Caregivers Expansion and Improvement Act of 2013

Mr. President, today as the chairman of the committee I have introduced the most comprehensive piece of veterans legislation that we have seen in a very long time. The Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefit and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014 delivers on the promises that we have made to our servicemembers and I believe will have the support of Members of the Senate and of the House. It addresses virtually every single issue the veterans community has been concerned about.

What we have done now is taken two omnibus bills and wrapped them into this legislation. In addition, we have taken other pieces of legislation passed by the committee, and we have added to that based on some recent developments.

This legislation is the product of a year of bipartisan work and includes provisions important to almost every single veterans service organization and dozens of Members of the Senate, Republican, Democrat, and Independent, many of which were reported out of the Veterans' Affairs Committee with strong bipartisan support.

This legislation completely eliminates the cuts that were made to the military retiree cost-of-living adjustments. I know there was great concern here in the Senate from Democrats and Republicans about that cut, as well as in the House of Representatives. I am happy to say this legislation completely eliminates the cuts that were made to the military retiree cost-of-living adjustments.

As we all know, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 that was passed a few days ago would lower cost-of-living adjustments for military retirees by reducing the annual adjustment by 1 percent until age 62. The American people have spoken very loudly and very clearly. They have told the Congress to restore those cuts to military retirees and we have listened. I applaud the House and the Senate for restoring these cuts for disabled military retirees and survivors in the appropriations act we passed today. Today we took care of part of the problem. But we have to do more. What the comprehensive veterans bill I have introduced today does is restore the full COLA to all military retirees, every single retiree. This bill restores these COLAs and does much more.

I wish to take a moment to highlight some of the key provisions of this comprehensive piece of legislation. Let me say, this legislation is based on listening very carefully to what the veterans organizations have told us in private meetings, in hearings, and at some of the very large hearings we have held with the American Legion, the VFW, the DAV, and many other service organizations. Let me briefly touch on some of the provisions we are addressing, some of the concerns we are addressing in this comprehensive veterans legislation which, I should add, is fully paid for. It is fully paid for.

In the first omnibus bill that we passed, S. 944, the Veterans Health and Benefits Improvement Act of 2013, we dealt with in-State tuition assistance for post-9/11 veterans, an issue of great concern to young veterans and to all of the veterans organizations. This package includes provisions the committee's ranking member Senator Burr and I worked together on, that would help servicemembers transition back into civilian life by making recently separated veterans eligible for tuition at the in-State rate.

Given the nature of our Armed Forces, servicemembers have little to no say as to where they reside during military service. Therefore, many of these servicemembers have not had sufficient time to establish residency by the time they go back to school. This legislation would help the transition of our brave men and women who have sacrificed so much in defense of our country by giving them a fair shot at attaining educational goals without incurring an additional financial burden. We address that issue in this legislation.

Clearly one of the issues that has been an embarrassment to all of us is the degree of sexual assault we have seen in the military. What this legislation does is address that issue as well. While the Pentagon, Congress, and other stakeholders continue to work to end sexual assault within the military, something we have to focus on, we must nonetheless do everything we can to ensure that the VA is a welcoming place for those who have survived sexual assault. That is why this legislation includes important provisions that would improve the delivery of care and benefits to individuals who experience sexual trauma by serving in the military. These provisions were inspired by Ruth Moore, a veteran who struggled for 23 years to receive VA disability compensation.

It would expand access to VA counseling and care to active-duty servicemembers and members of the Guard and Reserve who experienced sexual assault during inactive-duty training. It also takes a number of steps to improve the adjudication of disability compensation claims based on military sexual trauma.

This legislation will give the VA additional tools to provide victims of sexual trauma with the care and benefits they need to confront the emotional and physical consequences of these horrific acts. Sexual assault in the military is unacceptable and this committee is, in a significant way, addressing that issue.

One of the concerns we have heard from many veterans and veterans organizations is the issue of overmedication. Many of our veterans come back and receive in some cases 5, 10 different types of pills to address some of the very serious problems they have. What this bill does is expand, among many other things, access to complementary and alternative medicine. The VA already does a good job in that area. This would expand their capability to provide complementary and alternative medicine.

Maintaining the VA's world-class health care system remains a priority for our committee. I am pleased we were able to respond to calls from veterans to increase access to complementary and alternative medicine for the treatment of chronic pain, mental health conditions, and chronic disease. By expanding access to these treatment options-- options such as acupuncture, meditation, massage therapy, and many others--we can enhance the likelihood veterans get the care they need in the way that works for them. These treatments are becoming more and more popular. More and more veterans want access to them and that is what we do in this legislation.

Additionally, this legislation calls for the VA to promote healthy weight in veterans by increasing their access to fitness facilities as a healthy weight is critical to combating multiple chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. In other words, the

most cost-effective and best way to treat disease is to prevent that disease by making sure our veterans have the opportunity to keep healthy. This legislation does that as well.

This legislation further honors as veterans certain persons who performed service in the Reserve components of the Armed Forces. I know how important this provision is for all those who wore this Nation's uniforms as members of the Reserves. I am pleased we will finally honor their service with passage of this legislation.

This legislation also expands benefits for surviving spouses, for the spouses of those who gave their lives to defend this country. I want to make special note of provisions that will be included in this package that would also strengthen the benefits and services provided to surviving family members by addressing a number of concerns brought to the attention of this committee by the Gold Star Wives in testimony last year.

Obviously the Gold Star Wives are the spouses of those soldiers who died in combat. Specifically, this bill would provide additional dependency and indemnity compensation for surviving spouses with children in order to provide financial support in the difficult period following the loss of a loved one. This bill would also expand the Marine Gunnery Sergeant John David Fry Scholarship to include surviving spouses of members of the Armed Forces who died in the line of duty. That means surviving spouses would become eligible for post-9/11 GI bill benefits, setting them and their families up for success in the years to follow.

One of the issues that has occupied a great deal of time and energy on the committee deals with claim processing. We all know that for the last number of years the VA has had a very significant backlog. That is clearly not acceptable. When a veteran brings forth a claim, that claim should be processed in a reasonable period of time with a reasonable degree of accuracy. We are all too well familiar with the challenges of the claims backlog. I am very pleased to see that the VA is making significant progress on this complex issue. They are going from paper to digital. That is a huge process. As a result, the backlog is declining. That is good news, but we have to do more.

This legislation would support VA's ongoing efforts and would make needed improvements to the claims system. Among a number of claims- related provisions, this bill for the first time would require the Department to publicly report on both claims processing goals and actual production. This would allow Congress and the public to closely track and measure VA's progress on this difficult issue. The Secretary of the VA Eric Shinseki has proposed a very ambitious goal for the end of 2015. We want to make sure they are on track.

That is some of the provisions included in the first bill. Let me talk a little about bit about the second omnibus bill. Both of those bills passed unanimously out of committee. The Comprehensive Veterans Health and Benefits and Military Retirement Pay Restoration Act of 2014 includes provisions from S. 1581, a second omnibus bill that moved out of the committee with unanimous support at the November markup. Here are some of the provisions in that omnibus.

The improvement and expansion of dental care. I don't know about New Mexico, but I can tell you that in Vermont, and in fact in many parts of this country, inability to access affordable dental care is a major crisis. It is true for the general public and it is true for veterans as well. The truth is, right now the VA, with the exception of service- connected oral problems, does not provide dental care to our veterans. I think that is a very significant omission.

What this legislation does is, starting off with a large-scale pilot project, begin the effort to make sure dental care becomes part of VA health care. This is something that I think the veterans throughout this country will be very excited to learn about and to participate in.

Those are some of the provisions that were in the two omnibus bills, and they passed unanimously.

Let me talk about some other legislation that came out of the committee, in some cases with bipartisan support, but not unanimously. The first one deals with advanced appropriations for the VA; that is, S. 932, the Putting Veterans Funding First Act of 2013. That was introduced, as I recall, by Senators Begich and Boozman in a bipartisan way. Here is the story, which is very important: As we saw last year, in the event of a prolonged government shutdown, the Veterans' Administration would not have been able to issue disability compensation or pension payments or provide educational benefit to millions of deserving veterans.

The truth is that during that shutdown, we were perhaps a week or 10 days away from disabled veterans, and others, not getting the benefits so many of them depend upon. It is what they depend upon to buy groceries, it is what they depend upon to pay a mortgage, and to make their car payments. We were a week or 10 days away from those veterans not getting those benefits.

I am happy to say that in this legislation we have addressed that issue, and we have moved forward with advanced appropriations for mandatory accounts at the VA.

Our economy is making slow progress. We are creating jobs, but nobody believes we are anywhere near where we want to be. Real unemployment in this country is close to 13 percent. In my view, we owe a great deal to our veterans who have left their families, their jobs, gone abroad, and then when they come back, they are unable to find employment. What our legislation does is put into this comprehensive bill the Renew Our VOW to Hire Heroes, S. 6, the Putting Veterans Back to Work Act of 2013. This legislation would reauthorize provisions from the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, including a 2-year extension to the Veterans Training Assistance Program which retrains unemployed veterans for high-demand occupations. There are other employment provisions in this legislation as well.

Several years ago, under the leadership of our colleague Patty Murray, who was my predecessor as chair of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, we proudly passed the Caregivers Act. The Caregivers Act was a very important piece of legislation which said to families who were taking care of disabled veterans: We understand what you are doing is very difficult, and we are going to give you some assistance.

The legislation we had passed dealt with post-9/11 veterans and their families. After listening to the concerns of pre-9/11 veterans and their family members, I introduced S. 851, the Caregivers Expansion and Improvement Act of 2013 to extend eligibility for the caregivers programs to veterans' families of all eras. So we took this program, which was working well, and we said we are going to pay attention to the needs of all families who are taking care of men and women who put their lives on the line to defend us and have become disabled, and that is in this legislation as well.

Also in this legislation is language which will extend eligibility to enroll in VA health care, and that is S. 1604. We all know that early diagnosis of health care conditions is critically important. Under the current law, recently separated veterans have 5 years of free health care from the VA. This legislation would extend the period of time for these individuals, including members of the active component, the National Guard, and Reserves. They will be eligible to enroll in the VA health care system for 10 years post deployment. We go from 5 years to 10 years.

This benefit has been incredibly helpful to our most recent generation of servicemembers, and extending the enrollment period will allow more individuals to take advantage of VA's high-quality, cost- effective health care system, including important access to mental health care services.

Additionally, this legislation simplifies the process for determining eligibility for enrollment in VA health care for lower income veterans. Currently VA uses an extremely complex calculation of geographic income thresholds that vary from county to county. You can have one veteran in one county in Vermont, another person living a mile away, and one is eligible for VA health care because of his or her income, but another person with the same income is not eligible. My legislation establishes one income threshold per State, simplifies the process, and

will enable more veterans to be eligible for VA health care.

This legislation also includes S. 131, the Women Veterans and Other Health Care Improvements Act of 2013. With the widespread use of improvised explosive devices throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, both female and male servicemembers have found themselves with increased risk of spinal cord, reproductive, and urinary tract injury. Many of these veterans dreamed of starting a family, but their injuries prevented them from conceiving, and this legislation will help them fulfill their dreams.

We have three more important provisions I want to briefly touch upon, and that is, once again, the restoration of full COLA for all military retirees. In an effort to address concerns regarding the cost-of-living adjustments for all military retirees, this bill would reaffirm the commitment Congress made to our servicemembers and veterans by ensuring consistent and appropriate funding for military retirees and veterans. This very important provision is in this legislation.

Furthermore, there has been a concern that many CBOCs, community- based outreach clinics, that have been planned all over this country have been unable to be built for a variety of technical reasons. We addressed that issue as well. This bill also improves access to mental health treatment for veterans.

Let me conclude by saying we give a lot of speeches about the respect we have for the men and women who put their lives on the line to defend this country. They have come forward through the veterans committee and they have said: We have concerns. We have concerns about health care; we have concerns about how quickly the benefits that we apply for come to us. They have been very loud and clear in saying--and we agree with them--that it is unacceptable that pensions promised to veterans have been cut. There have been many other issues dealing with employment and dealing with education.

What this bill does in a comprehensive way is to say to the veterans of this country--the millions and millions of people who have given so much to us--we hear your concerns. We hear your concerns, and we are going to address your concerns.

I want to take this moment to thank majority leader Senator Reid. He has been very supportive of not only veterans in general but supportive of this effort to make sure we keep our promises to the veterans of this country. That bill has been introduced. My hope is we can get it to the floor as soon as possible.

I hope very much that although there is a partisan climate, that on this issue of keeping our promises to the men and women who have put their lives on the line to defend this country, we can come together as a Senate and as a House and have the President sign this bill which will mean so much to so many.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Arizona for pointing out to all in the Chamber my tardiness, and I should not have been tardy because I do not like to follow the Senator from Arizona. I would rather begin before him. But I want to thank him for his work with me, together, on this important issue and amplify on a few of the comments he has made.

Today, together, as cosponsors we are introducing the War Powers Consultation Act of 2014, which would repeal the 1973 War Powers Resolution and replace it. I could not have a better cosponsor than Senator McCain and appreciate all the work he and his staff have done over the last months with us.

I gave a floor speech about this issue in this Chamber in July of 2013, almost to the day, 40 years after the Senate passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973. Many of you remember the context of that passage. When it was passed in the summer of 1973, it was in the midst of the end of the Vietnam war. President Nixon had expanded the Vietnam war into Cambodia and Laos without explicit congressional approval, and the Congress reacted very negatively and passed this act to try to curtail executive powers in terms of the initiation of military hostilities.

It was a very controversial bill. When it was passed, President Nixon vetoed it. Congress overrode the veto at the end of 1973. But as Senator McCain indicated, no President has conceded the constitutionality of the 1973 act, and most constitutional scholars who have written about the question have found at least a few of what they believe would be fatal infirmities in that 1973 resolution.

It was a hyperpartisan time, maybe not unlike some aspects of the present, and in trying to find that right balance in this critical question of when the Nation goes to war or initiates military action, Congress and the President did not reach an accord.

I came to the Senate with a number of passions and things I hoped to do. But I think I came with only one obsession, and this is that obsession. Virginia is a State that is most connected to the military of any State in the country. Our map is a map of American military history--from Yorktown, where the Revolutionary War ended, to Appomattox, where the Civil War ended, to the Pentagon, where 9/11 happened. That is who we are. One in nine Virginians is a veteran. If you add our Active Duty, our Guard and Reserve, our military families, our DOD civilians, our DOD contractors, you are basically talking about one in three Virginians. These issues of war and peace matter so deeply to us, as they do all Americans.

The particular passion I had in coming to this body around war powers was because of kind of a disturbing thought, which is, if the President and Congress do not work together and find consensus in matters around war, we might be asking our men and women to fight and potentially give their lives without a clear political consensus and agreement behind the mission.

I do not think there is anything more important that the Senate and the Congress can do than to be on board on decisions about whether we initiate military action, because if we do not, we are asking young men and women to fight and potentially give their lives, with us not having done the hard work of creating the political consensus to support them. That is why I have worked hard to bring this to the attention of this body with Senator McCain.

The Constitution actually sets up a fairly clear framework. The President is the Commander in Chief, not 535 commanders-in-chief, as Senator McCain indicated. But Congress is the body that has the power both to declare war and then to fund military action. In dividing the responsibilities in this way, the Framers were pretty clear. James Madison, who worked on the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, wrote a letter to Thomas Jefferson and said:

The constitution supposes, what the History of all

Governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of

power most interested in war, and most prone to it. It

has accordingly with studied care vested the question of war

in the Legislature.

Despite that original constitutional understanding, our history has not matched the notion that Congress would always be the initiator of military action. Congress has only declared war five times in the history of the United States, while Presidents have initiated military action prior to any congressional approval more than 120 times.

In some of these instances where the President has initiated war, Congress has come back and either subsequently ratified Presidential action--sometimes by a formal approval or sometimes by informal approval such as budgetary allocation--but in other instances, including recently, Presidents have acted and committed American military forces to military action without any congressional approval. The Senator from Arizona mentioned the most recent one. President Obama committed military force to NATO, action against Libya in 2011, without any congressional approval, and he was formally censured by the House of Representatives for doing so.

The current context that requires a reanalysis of this thorny question, after 40 years of the War Powers Resolution, was well stated by the Senator from Arizona. Wars are different. They start differently. They are not necessarily nation state against nation state. They could be limited in time or, as of now, we are still pursuing a military force that was authorized on September 18, 2001, 12 or 13 years later. Wars are of different duration, different scope, different geography. Nation states are no longer the only entities that are engaged in war.

These new developments that are challenging--what do we do about drones in countries far afield from where battles were originally waged--raise the issue of the need to go back into this War Powers Resolution and update it for the current times.

As the Senator from Arizona mentioned, this has been a question that Members of Congress have grappled with and thought about, as have diplomats and scholars and administration officials and Members of Congress for some time.

In 2007, the Miller Center for the study of the presidency at the University of Virginia convened a National War Powers Commission under the chairmanships of two esteemable and bipartisan leaders--former Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and James Baker. The remaining members of the Commission were a complete A list of thinkers in this area--Slade Gorton, Abner Mikva, Ed Meese, Lee Hamilton. The Commission's historian was no less than Doris Kearns Goodwin, who looked at the entire scope of this problem in American history and what the role of Congress and the President should be.

The Commission issued a unanimous report, proposing an act to replace the War Powers Act of 1973, briefed Congress and incoming President Obama on the particular act in 2007 and 2008, but at that time, the time was not yet ripe for consideration of this bill.

But now that we are 40 years into an unworkable War Powers Resolution and now, as the Senator indicated, we have had a string of Presidents-- both Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents--who have maintained that the act is unconstitutional and now that we have had a 40-year history of Congress often exceeding to the claim of unconstitutionality by not following the War Powers Resolution itself, we do think it is time to revisit.

Let me just state two fundamental, substantive issues that this bill presents in the War Powers Consultation Act of 2014.

First, there is a set of definitions. What is war? The bill defines significant military action as any action where involvement of U.S. troops would be expected to be in combat for at least a week or longer. Under those circumstances, the provisions of the act would be triggered.

There are some exceptions in the act. The act would not cover defined covert action operations. But once a combat operation was expected to last for more than 7 days, the act would be triggered.

The act basically sets up two important substantive improvements on the War Powers Resolution.

First, a permanent consultation committee is established in Congress, with the majority and minority leaders of both Houses and the chairs and ranking members of the four key committees in both Houses that deal with war issues--Intel, Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Appropriations.

That permanent consultation committee is a venue for discussion between the executive and legislative branches--permanent and continuous--over matters in the world that may require the use of American military force.

Because the question comes up often: What did the President do to consult with Congress? Is it enough to call a few leaders or call a few committee chairs? This act would normalize and regularize what consultation with Congress means by establishing a permanent consultation committee and requiring ongoing dialogue between the Executive and that committee.

The second requirement of this bill is that once military action is commenced that would take more than 7 days, there is a requirement for a vote in both Houses of Congress. The consultation committee itself would put a resolution on the table in both Houses to approve or disapprove of military action. It would be a privileged motion with expedited requirements for debate, amendment, and vote, and that would ensure that we do not reach a situation where action is being taken at the instance of one branch with the other branch not in agreement, because to do that would put our men and women who are fighting and in harm's way at the risk of sacrificing their lives when we in the political leadership have not done the job of reaching a consensus behind the mission.

To conclude, I will acknowledge what the Senator from Arizona said. This is a very thorny and difficult question that has created challenges and differences of interpretation since the Constitution was written in 1787. Despite the fact that the Framers who wrote the Constitution actually had a pretty clear idea about how it should operate, it has never operated that way.

Forty years of a failed War Powers Resolution in today's dangerous world suggests that it is time now to get back in and to do some careful deliberation to update and normalize the appropriate level of consultation between a President and the legislature.

The recent events as cited by the Senator--whatever you think about the merits or the equities, whether it is Libya, whether it is Syria, whether it is the discussions we are having now with respect to Iran or any other of a number of potential spots around the world that could lead to conflict--suggest that while decisions about war and initiation of military action will never be easy, they get harder if we do not have an agreed-upon process for coming to understand each other's points of view and then acting in the best interest of the Nation to forge a consensus.

With that, I appreciate the opportunity to stand with my colleague, after a number of months of discussion, to introduce this bill, and I look forward to the opportunity to carry this dialogue forward with my colleagues in this body.

Thank you very much.

Mr. President, today, Senator Brown and I are introducing important legislation to extend tax relief to working families: The Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2013.

This legislation will ensure that taxes do not increase on working families in the coming years, and will expand an effective incentive to work.

The Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2013 is pro-family, pro-work legislation that would permanently extend critical refundable tax credit provisions that have helped lift millions of working families out of poverty.

These provisions were only extended for 5 years in the American Taxpayer Relief Act, the same bill that permanently lowered the estate tax for the wealthiest Americans.

The Child Tax Credit, CTC, and the Earned Income Tax Credit, EITC, are refundable tax credits that encourage work, help families make ends meet, and lead to healthier and better educated children.

Both the Senate-passed budget and the President's FY 2014 budget request call for making these provisions permanent.

Consistent with the original goals for the EITC, the Working Families Tax Relief Act would help the only group that our Tax Code pushes into poverty: childless workers.

The EITC was designed to help childless workers offset their payroll tax liability. In reality, employees bear the burden of both the employee and employer portion of the payroll tax.

As a result, a typical single childless adult will begin to owe Federal income taxes in addition to payroll taxes when his or her income is still significantly below the poverty line. These changes will result in a full-time worker receiving the minimum wage to be eligible for the maximum earned income credit amount.

This may sound complicated, but these CTC and EITC provisions have real-world impacts.

An analysis of Census data showed that these CTC provisions lifted 900,000 people above the poverty line in 2011, using a poverty measure that counts not only cash income but also taxes and government benefits.

According to recent estimates, letting the expanded CTC expire will increase taxes on 12 million families who will see the size of their CTC credit shrink, and 5 million families will no longer be eligible for the credit at all.

The EITC has long been one of the most effective anti-poverty measures in our toolkit. In 2011, according to the Internal Revenue Service, the EITC lifted 6.6 million Americans out of poverty, 3.3 million of whom were children.

In Illinois last year, 1 million taxpayers claimed the EITC and received an average credit of about $2,300. That money isn't a hand- out, it is food on the table, school clothes for children and maybe a little bit leftover to buy Christmas presents.

When Ronald Reagan signed the 1986 Tax Reform package, he had this to say about its provisions that expanded the EITC:

The Earned Income Tax Credit is the best anti-poverty, the

best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of

Congress.

I could not have said it better myself.

I thank Senator Brown for his leadership on this, as a new member of the Finance Committee.

I look forward to working with him and many of my colleagues to ensure that these provisions are included in tax reform.

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce the Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act. This bill, which I have also introduced in the previous two Congresses, would extend the important protections of the Family and Medical Leave Act to grandparents, grandchildren, siblings, adult children, and same-sex spouses and domestic partners throughout America.

I am pleased to introduce this bill with a coalition of Senators who are committed to ensuring justice and equality for all Americans. I would like to thank Senators Leahy, Whitehouse, Sanders, Murray, Coons, Gillibrand, Lautenberg, and Blumenthal for standing with me in support of the Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act.

In 1993, Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act to, among other things, protect American workers facing either a personal health crisis, or that of a close family member.

People in the workforce who suffer a serious illness or significant injury should be able to take time to heal, recover, and follow their doctors' orders, without the added stress of worrying about their job status. They should be able to return to their workplaces strong, healthy, and ready to be productive again. Thanks to the FMLA, they can take the needed time knowing that their jobs will be there when they recover.

Most employees, however, are not solely concerned about their own health and wellbeing. They are also concerned about the health and wellbeing of those they love. The FMLA gave workers with a child, parent, or spouse that was sick or injured, an opportunity to provide the needed care and support, knowing that their jobs would still be there when they returned.

When it was passed, the FMLA was an important and historic expansion of our nation's laws. Unfortunately, as families have evolved and expanded, we've learned that the FMLA does not adequately nor equally protect all American families. Under current law, it is impossible for many employees to be with their loved ones during times of medical need.

As I stated when I first introduced this bill, Congress followed the lead of many large and small businesses when it enacted the FMLA. Twenty years ago, many of these businesses had already recognized and addressed the need for employees to take time off to care for themselves or a loved one that was battling a serious health condition. These companies had put in place systems that gave their employees time to heal themselves or their family members, and ensured that those employees would return to work as soon as they could.

The FMLA took the model these companies provided and brought the majority of the American workforce under the same protections.

We once again have an opportunity to learn from the best practices of American businesses who have adjusted their personnel policies and benefit packages to better meet the needs of American families, as we find them today. These businesses have assessed the composition of their workforces and realized that, in order to meet the evolving needs of their employees and enhance productivity, they needed to go one step further than the protections provided by the FMLA.

It's time that we do the same here in Congress, and recognize in law that a healthy workforce, regardless of sexual orientation, is a critical component of a healthy, modern, and efficient national economy. The Human Rights Campaign, a leading civil rights organization that strongly supports the Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act, reports that at least 580 major American corporations, 17 States, and the District of Columbia now extend FMLA benefits to include leave on behalf' of a same-sex partners and spouses. Moreover, as of January 1st of this year, 47% of Fortune 500 companies provided health benefits to same-sex partners.

When the FMLA was signed into law, it was narrowly tailored to cover individuals caring for a very close family member. The law sought to cover that inner circle of people, where the family member assuming the caretaker role would be one of very few, if not the only person, who could do so. That idea has not changed.

What has changed are the people who might be in that inner circle. The nuclear American family has grown,

sometimes by design, and sometimes by necessity. More and more, that inner circle of close family might include a grandparent or grandchild, siblings, or same-sex domestic partners in loving and committed relationships.

As the law stands right now, too many of these people are excluded from the protections of the FMLA.

In these tough economic times, when unemployment is high and those with jobs are doing everything they can to keep them, we all know the value of job security. Hardworking Americans should not have to make the impossible choice between keeping their jobs and providing care and support for loved ones in their time of need. Twenty years ago, the FMLA ensured that millions of Americans did not have to make that choice. Now, the time has come to bring this protection into the 21st century and ensure that the security afforded by the FMLA is available to a broader range of American workers.

There are many who would understandably question what this kind of change in the law would cost the business community. Ensuring that workers can take the time they need to recover from a health emergency not only benefits an individual family, it benefits the community where the family lives and the businesses for which the family members work.

As I have stated in the past, the FMLA is already a very good law; it is already in place and it is working. It provides for unpaid leave when the need arises, and it only applies to businesses that have enough employees on hand to handle the absence of a single worker without too great a burden.

Ninety percent of the leave time that has been taken under the FMLA has been so that employees can care for themselves or for a child in their care, and those situations are already covered under the law as it stands. What the Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act would do is provide a little more flexibility, and recognize that there are a few more people in that inner circle of family who we might call upon, or who might call upon us.

We can all agree that family is the first and best safety net in times of personal crisis. Families need to be given the realistic ability to provide that assistance. What the Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act does is give those family members the ability to help their loved ones in ways that only they can, without fear of losing their jobs in the process.

The Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act enhances the FMLA. Like the FMLA when it was passed two decades ago, the Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act is long overdue. Our legislation contains reasonable changes that reflect what many of our nation's most successful businesses have already done and it accurately represents the modem American family.

The Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act is supported by over 80 organizations from the business, civil rights, LGBT, and labor communities, including: the National Association of Working Women; AFSCME; American Academy of Pediatrics ACLU; Families USA; Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, GLAD; Human Rights Campaign; People for the American Way; SEIU and; The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

The Family and Medical Leave Inclusion Act is the right thing to do, and I hope we can join together and pass it on a bipartisan basis.

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

Mr. President, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, I rise to introduce the Homeless Veterans Prevention Act of 2013. I would like to thank Ranking Member Burr for joining me to introduce this bill. At a time when too many veterans are sleeping in the streets, in cars, and on couches, the Department of Veterans Affairs has taken on an aggressive initiative to end homelessness among veterans by 2015.

This high level commitment has led to a 17 percent decrease in the homeless veteran population between 2009 and 2012. These declining numbers are a reflection of the combined efforts of VA and its Federal, State, Local, Tribal, and community partners as they work to eliminate veteran homelessness by 2015. However on one night in January 2012, an estimated 62,000 veterans were still without a place to call home. We must continue to work toward removing any remaining barriers to housing for veterans.

The legislation we are introducing today would reaffirm this commitment by improving upon VA's programs to prevent and end homelessness among veterans. VA's transitional housing programs for homeless veterans must modernize to ensure that they are meeting the needs of the homeless veterans they are serving. With increasing numbers of women joining the military and eventually becoming veterans, VA is facing a growing homeless women veteran population. Many of these women are single mothers or have experienced military sexual trauma, making their housing needs even more complex.

The Government Accountability Office and VA's Office of the Inspector General both found that homeless women veterans were not able to safely access services through VA's transitional housing programs. The Homeless Veterans Prevention Act of 2013 would remove these barriers by requiring grantees to ensure that facilities can safely serve the needs of the populations that will be living there. It also would allow VA to reimburse grantees for housing the children of homeless veterans, keeping families together and encouraging parents to come forth and be housed without having to worry about splitting their families up.

As VA focuses on resolving homelessness, instead of just managing it, housing stability is increasingly a focus. This bill also modifies the transitional housing program to allow VA to incentivize grantees to avoid the challenges that veterans completing time-limited transitional housing programs can face as they search for permanent housing. More specifically, this bill allows VA to focus on housing stability by allowing certain transitional housing grantees to turn a portion of their transitional housing units into permanent housing units as veterans are stabilized and linked to support services.

Access to stable and safe housing is a priority, but it is also critical to find ways to prevent homelessness among veterans who are at-risk of becoming homeless. This bill would also increase access to legal services and dental care for our veterans, two things that homeless veterans themselves have identified as unmet needs. Access to these services would greatly increase their chances of finding gainful employment, avoid foreclosure or eviction, obtain identification, and deal with legal issues that have resulted from the criminalization of homelessness, among other things.

Veterans have a number of services and resources available to meet their needs. At its very simplest, homelessness among veterans is preventable when all of these programs work together to lift a veteran up. Conversely, homelessness occurs when a veteran slips through the cracks. We cannot sit by idly and allow another veteran to slip through the cracks. We must reach out and let them know when, where and how to get the help that they need and that they have earned.

This is not a full summary of all the provisions within this legislation. However, I hope that I have provided an appropriate overview of the major benefits this legislation would provide.

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

Mr. President, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, I am proud to introduce the Caregivers Expansion and Improvement Act of 2013, which will address the important needs of veterans' caregivers.

For generations, as the men and women of our armed forces returned home with serious injuries sustained overseas, their wives, husbands, parents and other family members stepped in to care for them. These family members have often provided this care at significant personal sacrifice. These caregivers' dedication to caring for the needs of their injured veterans has often resulted in lost professional opportunities and reduction in income.

Under the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010, important services and benefits were made available to seriously injured post-9/11 veterans and their families. These changes improved the lives of caregivers by giving them the support they need which, in turn, improved the lives of veterans. These services and benefits for caregivers include a tax-free monthly stipend, travel expenses, health insurance, mental health services and counseling, caregiver training and respite care for caregivers of seriously injured post-9/11 veterans. However, these services were not made available to pre-9/11 veterans with equally serious injuries and whose caregivers were in equal need of support.

Many caregivers of pre-9/11 veterans have been caring for injured veterans for years with no support from the federal government. It is time to provide equal benefits to veterans and their family members from all eras. My legislation does just that.

I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting equal treatment of the caregivers of our Nation's veterans and cosponsor my legislation.

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

Mr. President, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, I am proud to introduce the Veterans Health Promotion Act of 2013, which will address veterans' health and wellness.

The most recent statistics show that VA is providing health care to over 6.5 million individual veterans each year, including over 674,000 veterans from the most recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. These veterans are enrolling in VA at a rate of 56 percent, higher than any other group of veterans from previous conflicts. These veterans are receiving some of the best health care this nation has to offer. They can access this care at medical centers, outpatient clinics, vet centers, mobile clinics and through telemedicine.

Despite this access to care, many veterans still struggle with their overall wellbeing. Therefore, it is not enough to treat veterans who are very sick. When we focus solely on disease and illness, we miss the broader goal of wellness. We must expand our understanding of the care options necessary to improve veterans' lives. Therefore, I am introducing legislation which would do just that--expand veterans' access a full spectrum of care including wellness and Complementary and Alternative Medicine--known as CAM.

VA has made significant strides in providing CAM at VA medical centers. As the name describes, CAM therapies can serve as a complement to traditional care or, for some veterans, as an alternative. There is a growing body of evidence to support the value of these therapies but greater understanding can be achieved through the expansion of these services to more veterans. The legislation I am introducing today would do just that.

This expansion would occur through the Veterans Health Administration's Center of Innovation, which is developing, demonstrating and evaluating veteran-centered health care policies. To date, VA has established five such centers. My legislation would increase the number of these Centers of Innovation, establishing at least one in each of VA's 23 Veterans Integrated Service Networks. My legislation would create a total of fifteen pilot sites to provide CAM therapies to veterans throughout the nation. Five of the pilot sites would be located at VA's Polytrauma Centers, which care for veterans with the most complex injuries. The remaining ten would provide CAM therapies within primary care settings.

Additionally, my legislation would require VA to study barriers to providing and promoting preventive and holistic approaches to health care, including CAM and wellness, in the primary care setting. When we understand these barriers we can find a way to break them down, furthering opportunities to enhance the overall health and sense of wellbeing among veterans.

The legislation would also authorize grants to state and city agencies, and community-based nonprofit organizations to provide combat veterans and their family members access to wellness programs. By leveraging these outside organizations while improving their collaboration with VA, we can improve access to wellness programs without sacrificing VA's valuable model of care coordination.

An important component for maintaining a healthy lifestyle is physical activity. One of the best ways to improve the health of a population is to increase access to opportunities for physical activity. When coupled with a healthy diet, physical fitness can help promote weight loss and lower the risk of diabetes, heart attack and stroke. Therefore, my legislation would create a pilot program to provide fitness center memberships for overweight and obese veterans, in consultation with their VA health care provider. The pilot program would be over a 2-year period at 10 pilot sites. Additionally, the legislation would require VA to partner with fitness centers to improve access for veterans.

Finally, we must ensure CAM, wellness and fitness options are not only available to veterans, but are also utilized by veterans. Therefore, my legislation would require VA to study the barriers that exist across VHA in providing and promoting preventative and holistic approaches to health care, to include Complementary and Alternative Medicine and Wellness, in the primary care setting in order to enhance their overall health and sense of wellbeing among veterans.

I urge my colleagues to support this legislation and I look forward to working with them to continue to improve health care access for our veterans.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased today to join my colleague, the junior Senator from Virginia, as we introduce the War Powers Consultation Act of 2014.

This legislation is the final product of the National War Powers Commission, which was a bipartisan effort co-led by former Secretary of State Jim Baker and former Secretary of State Warren Christopher. The commission was set up by the Miller Center at the University of Virginia to devise a modern and workable war powers consultation mechanism for the executive and legislative branches. It included some of our Nation's most distinguished and respected thinkers and practitioners of national security policy and law. In 2008, after more than a year of hard work, the commission released the final product--an actual legislative proposal to repeal and replace the War Powers Resolution of 1973, which no American President has ever accepted as constitutional.

As does my colleague, I view our introduction of this legislation today as the start of an important congressional and national debate, not the final word in that debate. We wish to pick up where the National War Powers Commission left off 6 years ago, and we do so fully understanding and hopeful that this legislation should be considered and debated and amended and improved through regular order.

My colleague from Virginia has done a great job on this legislation, and I am proud to join him. I wish to expand a bit on why updating the War Powers Resolution is such a worthwhile endeavor for the Senate to consider right now.

The Constitution gives the power to declare war to the Congress, but Congress has not formally declared war since June of 1942 even though our Nation has been involved in dozens of military actions of one scale or another since that time. There is a reason for this. The nature of war is changing. It is increasingly unlikely that the combat operations our Nation will be involved in will resemble those of World War II, where the standing armies and navies of nation states squared off against those of rival nation states on clearly defined fields of battle. Rather, the conflicts in which increasingly we find ourselves and for which we must prepare will be murkier, harder to reconcile with the traditional notions of warfare; they may be more limited in their objectives, their scope, and their duration; and they likely will not conclude with a formal surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship.

The challenge for all of us serving in Congress is this: How do we reconcile the changing nature of war with Congress's proper role in the declaration of war? It is not exactly a new question, but it is a profound one, for unless we in Congress are prepared to cede our constitutional authority over matters of war to the executive, we need a more workable arrangement for consultation and decisionmaking between the executive and legislative branches.

We have seen several manifestations of this challenge in recent years. In 2011 President Obama committed U.S. military forces to combat operations in Libya to protect civilian populations from imminent slaughter by a brutal, anti-American tyrant. I, for one, believe he was right to do so. But 6 months later, when our armed services were still involved in kinetic actions in Libya--not just supporting our NATO allies but conducting air-to-ground operations and targeted strikes from armed, unmanned aerial vehicles--the administration claimed, as other administrations would, that it had no obligations to Congress under the War Powers Resolution because our Armed Forces were not involved in combat operations. That struck many Members of Congress, including me, as fundamentally at odds with reality, and unfortunately it pushed more Members of Congress into opposition against the mission itself.

More recently, we saw the opposite problem manifested with regard to Syria. Perhaps due to the backlash in Congress that the administration's handling of the Libya conflict engendered, President Obama decided to seek congressional authorization for limited airstrikes against the Assad regime after it slaughtered more than 1,400 of its own citizens with chemical weapons last August. An operation that likely would have lasted a few days and thus been fully consistent with the President's authority under the existing War Powers Resolution had he decided to act decisively and take limited military action instead devolved into a stinging legislative repudiation of executive action. The tragic result was that the Assad regime was spared any meaningful consequences for its use of a weapon of mass destruction against innocent men, women, and children, and, as with Libya, the forces that want to turn America away from the world were not checked but empowered.

Some of us may see the problem in these two instances as a failure of Presidential leadership, and I would agree, but I also believe the examples of Libya and Syria represent the broader problem we as a nation face: What is the proper war power authority of the executive and legislative branches when it comes to limited conflicts, which are increasingly the kinds of conflicts with which we are faced?

It is essential for the Congress and the President to work together to define a new war powers consultative agreement that reflects the nature of conflict in the 21st century and is in line with our Constitution. Our Nation does not have 535 commanders in chief. We have one--the President--and that role as established by our Constitution

must be respected. Our Nation is poorly served when Members of Congress try to micromanage the Commander in Chief in matters of war.

At the same time, now more than ever, we need to create a broader and more durable national consensus on foreign policy and national security, especially when it comes to matters of war and armed conflict. We need to find ways to make internationalist policies more politically sustainable.

After the September 11 attack, we embarked on an expansive foreign policy. Spending on defense and foreign assistance went up, and energy shifted to the executive. Now things are changing. Americans want to pull back from the world. Our foreign assistance and defense budgets are declining. The desire to curb Presidential power across the board is growing, and the political momentum is shifting toward the Congress. America has gone through this kind of political rebalancing before, and much of the time we have gotten it wrong. That is how we got isolationism and disarmament after World War I, that is how we got a hollow army after Vietnam, and that is how we weakened our national security after the Cold War in the misplaced hope of cashing in on a peace dividend. We can't afford to repeat these mistakes.

A new war powers resolution--one that is recognized as both constitutional and workable in practice--can be an important contribution to this effort. It can more effectively invest in the Congress the critical decisions that impact our national security. It can help build a more durable consensus in favor of the kinds of policies we need to sustain our global leadership and protect our Nation. In short, the legislation we are introducing today can restore a better balance to the way national security decisionmaking should work in a great democracy such as ours.

Let me say again. Neither the Senator from Virginia nor I believe the legislation we are introducing today answers all of the monumental and difficult questions surrounding the issue of war powers. We believe this is a matter of transcendent importance to our Nation, and we as a deliberative body of our government should debate this issue, and we look forward to that debate. This legislation should be seen as a way of starting that discussion both here in the Congress and across our Nation. We owe that to ourselves and our constituents. Most of all, we owe that to the brave men and women who serve our Nation in uniform and are called to risk their lives in harm's way for the sake of our Nation's national defense.

Before I yield to my tardy colleague from Virginia, I wish to mention again another reason why I think this legislation should be the beginning of a serious debate which we should bring to some conclusion. The fact is that no President of the United States has recognized the constitutionality of the War Powers Act. That is a problem in itself. That is a perversion, frankly, of the Constitution of the United States of America. That is one reason, but the most important reason is that I believe we are living in incredibly dangerous times. When we look across the Middle East, when we look at Asia and the rise in the tensions in that part of the world and we look at the conflicts that are becoming regional--and whose fault they are is a subject for another debate and discussion, but the fact is that we are in the path of some kind of conflict in which--whether the United States of America wants to or not--we may have to be involved in some ways.

We still have vital national security interests in the Middle East. It is evolving into a chaotic situation, and one can look from the Mediterranean all the way to the Strait of Hormuz, the Gulf of Aqaba, and throughout the region. So I believe the likelihood of us being involved in some way or another in some conflict is greater than it has been since the end of the Cold War, and I believe the American people deserve legislation and a clear definition of the responsibilities of the Congress of the United States and that of the President of the United States.

Again, I thank my colleague from Virginia, whose idea this is, who took a great proposal that was developed at the University of Virginia and was kind enough to involve me in this effort. I thank him for it. I thank him for his very hard work on it, despite the fact that, as the Chair will recognize, he was late for this discussion.

I yield the floor.