Emergency Port of Entry Personnel and Infrastructure Funding Act of 2015

Mr. President, I am introducing a bill today because there is something going on that people are not as aware of as they should be.

We don't have a better friend than King Abdullah in Jordan. I have been pleased to get to know him as a personal friend as well as a friend of America. I was over there with him last October. We were on the Syrian border looking at all the things that are going on right now with ISIL and ISIS, and it has been a real tragedy.

Last week King Abdullah was in the United States for the National Prayer Breakfast. While he was here, there were several of us who were with him when he got the news that his friend and relative, an F-16 pilot, had been caged, soaked with gasoline, and burned alive.

America and the whole world saw what happened and asked: What kind of monsters are these people who are doing this over there? They are beheading children and pregnant women and burning people alive. Yet this is going on. People have to understand this.

They do understand it in terms of ISIS. But what I want to share with you, and introduce legislation to correct, is that it is not just happening there, it is also happening in Ukraine right now.

I happened to be in Ukraine in late October of this year. I went over there because they were having their parliamentary elections at the time. Ukraine has been such a good friend to us--not just Poroshenko, but the rest of the administration that went through the parliamentary election has also been a friend.

Let's keep in mind that the Presidential elections were way back in May. This last election was the parliamentary election, and we were there to see what was happening in the Ukraine.

In the Ukraine they have a constitutional requirement that you cannot have a seat in Parliament unless you have 5 percent of the vote. This is the first time, after the vote when we were there in October, that they had a parliamentary election and not one Communist got a seat in Parliament. This is the first time in 96 years that not one Communist has a seat in the Parliament.

As bad as things are with ISIS, I suggest that what is going on--and I only preface what I am saying so I can demonstrate what a good friend Poroshenko and the leadership of the Ukraine is to the United States. We have the Russians in there with the separatists doing horrible things--things that are just as bad as what is taking place in Syria with ISIS and in other places.

To demonstrate this--it is not a very fun thing to look at, but you have to understand what is happening. These are T-72 tanks. Putin keeps saying: We don't have any Russians in there with the separatists. It is not us. We are not doing it.

Well, here they are. These are the pictures we brought back with us. All those tanks are lined up within Ukraine, and that is clearly what they are.

If you want to see how brutal Putin and everyone else is--it is not something anyone enjoys looking at, but you have to know this is going on. The tragedies that are taking place in Syria and in other parts of the world are also taking place in Ukraine.

This is a picture of the murders and torture that have been taking place there. These people have been disembodied, their heads cut off. These are Ukrainian citizens. They are legal citizens. They are the ones whom Putin and the rest of them are fighting. For that reason, I have introduced legislation to require that the United States offer the weaponry.

By the way, I was making a presentation about this issue and Senator

McCain was there. He said: If you look at all of those tanks, they don't have one piece of equipment that could offer a defense against those tanks. What have we been giving them? We have been giving them MREs and blankets.

When Poroshenko was here in the United States, he made a speech to both Houses. He said that ``one can't win the war with blankets. . . . Even more, we cannot keep the peace with a blanket.'' In other words, we have to share the very best defensive weapons or weapons that can be used offensively with them. They cannot be left naked there when facing this kind of abuse. We know that shortly after the heavily armed Russian soldiers invaded and took control of the Crimean region in February of 2014, the Ukrainian Government and its people faced and sustained a deadly force from heavily armed rebel separatists who were equipped, trained, and supported by the Russian Federation. We have seen pictures of that. This is the first time we have shown pictures that document, No. 1, that the equipment came from Russia and Putin, and, No. 2, the type of things they are doing over there.

We passed a law last year that said we would give defensive weaponry to the Ukrainians, but it fell short because of one thing--it was prescriptive. It said what kind of equipment it would be.

The bill I am introducing today does two things. It offers the equipment we can give them with no restrictions whatsoever, and secondly, it does something else I think is very significant, and that is we require the President to come up with a strategy. People always say: Well, the President doesn't have a strategy against ISIS. It is true he doesn't have one, and it is deplorable that he doesn't have one. He also doesn't have a strategy for Ukraine. Without a strategy, it is not going to work.

Last week we had a hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee. It was kind of funny because we had people from the past. We had George Shultz, Madeleine Albright, and Henry Kissinger. We were talking about the Ukraine at that time and talked about offering some equipment we thought should go there, and they said: Well, you have to do that, but you can't just send them equipment. You have to specifically demand a strategy. In this bill we are saying to the President of the United States to not only send over equipment but we need to also provide a strategy we can massage as time goes on.

On February 2, 2015, eight of the former senior ranking diplomatic and military officials testified. They included the former U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine, Steven Pifer; former Under Secretary of Defense Michele Flournoy; former Supreme Allied Commander ADM James Stavridis, and former Deputy Commander to the U.S. Command, Gen. Charles Wald. They all served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. They released a nonpartisan report calling on President Obama to provide Ukraine with lethal weaponry, and this is what we talked about in the bill. They encouraged other NATO countries to do the same, particularly those that possess and used former Soviet equipment and weaponry.

On January 25, when President Obama stated at a news conference in New Delhi, India that the aggression by the rebel separatists in eastern Ukraine had Russian backing, Russian equipment, Russian financing, Russian training, and Russian troops--so he finally agreed. It is not something that is debatable or might be happening; it is something that is happening. You can see the horrible things that are going on there, and you can see the reason it is necessary to get this done.

Some time ago, back when Carl Levin was still here--he is retired, and he did such a great job as the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee for so many years when I was the ranking Republican on the Committee on Armed Services. At that time, a year ago in October, we wrote the following in the Washington Post:

We believe that the United States should begin providing defensive weapons that would help Ukraine defend its territory. Such weapons could include anti-tank weapons to defend against Russian-provided armored personnel carriers, ammunition, vehicles and secure communications equipment. This would present no threat to Russia unless its forces launch further aggression against Ukraine. In other words, these weapons are lethal, but not provocative because they are defensive.

That came from Carl Levin and me. This is back before we knew the results of the parliamentary election that was so successful and so complementary to the West.

This has been long overdue. There is no one who disagrees with it, and even the President recognizes they have the equipment and we are not doing the job we should be doing.

So, with that, I am going to introduce S. 452, and we are going to ask for cosponsors to come down and speak on this topic. We have quite a long list of cosponsors.

It doesn't bother me if other Members want to introduce like resolutions because we need to get something passed. We need to raise the visibility so the people of America know this is not just going on in Syria and some of these other countries, but it is also in the country of one of our very best friends worldwide, and that best friend is the Ukraine.

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

Mr. President, I wish to take a few minutes to discuss a piece of legislation I am introducing today--legislation I have written to improve access to health care for our Nation's veterans, because there is no more solemn promise we make as a nation than our commitment to care for the men and women who serve in the U.S. military. These men and women put life and limb on the line to protect our country, to protect our freedoms, and to protect our way of life. In return, we as a country make a promise to care for them, no matter what. Just

as important, we make a promise to care for their families--their wives, their husbands, and their children.

Many of the young men and women who serve in the military enter at a very young age, often before they have children of their own. Like so many other Americans, they have big plans for their lives after their service. Many of them plan to buy a house, go back to school, and eventually have a family.

But in a time when our military conflicts involve roadside bombs, makeshift explosives, and life-threatening danger around every corner, many of our service men and women are coming home with injuries that leave them unable to start their own family.

In fact, military data shows that over the last decade, thousands of servicemembers have suffered injuries that make it nearly impossible to have children. We should be doing everything we can, with the best science and health services available, to help our veterans and their loved ones have children, despite their injuries.

But instead, outdated policies at the Pentagon and the VA are making it harder, not easier, for seriously injured veterans to have children. That is because when severely injured service men and women and veterans seek reproductive health services, such as in vitro fertilization, their military and VA health insurance simply doesn't cover this often very expensive procedure. As a result, the only option for these heroes and their partners to have children is to pay out of their own pocket, often tens of thousands of dollars, to try and conceive.

So today I am introducing The Women Veterans and Families Health Services Act of 2015.

It would basically do two things: First, it would expand the reproductive health services available for Active-Duty servicemembers and their families.

Second, it would finally end the ban on in vitro fertilization services at the VA. I have introduced similar legislation in the past, and, as I have done before, I am going to share the story of SSG Matt Keil and his wife Tracy.

Staff Sergeant Keil was shot in the neck while on patrol in Ramadi, Iraq, on February 24, 2007, just 6 weeks after he married the love of his life, Tracy. The bullet went through the right side of his neck, hit a major artery, went through his spinal cord, and exited through his left shoulder blade. He instantly became a quadriplegic. Doctors informed Tracy her husband would be on a ventilator for the rest of his life, and would never move his arms or legs.

Staff Sergeant Keil eventually defied the odds and found himself off the ventilator and beginning a very long journey of physical rehabilitation.

Around that same time, Tracy and her husband started exploring the possibilities of starting a family together. Having children was all they could talk about, once they adjusted to their ``new normal.''

With Staff Sergeant Keil's injuries preventing him from having children naturally, Tracy turned to the VA for assistance and began to explore her options for fertility treatments. Feeling defeated after being told the VA had no such programs in place for her situation, Tracy and Staff Sergeant Keil decided to pursue IVF through the private sector.

While they were anxious to begin this chapter of their lives, they were confronted with the reality that TRICARE did not cover any of the costs related to Tracy's treatments, because she did not have fertility issues beyond her husband's injury.

Left with no further options, the Keils decided this was important enough to them that they were willing to pay out of pocket to the tune of almost $32,000 per round of treatment. Thankfully, on November 9, 2010, just after their first round of IVF, Staff Sergeant Keil and Tracy welcomed their twins Matthew and Faith into the world.

Tracy told me:

The day we had our children something changed in both of

us. This is exactly what we had always wanted, our dreams had

arrived.

The VA, Congress and the American People have said

countless times that they want to do everything they can to

support my husband or make him feel whole again and this is

your chance.

Having a family is exactly what we needed to feel whole

again. Please help us make these changes so that other

families can share in this experience.

Tracy does not want to see other servicemembers and their families go through the struggle she and Matt did because of outdated policies that don't reflect modern medicine.

While the Keils' story may be unique, they are not alone. Thousands of servicemembers and veterans have returned from their service hoping to have children, only to find that, despite their sacrifices for our country, they are unable to obtain the kind of assistance they need. Some have spent tens of thousands of dollars in the private sector, like Tracy and her husband did, to get the advanced reproductive treatments they need to start a family. Others have, sadly, watched their marriages dissolve because of the stress of infertility, in combination with the stress of readjusting to a new life after a severe injury, driving their relationship to a breaking point.

Any servicemember who sustains this type of serious injury deserves so much more. They deserve our support to help them start a family, and our support to raise that family.

This bill is so important because access to childcare is one of the most significant barriers to care for women veterans and younger veterans. This bill makes permanent the highly successful pilot program in VA and expands it across the country. I am very hopeful today that both Republicans and Democrats can come together to support this bill.

Just a few years ago we were able to pass similar legislation through the Senate, but, unfortunately, it didn't pass the House in time to get the President's signature and become signed into law. This time has to be different, because this bill is about nothing more than giving veterans who have sacrificed so much the option to fulfill the dream of starting a family. It is a bill that shows when we tell our servicemembers deploying to a war zone that we have their back, we mean it. It is a bill that recognizes the men and women who are harmed in the service of this country have bright, full lives ahead of them.

Mr. President. I am pleased to reintroduce the Thomasina E. Jordan Indian Tribes of Virginia Federal Recognition Act of 2015. This legislation was voted out of Committee in the previous Congress, and I remain hopeful that the full Senate will vote to approve this tribes bill this year.

This legislation is critically important because it strives toward reconciling an historic wrong for Virginia and the Nation. While the Virginia Tribes have received official recognition from the Commonwealth of Virginia, acknowledgement and officially-recognized status from the federal government has been considerably more difficult due to their systematic mistreatment over the past century.

More specifically, Virginia's Racial Integrity Act, a state law in effect from 1924 to 1967, stripped the identities of the tribal members of Virginia's Indian Tribes. The Act changed the racial identifications of those who lacked white ancestry to ``colored'' on birth certificates during that period. In addition, five of the six courthouses that held the vast majority of the Virginia Indian Tribal records were destroyed in the Civil War. Those records were crucial for documenting the history of the tribes for recognition by the Bureau of

Indian Affairs Office of Federal Acknowledgement.

Furthermore, Virginia Indians made peace when they signed the Treaty of Middle Plantation with England in 1677. This predated the creation of the United States of America by about 100 years; the founding fathers of the United States never recognized the treaty. Therefore, unlike tribes that received federal recognition upon the signing of a treaty with the United States, the Virginia Tribes did not receive federal recognition because they made peace with England prior to the founding of our Nation.

I am proud of Virginia's recognized Indian Tribes and their contributions to our Commonwealth. The Virginia Tribes are not only part of our history, but they remain ever present today. We go to school and work together, and serve the Commonwealth and nation together every day. These contributions should be acknowledged, and this Federal recognition for Virginia's native peoples is long overdue.

Virginia's Indian Tribes contributed to the successful founding of our country and continue to help define our national identity. Their members have attended our schools, worked next to us, and served in every American war since the Revolution, all while maintaining a unique identity and culture. I am hopeful the Senate will act upon my legislation this year, to give these six Virginia Native American Tribes the Federal recognition that is long overdue.

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

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

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