Spouses of Heroes Education Act

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.

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

I rise today in strong support of the Veterans' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014, which was passed by the Senate 93-7 on June 11 of this year.

This critical piece of legislation is one that must be implemented immediately to provide solutions to the many problems that have been discovered at the Department of Veterans Affairs and to provide the necessary care and assistance that our veterans deserve. We must move immediately on an agreement with the Senate and not further delay the long overdue care that our veterans need and have earned.

The most expeditious way to do this would be to move forward with the Senate bill, one, as I said, that was supported by 93 Senators-- Republican, Democrat, and Independent alike. I know that my colleagues in the House and Senate are committed to serving our veterans. Services for our veterans, I am pleased to say, is an issue of great importance and is one that continuously receives strong bipartisan support in both Chambers.

I want to applaud Chairman Miller and the Veterans' Affairs Committee and Ranking Member Michaud for their hard work in bringing to light the many problems and the terrible corruption that we have discovered in the VA, and for working to improve the care for our veterans.

I am here to fight for the veterans and the military families in my district and for those across the country. Mr. Speaker, this is a deeply personal issue with me. My father was a veteran of World War II. He joined the Army Air Corps, and probably lied about his age so he could go serve his country.

He served in World War II. He went on to serve in Korea and Vietnam, and when he left the Air Force, he extensively used the services of the veterans administration.

Were he alive today, I know he would be enraged by what has been discovered about the neglect, misconduct, and manipulation of the VA waiting lists, so that top executives could receive financial rewards and bonuses.

The 85,000 veterans I work for in southern Arizona--and countless more nationwide--deserve better from us and from the Department of Veterans Affairs than they have been getting.

I have been pressing for better access to health care for our veterans since I first came to Congress in 2012. One of the first bills I introduced was the Veterans Health Access Act, to ensure that veterans could get the health care they needed in their communities, without long commutes and even longer wait times, and I am pleased that the House and Senate are now working to address this issue.

We must improve the quality and timeliness of care to our veterans, and that is why, today, Mr. Speaker, I stand before you to call on my colleagues in the House and the Senate to support the Senate bill that increases access to care and takes many more steps to improve services and support for our veterans and their families.

Included in the Senate-passed bill is the expansion of the Marine Gunnery Sergeant John David Fry Scholarship, so that surviving spouses may have a chance to further their education and take care of their families.

The Marine Gunnery Sergeant John David Fry Scholarship is a current education benefit for the surviving children of our fallen military servicemembers. It has sent many sons and daughters of fallen heroes to college and given them the opportunity to get the American Dream.

However, it is important that we also offer this benefit to the spouses who are left widowed and must singlehandedly care for their families. This scholarship could provide many spouses an opportunity to get the education they need and the jobs that will help them succeed and support their family.

This scholarship was originally created in memory of John David Fry, who was a leader of marines from Lorena, Texas. Gunnery Sergeant Fry, a member of the explosive ordnance disposal community, demonstrated true service to his country and to his fellow marines in Iraq.

With only 1 week left on his tour in 2006, he injured his hand and was given the option to return home early with a Bronze Star. Fry declined the offer and volunteered to go on one last patrol, to defuse bombs for his fellow servicemembers.

Sadly, Gunnery Sergeant Fry was killed that day by an improvised explosive device in Anbar province, Iraq, leaving behind his wife and three small children.

Mr. Speaker, this type of courage and sacrifice has been witnessed countless times in the past 13 years by our men and women in uniform. For example, just recently, on May 12, a soldier from my district with 29 years of military service succumbed to the wounds he received in Afghanistan.

Command Sergeant Major Martin R. Barreras of Tucson was the enlisted leader of his infantry battalion in Harat province and was on his sixth deployment to Afghanistan.

While on patrol with his soldiers, Gunny--as his family likes to call him and remember him--was fatally wounded by small-arms fire while leading his troops into battle.

This was not the only time this respected leader saw combat. In 2003, Sergeant Major Barreras helped rescue former prisoner of war Jessica Lynch from an Iraqi hospital. At the time, he was the enlisted leader of the Army battalion that conducted the mission.

He personally handed Lynch to another soldier to transfer her to the helicopter that evacuated her from the area and to safety. According to reports, he then fended off multiple attacks to retrieve all nine bodies of the other U.S. soldiers missing in action.

Everyone in our country owes all of our fallen heroes, such as Gunnery Sergeant Fry and Command Sergeant Major Barreras, a debt of gratitude for their service and their courage, but we must also remember the silent courage of spouses of our servicemembers who must cope with the rigors of military life and who must live with only the memory of their fallen husband or wife.

These unsung heroes are the ones who maintain the homefront for our deployed men and women in uniform. They are the ones who maintain the

morale of our troops. They are the ones who unite with other military families to develop a support network for those spouses and children while their loved ones are in harm's way.

They are the ones who live with constant worry of their servicemember's safety, and they are the ones who must bear the burden in the absence of their husband or wife.

Our military spouses play a pivotal role in our Nation, and it is one that we must never forget. This is a good way to honor that service, by providing a scholarship in memory not just of Gunnery Sergeant Fry and Command Sergeant Barreras, but all of the servicemembers who died for our country and have left behind a loving family.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this motion to instruct, to support the expansion, with no limitations, of the Gunnery Sergeant John David Fry Scholarship.

I further urge swift passage to pass the Veterans' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014 in its entirety. We must act now to enact this legislation and get our veterans the care that they deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, could you advise me on how much time remains?

Mr. Speaker, I want to introduce a series of Members who would like to speak to this issue, but before I do, I would just say this: I have been here now a little bit more than 2 years, and I have learned a few things.

One of those things I have learned is that, when you have the public's attention and when you have this Chamber's attention and when you have the Senate's attention on an issue of importance like this, you act, and you do as much as you can to not only take care of the corruption, the systemic problems within the VA, but other issues that have been pending for a long time. To that end, I hope that we will, in fact, recede to the Senate version of the legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Arizona (Mrs. Kirkpatrick), ranking member on the Oversight Subcommittee of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, who has been a strong fighter for our veterans her entire time in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, next I would like to yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada, Congresswoman Dina Titus, a member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, who has introduced legislation here in the House, H.R. 3441, the Spouses of Heroes Education Act, which would expand this scholarship.

As a university professor at UNLV for more than 30 years, Congresswoman Titus understands the importance of education and has been a strong leader in education issues both in Nevada and here in Washington, as a former member of the Education and Labor Committee.

Mr. Speaker, next I would like to yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Arizona, Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema. If you know Congresswoman Sinema, you know that when she gets her dander up, she fights like hell for whatever the issue is, and that has certainly been true in the fight that she has waged on behalf of our veterans.

As you know, the first evidence of corruption and misdeeds was discovered in Arizona at the VA in Phoenix, and from the very beginning, Congresswoman Sinema has been on that issue. So I am very proud and pleased to yield to her to speak on this bill.

I have no further requests for time, but I do have some closing remarks.

Mr. Speaker, could I ask for the balance of time remaining.

Mr. Speaker, let me just close with these thoughts.

I came here, as you well know, following the resignation of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, for whom I worked, when she was a Member. Her commitment to veterans was complete and deep. I am pleased to have picked up that mission and have tried to move forward with it in every way possible.

I also came here in the spirit of bipartisanship, looking for partners on both sides of the aisle to move important legislation for our country, and I am very pleased to say that I have found bipartisanship in full measure in the manner with which we have worked together to ensure that our veterans are properly served. Now I call on my colleagues, the conferees, to move quickly to bring our two bills together, to strike now while the opportunity presents.

Back home, when I meet with veterans, they say, What are you waiting for? We need you to act, and act now.

I urge our colleagues to adopt the motion to instruct so that we can get this job done expeditiously and in full measure.

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

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 628, I offer a motion.

Mr. Speaker, this motion is to authorize a conference to combine our two bills into something that is focused on the access and accountability crisis that exists at VA.

I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the motion.

The previous question was ordered.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to instruct.

As our committee works in a bipartisan fashion in an ongoing investigation of the Department of Veterans Affairs, we have continued to work and will continue to work in that bipartisan manner through legislation and aggressive oversight.

Veterans are not a partisan issue and must remain as such. That is why I am a little bit confused about the motion to instruct that has been offered by my colleagues across the aisle today.

With the vote that was just held to authorize us to go to conference, it would really not be prudent to prematurely direct our conferees to already recede to the Senate position before we even sit down and discuss whatever the matter that we may have with the Senate is.

The House amendment contains the text of H.R. 4810 and H.R. 4031, which have both passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan majorities and could be taken up right now by the Senate and sent to the President today.

Since it is clear that the Senate doesn't intend to do that, our only option is to go to conference so that both Chambers--the House and the Senate--can work together to smooth out the differences.

I want to caution my colleagues that what we are dealing with right now is a very technical provision, a provision that will have a long- lasting effect on VA and the manner in which veterans throughout the country receive the needed care that they have earned.

The gravity of the issues before us and the differences in how we solve them does require that the House Members be given an opportunity to sit down face to face with our Senate colleagues, so that we might make sure that we get this right for our veterans and their families.

I agree with a lot of the intent of many of the provisions in the legislation, but I do have some concerns. First, as the Senate bill is currently written, it provides an expedited appeal right for Senior Executive Service employees at VA who are fired by the new removal authority that is authorized by this bill.

The House has already passed similar provisions in H.R. 4031, with appeal rights that follow exactly what we, as Members of Congress, have in regards to our congressional staff. While I am open to discussing appeal rights, I am concerned that the Senate bill really doesn't change the status quo and could, in fact, limit the Secretary's authority to remove poor-performing employees. In short, without accountability, reform will not be possible.

Secondly, another major provision of the Senate bill would be to provide the authority for VA to hire additional doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel to provide and improve access.

The House Committee on Veterans' Affairs has heard multiple times, during the course of our investigation, that one issue with VA's current policy on capacity and scheduling is that VA doctors do not see nearly enough patients in one day compared to doctors in the private sector.

We need to ensure that VA health care staff and technology are used efficiently first, then address new hiring. Therefore, before Congress authorizes new funding for a whole new slew of medical personnel, I believe that VA managers must reexamine their current policies and see if they can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the personnel that are already in place.

Finally, the Senate bill essentially gives the VA a blank check to fund the requirements of this bill. Again, in hearing after hearing, the committee heard from VA about their wasteful spending on IT programs, poorly managed contracts, large bonuses, extravagant conferences, and bloated bureaucracy.

In short, this is not an agency for which Congress should be cutting a no-strings-attached blank check. It is imperative that Congress follow a more methodical, yet quick approach to funding new requirements which preserves Congress' oversight responsibility to protect taxpayer resources provided on behalf of America's veterans. This is the House position, and we ought to fight for it.

Now, look, I don't doubt my colleague's sincerity to quickly and efficiently pass legislation to help address the countless issues that are facing the Department of Veterans Affairs today. However, the best way to do this and to ensure that all of the issues are on the table to work out our differences with the Senate is with a conference committee.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the motion to instruct, and I reserve the balance of my time.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I think the question that needs to be asked is why in the world, with an almost $160 billion budget, would there be two nonfunctioning machines inside a VA medical center? It just goes to show the incapability for the current bureaucracy that exists out there to do what they need to do.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I think what is very curious is that if people would look at the bill that they are referring to today, that 80 percent of the text in that bill is already House-passed language. The Senate could pass that--could have passed that some time ago--and they have refused to do so. And now, all of a sudden, because it is wrapped up with a tiny little bow, it is the perfect piece of legislation.

I don't believe that my colleagues are trying to imply that the bickering that takes place is not supporting the veterans. The House Committee on Veterans' Affairs has held 90 hearings in the 113th Congress. Over 50 of those are oversight hearings. The Senate has only held six oversight hearings. The House has been doing their job and has been doing it in a bipartisan fashion.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to remind the Members here on the floor that H.R. 357, the in-State tuition and bonus elimination bill, passed the House by 390-0; H.R. 4031, the VA accountability bill, passed this House in a wide, bipartisan fashion, 390-33; H.R. 4810, the access to care bill, passed this House unanimously, 400--we are hearing about 93-3? How about 426-0? Why don't we fight for what the House believes in once in a while around here instead of giving up to the Senate? H.R. 3521, the VA clinics--27 clinics are authorized in our bill. That was a 347-1 vote.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I remind my fellow colleagues in the Chamber today that there are 12 pieces of legislation that have passed our committee and this full House that await action in the United States Senate, and they continue to languish.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I remind my friends here that the whims of the Congress to not pass appropriation bills blows very strong over on the Senate side because the House passes its Military Construction-VA bill year in and year out. It was the Senate that chose not to pass any appropriation bills last year.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank all Members who have come to speak on this very important matter. This should be a bipartisan matter, and it has been in our committee and certainly in this entire House.

I am still wondering why in the world we would just now vote to go to conference with the Senate on 80 percent of the bills that have already passed the House, and then we would turn around, and we would have a motion to instruct the conferees to just forget what the House said, take up the Senate bill.

It doesn't make sense that we would do that. In a normal course of legislative business, this is the way the process works: the House, the Senate get together, and we work out the issues that concern all of us.

I would ask the minority--or I would request the minority to not use this motion to instruct in one single political ad. I hope that I don't see this vote used in any political ads because our committee does things in a bipartisan fashion. Congressman Michaud and I have worked together diligently to keep the votes from becoming partisan.

I cannot see any other reason to have the vote today on the motion to instruct conferees to accept the Senate-

passed legislation after we have done the same thing in the House, passed the same bills in the House that they could take up on our side, yet we are going to cede to the Senate position.

With that, I urge defeat of the motion to instruct.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion.

Mr. Speaker, I offer this motion to instruct because veterans in Arizona and across the country need action from Congress and from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Our motion instructs House conferees to accept the bipartisan bill, drafted by Senator John McCain and Senator Bernie Sanders and overwhelmingly approved by the Senate, so that we can immediately send a bill to the President's desk that will provide relief for our Nation's veterans.

The revelations that veterans at the Phoenix VA and veterans at other VA facilities across the country were placed on secret lists and had to wait months before seeing a doctor are immoral, irresponsible, and un- American. That veterans who served our country honorably may have died while waiting for care is unconscionable.

Ongoing audits by the VA and the VA Office of Inspector General revealed systemic problems with wait times, with the scheduling process, and with the honesty and integrity of the system. Those responsible for this disaster must be held accountable.

Many dedicated VA employees, many of them veterans themselves, work tirelessly to provide the best care to our veterans, but they are limited by this broken system, which is failing millions of our veterans.

The first priority of the VA and Congress must be to provide our veterans the care they need. This challenge does not need a Democratic or a Republican response. It demands an American response, and I appreciate the bipartisan leadership and work of Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Michaud. In fact, I cosponsored and voted for both of Chairman Miller's bills.

I supported bipartisan legislation to give the Secretary of the VA a greater ability to hold underperforming senior executives accountable and to fire managers, like those in Phoenix who manipulated wait times and put veterans at risk.

I also supported bipartisan legislation directing the VA to use non- VA community providers to cut those wait times and increase the capacity and capabilities of the VA health care system.

In Phoenix, we have established a working group of community providers, veterans service organizations, and the local VA to work together to improve access to services.

We joined with the American Legion to establish a veterans crisis center to provide service to our veterans, and I would say thank you to the American Legion for moving so quickly and working with our community.

We have also started to fully utilize programs, like the Patient- Centered Community Care contract, which cuts into wait times for specialty and mental health care at the Phoenix VA. A new contract for primary care should be in place by the end of this month, but more action is required.

This conference should move quickly to accept the Senate language, which passed 93-3.

In addition to the good provisions in the House bill to improve access and accountability, the Senate language directs the VA to hire more doctors and nurses. It invests in 26 new VA facilities.

It provides for instate tuition for veterans, regardless of their home concept, a concept that the House overwhelmingly supported earlier this year. It extends post-9/11 GI Bill education benefits to surviving spouses of veterans who died in the line of duty. It improves access to health care for military sexual assault survivors. It was scored as costing less than the House bill.

Both Republicans and Democrats want to provide the best possible care for our veterans and their families, and we want to move quickly to provide this care. That is why I urge my colleagues to accept this motion to instruct, so we can move a bill to the President's desk quickly, and we can provide the care and services our veterans have earned and deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to my colleague from Arizona (Mrs. Kirkpatrick).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Enyart), a veteran colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Titus), my colleague on the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Castro).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Garcia).

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Miller, just know that folks on both sides of the aisle are very, very grateful for his leadership, in particular the research that was done to uncover the tragedy that occurred in the Phoenix VA in my district. So know that folks on both sides of the aisle here in the House are very, very grateful for the bipartisan nature in which the Veterans' Affairs Committee has conducted its affairs during his tenure, and we appreciate his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano), my colleague who serves on the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Brownley), my colleague who serves on the Veterans' Affairs Committee and the ranking member on the Health Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown), who serves on the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains?

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Michaud for their tremendous leadership and the work that they have done over the years to provide veterans with the best possible care, holding multiple hearings and passing a multitude of bipartisan bills. By working together, I know we can address this crisis and create a VA system that our veterans deserve.

I urge our colleagues to support this motion to instruct, so we get a bill to the President's desk quickly. This is not the end of our work, but it is an important step forward to meet the needs of our veterans.

I trust that Chairman Miller, Ranking Member Michaud, and the members of the conference committee will represent the interests of veterans very well in our conference committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to instruct and yield myself such time as I may consume.

As we have already heard, the motion to instruct would require the House to recede to the Senate amendment to H.R. 3230.

Solving the problem of timely access to health care and imposing the rule of accountability is absent at VA, and I think that is our first and most important obligation because it is the source of many of the problems that exist within the Department, many of the problems that were uncovered because of the oversight from both Republicans and Democrats on the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

We are making good progress with our negotiations with our Senate colleagues, and now is not the time to try to tie the hands of the negotiators with what I believe is a partisan ploy.

Moreover, yesterday, Senator Sanders indicated that he wanted to expand the scope of the conference committee's work far beyond what the Senate bill itself had encompassed, by adding VA's request for an additional $17.6 billion into the mix.

So today, I say to my colleagues I am not even sure that the Senate could recede to the Senate amendment because they keep moving the goalposts.

As I said yesterday, on the last motion to instruct, the inspector general and the GAO have both stated on multiple occasions during our hearings that they do not have confidence in VA's numbers.

Moreover, at every VA budget hearing, the Secretary has been asked: Do you have the dollars you need to take care of the veterans that you are tasked with taking care of? Invariably, we get the answer, every single time, yes.

So why should we believe that, suddenly, VA sees the need to add an additional $10 billion to hire 10,000 new clinical staff and $6 billion in new construction without having those numbers vetted?

When our staff was briefed yesterday on this request for $17.6 billion--actually, I don't even know if it is a request yet, but when the Secretary talked about it, they came to brief our staffs, and they brought three sheets of paper to justify a $17.6 billion number.

To the Members on both sides of the aisle, I caution that, despite the urgency of the current crisis, we have got to root out the cause that has been affecting timely access to care and accountability, not secondary issues, many of which we all support, including the Fry Scholarship fund expansion.

If we don't, those of us fortunate enough to be here years from now will be right back where we are, debating, once again, how things went wrong at the VA.

I would point out again, as I did yesterday, there are dozens of bills sitting, languishing in the Senate, including the authorization of 27 clinics. The motion to instruct yesterday talked about receding to the Senate bill that had 26 clinics.

The House bill was passed in December of last year--27 clinics. If the Senate would just bring it up, pass it, send to it the President, we could immediately make a difference.

I also talked about the expansion of the Fry Scholarship program. That is something that we certainly should look at, but it will do nothing, nothing to increase the care and break the backlog, the lines that our veterans are waiting in now to get the health care that they have earned.

So I would ask the Senate to pass the dozen bills that sit over there on their side, send them to the President today, and I would also point out that I am willing to discuss--and I think most Members on our side--the Fry Scholarship issues, but we don't think that they are in the scope of the emergency that exists today.

Part of the reason that I believe that, section 701 of the Senate bill does not address timely access to care or the cultural corruption that exists within the Department.

A surviving spouse--as my colleague, Mr. Barber has already said--who has a spouse that was killed on active duty is already entitled to receive financial benefits that include 45 months of GI Bill-type education benefits, $500,000 in death benefits, and $1,215 in monthly dependency and indemnity compensation benefits.

In short, I don't believe it is time for us to be talking about expanding the benefits without expressing them through regular order here on the House floor, especially in the face of what I now understand is the Senate's new effort to move the goal line in our conference committee work.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I hope that the last speaker did not imply that anybody on the conference committee from the House was trying to delay the progress on this particular bill.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, might I inquire as to whether or not the gentleman from Arizona has any further requests for time?

Mr. Speaker, again, I would urge my colleagues to not support this motion to instruct. And I would also remind my colleagues that even though the number 93-3 has been used for the passage of the Senate bill, the House bill, itself, which was much more narrowly tailored to actually deal with the crisis that exists today, with access to care, passed unanimously, 426-0, in this House. Just prior to the final vote, there was a motion to recommit that did, in fact, want the House to recede to the Senate amendment.

The problem is, again, the goalposts are changing. The House has been working with the Senate. We have made an offer on our particular side. We are waiting for the Senate to return a counter. Things changed yesterday, unfortunately, because of the additional $17.6 billion that was brought forward by the Department themselves.

So we continue to stay focused. Our intent is to complete this bill and get it to the President's desk before we leave in August.

I appreciate my colleague's comments today.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I support this motion to instruct the conferees. The Senate amendments go beyond a short-term solution to solving the patient access crisis at the VA.

As a member of the conference committee, I continue to push for the provisions in the Senate amendments because they are good for veterans and their families.

We must seize this opportunity to pass meaningful reforms at the VA. Our veterans and their families deserve better than piecemeal, short- term fixes, especially with report after report of veterans struggling to receive timely care and benefits and struggling to find good-paying jobs.

One provision in the Senate amendment will give post-9/11 GI benefits to surviving spouses of servicemembers who have given the ultimate sacrifice for our country.

We cannot forget about surviving spouses. A surviving spouse struggles with the loss of a loved one and often struggles with a financial loss that can make it difficult to provide for the family left behind.

Servicemembers are able to transfer GI Bill benefits to their spouses and children, but the benefits and the ability to transfer this benefit are based on time served on active duty.

We can all agree that surviving spouses should not be cut out of receiving full bill benefits if they lose a loved one before that loved one has served 36 months on active duty.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill will give surviving spouses the opportunity to receive education and training so they

are better able to provide for themselves and their families. It would be wrong of the conference committee and Congress to pass up this opportunity to give surviving spouses this benefit.

We cannot delay passing meaningful veterans legislation. If we do not take this opportunity now, then Congress will once again fail all the American people, veterans, and their families by refusing to act.

Passing VA reform legislation in a meaningful way that gives GI Bill benefits to surviving spouses should be an easy decision for every Member of Congress.

For those who are holding up the progress of this legislation, how will you go home to your district in August and explain to veterans and constituents why Congress was unable to pass something as simple as giving GI benefits to surviving spouses?

I know that all of my colleagues sincerely wish to help veterans and their families, but it is not enough to pay lip service to our military and veterans. Congress must act now. At the very least, the conference committee should agree to this provision in the Senate amendments.