To provide funds to the Army Corps of Engineers to hire veterans and members of the Armed Forces to assist the Corps with curation and historic preservation activities, and for other purposes.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5282, as amended, introduced by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Barrow). This legislation makes permanent an innovative U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' program begun under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Recovery Act, P.L. 111-5. Under the Recovery Act, the Corps allocated $3.5 million to open three Veterans Curation Project, VCP, laboratories throughout the nation. This legislation is important because it provides funding for hiring and training our veterans, while helping the Corps meet its cultural responsibilities. At a time when Americans need jobs more than ever, we should do all we can to increase training and employment, especially for returning veterans.

One of the Army Corps' responsibilities is its role in providing curation support for its projects. Accordingly, the Corps identifies, evaluates, and manages cultural resources that are eligible for listing in, or are listed in, the National Register of Historic Places. The Corps is responsible for ensuring that cultural resource management activities are consistent with Federal laws and regulations pertaining to Native American rights, curation and collections management, and the protection of resources from looting and vandalism.

To that end, the Corps used Recovery Act dollars to open three VCP laboratories in Augusta, Georgia; Washington, DC; and St. Louis, Missouri. These laboratories are tasked with carrying out the Corps' curation responsibilities, including cataloging, scanning, and photographing records and artifacts. At the same time, these laboratories use and train a workforce of disabled, wounded veterans, as well as veterans who have recently returned from overseas.

The VCP program is a very important program for our veterans because it teaches them skills in computer databases, digital scanning, digital image capture, and writing. Veterans who participate in this program can use these technical skills in jobs outside the VCP laboratories, including as forensic technicians and records managers.

This bill provides a statutory, five-year authorization of the Corps' Veterans Curation Project. The bill allows the Corps to meet its dual mission of hiring and training the Nation's veterans, while also carrying out its responsibilities to preserve and protect the Nation's cultural heritage.

We owe our veterans all the training and support we can provide them when they return home from serving our country. I would also like to point out that the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure received letters of support for this legislation from the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and the Society for American Archaeology.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 5282.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5282) to provide funds to the Army Corps of Engineers to hire veterans and members of the Armed Forces to assist the Corps with curation and historic preservation activities, and for other purposes, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to include extraneous materials on

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise in strong support of H.R. 5282, a bill introduced by the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Barrow) to provide a 5-year authorization for the Corps of Engineers' Veterans' Curation Program.

H.R. 5282 is a worthy piece of legislation. It provides job training to our veterans. It helps to record and protect our Nation's cultural resources, and it assists the Corps in fulfilling its obligations to protect our Nation's cultural and historical legacy.

Thousands upon thousands of artifacts rest uncataloged in hundreds of museums and Federal repositories across the country. These objects represent our past and help describe who we are today. It is, therefore, a cultural imperative that we preserve and understand these pieces. It is also a matter of law and policy that we do so.

The Veterans' Curation Program, located at labs in Georgia, the District of Columbia, and Missouri, provides veterans with a skill set to preserve the many cultural and historical artifacts encountered by the Corps of Engineers.

These employees gain valuable work skills in a host of areas, including computer database management, photographic and scanning techniques, and software proficiency. The development of these skills provides valuable training and experience for future work at museums, forensics labs, records management entities, and at government agencies.

This legislation authorizes the program for 5 years, through fiscal year 2015. It also provides a realistic step increase of authorized funding from $5 million in 2011 through $9 million in 2015. This will allow the Corps to incrementally expand the program in a rational and deliberate manner.

The Corps has had success with this program using Recovery Act dollars, so I ask all of the Members to join me in supporting this bill. It will ensure the continuation of a worthwhile program that respects the Nation's cultural heritage at the same time as providing valuable training to the men and women who have valiantly served our Nation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Barrow).

Madam Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5282, a bill that would create a Veterans' Curation Program at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to hire veterans and members of the Armed Forces to assist in carrying out curation and historic preservation activities.

I commend my colleague from Georgia, Mr. Barrow, for his work on this legislation. H.R. 5282 again shows the necessary commitment from the federal government to assist our veterans and military personnel through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

While I am supportive of H.R. 5282, I would be remiss if I did not take a few moments to discuss perhaps the biggest issue for the Corps of Engineers in the State of Georgia--updating the current manuals that affect both the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) and the Alabama- Coosa-Tallapoosa (ACT) Basins. Over the next 18 months before the court ordered deadline for negotiations to be completed, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida must develop a workable water sharing plan with the resources within these two basins.

Madam Speaker, one of the critical aspects of these negotiations will be how Lake Allatoona and Lake Lanier are treated. I firmly believe that both of these lakes should be considered water supply lakes for the purposes of serving the local communities. Knowing that the negotiations are ongoing, it is my hope that common ground on the treatment of these lakes will be reached.

To that end, I applaud the leadership of both of Georgia Senators-- Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson--on these water issues. Specifically, both Senators have championed the notion of authorizing Lake Lanier and Lake Allatoona to be used for water supply and reallocation of storage to meet the current and future needs of the surrounding towns and cities.

As for the governors of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia, I hope that a compromise including the use of these lakes for water storage and further, that allows them to be part of the water supply for the State of Georgia is on the horizon.

Madam Speaker, I am supportive of the efforts of the bill that we have before us and believe that it is another way in which we can help those who have so bravely served our country through the Armed Forces. I urge all of my colleagues to support H.R. 5282.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Serving our country in uniform is, frankly, probably the most noble thing that any human being can do, and it is such incredible sacrifice that our

troops do, and their families as well. And they are the ones who allow everything that we take for granted on a daily basis--to live in freedom, to live in democracy. They are the ones who allow us to do that. So today we have the opportunity to help transition our soldiers and our veterans into civilian life much more easily.

H.R. 5282 will help to make opportunities available to the brave men and women who are returning from the fight on the global war on terror. And so this legislation will continue our commitment to our veterans through education and employment opportunities.

As part of the civil works mission, the Corps of Engineers uncovers countless historic artifacts continuously. However, a lot of these historic artifacts which are very important items are, frankly, just uncataloged and just semi-abandoned, and they need curation.

This is such a commonsense bill. It helps preserve our history and preserve our past, while also making sure that we give opportunities to the most noble, to the best and the brightest of our country, to our troops and to our veterans.

I urge all Members to support our veterans and support this real commonsense, noble legislation.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I think the issue has been adequately explained. This is something that has to be done. Who better to do it? Who is more qualified and who is more deserving? Who is better to do it than our veterans, than our troops and our soldiers?

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding her leadership on this issue.

Madam Speaker, in October of 2009, the Army Corps of Engineers used temporary funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to begin the Veterans' Curation project to employ and train wounded Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in archeological processing. The project gives these veterans an opportunity to learn transferable job skills and earn a fair wage while cataloging artifacts that the Corps has discovered and is required to preserve. The project now employs about 50 veterans in Augusta, Georgia; St. Louis, Missouri; and Washington, D.C.

Unfortunately, temporary funding for the Veterans' Curation project is set to run out just when our returning veterans and our economy need it the most. H.R. 5282 provides long-term authorization for the program and will preserve the program and allow it to grow.

The Veterans' Curation project not only helps educate, train, and employ veterans, but it allows them to heal through the power of meaningful work. Since the Army Corps of Engineers has to catalog these artifacts anyway, there can be no better qualified or more deserving group than our own veterans to help get the job done. We owe no debt as citizens that is greater than the debt we owe to the veterans who fought for our freedoms. We literally owe them everything.

That is why I urge my colleagues to support this worthy program to help our wounded veterans heal and get good job skills at the same time. It's not only the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do.