman of the Aging Subcommittee of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

I believe that social work is full of great opportunities, both to serve and to lead. Social work is about putting our values into action. Social workers are our best and brightest, our most committed and compassionate. They are at the frontlines of providing care, often putting themselves in dangerous and violent situations. Social workers have the ability to provide psychological, emotional, and social support--quite simply, the ability to change lives. That is why we must reinvest in social work--we must recruit, retain and research. I think we can do better by our Nation's troops, seniors, and children, by making sure we have the social workforce in place to meet their needs. I'm fighting to make sure we do.

The Dorothy I. Height and Whitney M. Young, Jr. Social Work Reinvestment Act is strongly supported by the National Association of Social Workers and the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research. I want to thank Senators Stabenow, Smith, and Inouye for their cosponsorship of this bill.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to enact this important piece of legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Southwest Border Violence Reduction Act. This legislation is aimed at addressing the drug-related violence that has plagued parts of Mexico and ensuring that we dedicate the resources necessary to stop the flow of weapons that help fuel this violence.

In the Mexican state of Chihuahua, which shares a border with New Mexico, there have been over 200 killings

since the beginning of 2008, an increase of about 100 percent over the previous year. This violence, which is mostly perpetrated by international drug trafficking organizations, impacts the well-being and safety of communities on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Recently it was reported that the entire police force in Palomas, a Mexican town just across the border from Columbus, New Mexico, resigned after repeated threats from drug traffickers. The Chief of Police fled to the United States to seek asylum. On another recent occasion, the Columbus Port of Entry was shut down after there were several killings nearby. As a result, American school children who commute back and forth over the border had to receive a police escort. And just yesterday, the Department of State renewed a travel advisory warning of the ongoing violence.

I have met with Mexico's Ambassador, Foreign Minister, and Attorney General to raise serious concerns about the level of violence in the region and to discuss ways to address this problem. I am pleased that the Government of Mexico understands the gravity of this situation and I appreciate Mexico's response in sending 2,000 troops to Chihuahua to bring it under control. However, both Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials have stressed the need to more aggressively target the criminal enterprises that are supplying weapons to drug cartels. According to ATF, about 90 percent of the firearms recovered in Mexico are trafficked from the United States because high-powered weapons are much easier to purchase in the U.S. than in Mexico.

The drug cartels operating along the border smuggle illegal narcotics into the United States and use revenue derived from the drug trade to purchase the firearms they need to maintain control over drug trafficking routes. According to ATF, about 90 percent of the firearms recovered in Mexico originate from sources within the United States because high-powered weapons, such as M-50s, are much easier to purchase in the United States than in Mexico. The ability to fight drug traffickers is significantly hampered by the fact that these violent groups use smuggled weapons to assassinate military and police officials, murder rival members of drug organizations, and kill innocent civilians.

In order to reduce violence in the region and disrupt the drug trade, it is essential that we aggressively work to prevent drug trafficking organizations operating in Mexico from obtaining these weapons. This effort requires that additional resources be allocated to target weapons trafficking networks supplying these arms and enhanced international cooperation in tracing the sources of weapons seized in Mexico.

To this end, the legislation I am introducing today would authorize additional resources to expand a successful ATF initiative, Project Gunrunner, which is aimed at combating arms smuggling. The bill would also increase the training and support of Mexican law enforcement in investigating firearms trafficking cases.

Specifically, the legislation would enable ATF to hire, train, and deploy an additional 80 special agents to establish and support seven more Project Gunrunner Teams that are solely devoted to disrupting firearm trafficking organizations smuggling weapons into Mexico. The bill also would make it possible for ATF to place at least 12 additional special agents in Mexico to support Mexican law enforcement in tracing seized firearms. Two Special Agents could be assigned to U.S. Consulates throughout the border region, Guadalajara, Chihuahua, Matamoros, Hermosillo, Tijuana, and Mazatlan, in conjunction with existing DEA offices. Funds would cover salaries, protective and investigative equipment, and other costs associated with maintaining a foreign presence. And lastly, the legislation would significantly increase ATF efforts to assist and train Mexican law enforcement officers with weapons trafficking investigations. The bill authorizes $24.5 million for each fiscal year 2009 and 2010 to implement this Act.

I strongly believe that it is essential that the U.S. enhance its efforts to stop the flow of weapons being trafficked into Mexico, and I hope my colleagues will join me in this effort.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Fisheries Capital Construction Fund Enhancement Act of 2008. This bill will help alleviate the potentially devastating economic impacts of recent regulations on the lobster industry issued by the National Marine Fisheries Service, and simultaneously encourage conservation in our Nation's fisheries and enhance the safety of the men and women who make their living at America's most dangerous profession.

On October 5, 2007, the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS, issued new regulations that will require ``fixed gear'' fishermen along the Atlantic Seaboard, including lobstermen, to use sinking groundline to connect their traps in large areas of the Gulf of Maine beginning next fall. The rules are intended to prevent entanglements of endangered whales in fishing gear. By NMFS's own estimates, this rule will impose annual costs of approximately $14 million on our fisheries, over 90 percent of which will be borne by the lobster industry. But a report issued by the Government Accountability Office in August 2007 found the agency's economic analysis to be insufficient, and that it could not estimate the extent to which these costly measures would protect whales. While we must protect our endangered species, it is senseless to impose ineffective measures on an already struggling industry.

These regulations are particularly concerning given the additional hardships our fishing communities currently face, especially down east where lobster plays an integral role in the regional economy. The groundfish industry, once the lifeblood of this region, is now virtually non-existent, with just one active permit remaining east of Penobscot Bay. Lobster has been the lone bright spot in recent years, with annual landings throughout the state in the neighborhood of $300 million. Unfortunately, early returns for 2007 have declined by more than 20 percent from the record highs of 2005 and 2006, and with fuel and bait prices at record highs, the harvest numbers already are leading to tightening budgets and dwindling profits. The bottom line is that it is no exaggeration to say that these rules could put many lobstermen out of business. The effect on fishing families, and even on entire fishing communities, could be devastating.

Furthermore, these rules bring additional safety concerns to the lobster industry. Many offshore areas in Maine have extremely rocky sea floors. Sinking rope vastly increases the likelihood that the line will chaff and snag, wearing the rope to the point that it can suddenly snap, or pulling the boat's rail towards the waterline where it can more easily be swamped and capsized by a large wave.

Passage of this bill would be a step toward alleviating the economic and safety impacts of these rules by opening fishermen's individually held Capital Construction Funds, or CCF's, to purchases of fishing gear required to meet conservation measures required within a fishery or for purchase of equipment to increase the safety of life at sea. Currently, fishermen can deposit a portion of their pre-tax income into a CCF, and that money can then be withdrawn for purchase or reconstruction of fishing boats. Expanding the qualified withdrawals from these accounts would reduce the safety and economic impacts of these and other fishing regulations. Furthermore, this bill would provide an additional outlet for the $221 million currently held in CCF's nationwide, limiting the expansion of fishing capacity and enhancing conservation efforts by reducing incentives to buy or upgrade existing vessels.

Our fisheries are the only remaining commercial wild capture industries in the Nation; fishermen are the last commercial hunters. As such, they must strike a unique balance between plying their trade and protecting the resource and the environment that supports it. The Nation's managers thus strive to balance the two parallel goals of sustaining our fish stocks and the viability of our fishing industries. The bill I introduce today will help achieve that balance by making fishing gear required for conservation or safety purposes more affordable for America's hard-working fishermen.

I want to thank my colleagues, Senators Reed, Kerry, Lieberman, Whitehouse, Collins, and Kennedy for co-sponsoring this legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am introducing today the proposed Training and Rehabilitation for Disabled Veterans Enhancement Act of 2008. This measure would make two small but, I believe, necessary changes in the Department of Veterans' Affairs program of Independent Living services conducted under the authority of chapter 31 of title 38, United States Code.

VA's IL Program was first established in 1980 by Public Law 96-466, the Veterans Rehabilitation and Education Amendments of 1980. Initially, that law provided for the establishment of a 4-year pilot program designed to provide independent living services for severely disabled veterans for whom the achievement of a vocational goal was not reasonably feasible. The number of veterans who could be accepted annually into the pilot program was capped at 500. In 1986, the program was extended through 1989 and then, in 1989, it was made in Public Law 101-237, the Veterans' Benefits Amendments of 1989. In 2001, the 500 annual cap on enrollees was increased to 2,500.

The measure I am introducing would remove any cap on the number of enrollees in any year. In earlier years, as a pilot project, the cap may have been appropriate in order to give VA an opportunity to manage the program in the most effective manner possible and in 2001, it made sense to increase that cap in light of the increased demand and need for the program.

Now, however, it makes sense to lift the cap altogether. This is especially so since this important program is designed to meet the needs of the most severely service-connected disabled veterans and more and more of those returning from combat have suffered the kind of devastating injuries that may make employment not reasonably feasible for extended periods of time.

The VA's Inspector General found, in a report issued in December of last year, that ``the effect of the statutory cap has been to delay IL services to severely disabled veterans.'' This delay happens because VA has developed a procedure that holds veterans in a planning and evaluation stage when the statutory cap may be in danger of being exceeded.

The bill I am introducing today would eliminate the cap entirely as recommended by VA's IG. It would also make the program mandatory rather than a discretionary pilot effort and would include improvement in quality of life an objective of training and rehabilitation for veterans with service-connected disability who are participating in programs of IL services. For these veterans--with respect to whom it has been determined that employment is not a present, reasonably feasible option but one that may be feasible in the future--it seems appropriate to look not only at future employment prospects but also toward improving the individual's quality of

life. Such an approach may very well lead to bettering an individual's chances of rehabilitation and future employment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I am introducing today the proposed Training and Rehabilitation for Disabled Veterans Enhancement Act of 2008. This measure would make two small but, I believe, necessary changes in the Department of Veterans' Affairs program of Independent Living services conducted under the authority of chapter 31 of title 38, United States Code.

VA's IL Program was first established in 1980 by Public Law 96-466, the Veterans Rehabilitation and Education Amendments of 1980. Initially, that law provided for the establishment of a 4-year pilot program designed to provide independent living services for severely disabled veterans for whom the achievement of a vocational goal was not reasonably feasible. The number of veterans who could be accepted annually into the pilot program was capped at 500. In 1986, the program was extended through 1989 and then, in 1989, it was made in Public Law 101-237, the Veterans' Benefits Amendments of 1989. In 2001, the 500 annual cap on enrollees was increased to 2,500.

The measure I am introducing would remove any cap on the number of enrollees in any year. In earlier years, as a pilot project, the cap may have been appropriate in order to give VA an opportunity to manage the program in the most effective manner possible and in 2001, it made sense to increase that cap in light of the increased demand and need for the program.

Now, however, it makes sense to lift the cap altogether. This is especially so since this important program is designed to meet the needs of the most severely service-connected disabled veterans and more and more of those returning from combat have suffered the kind of devastating injuries that may make employment not reasonably feasible for extended periods of time.

The VA's Inspector General found, in a report issued in December of last year, that ``the effect of the statutory cap has been to delay IL services to severely disabled veterans.'' This delay happens because VA has developed a procedure that holds veterans in a planning and evaluation stage when the statutory cap may be in danger of being exceeded.

The bill I am introducing today would eliminate the cap entirely as recommended by VA's IG. It would also make the program mandatory rather than a discretionary pilot effort and would include improvement in quality of life an objective of training and rehabilitation for veterans with service-connected disability who are participating in programs of IL services. For these veterans--with respect to whom it has been determined that employment is not a present, reasonably feasible option but one that may be feasible in the future--it seems appropriate to look not only at future employment prospects but also toward improving the individual's quality of

life. Such an approach may very well lead to bettering an individual's chances of rehabilitation and future employment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.