Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, it is an honor to rise on behalf of Senator David Perdue and myself to offer our congratulations on a job well done to Joel Wernick, a fine Georgian and the longtime president and chief executive officer of Phoebe Putney Health System in Albany, GA.

Under Joel's tireless leadership for the last 30 years, Phoebe Putney Health System has become a major regional healthcare provider. The Phoebe Putney Health System now includes Phoebe Sumter Medical Center, Phoebe Worth Medical Center, more than 15 primary and urgent care clinics, and nearly 30 specialty care clinics in counties throughout southwest Georgia.

As the health system has grown under Joel's guidance, it has become a major contributor to the entire region's economy. Today more than 4,500 people work under the Phoebe Putney umbrella, where they strive to improve the lives of Georgians from middle Georgia all the way south to the Georgia-Florida line.

Joel Wernick had the vision to grow Phoebe Putney's suite of services and provide comprehensive healthcare including world-class oncology, cardiovascular, and neonatal intensive care unit services in the southwest Georgia region. This increase in quality specialty services greatly benefits area residents who no longer have to travel extensive distances to receive care.

I also thank the board of directors and staff who have shared and supported this great leader's dedication to the people of Albany and the surrounding communities.

During Joel's tenure, Phoebe Putney has received State and national recognition, including the American Hospital Association's NOVA Award for teen pregnancy prevention and the prestigious Foster G. McGaw Prize for excellence in healthcare. Joel was a pioneer in making ``upstream contributions'' in community health programs over the years to reduce the cost and occurrence of disease and poor health before they reached the hospital setting.

In starting the Phoebe Family Medicine Residency Program, Joel has also appreciated the importance of healthcare for the family unit and the importance of training medical professionals in southwest Georgia and incentivizing them to remain there. Phoebe Putney's teaching hospital has graduated more than 120 residents, and Joel's investment in Flaggstone, the housing that supports those residents and pharmacy students, has successfully kept doctors practicing in southwest Georgia rather than departing for larger cities.

Joel has helped keep the ``golden rule'' culture and the charm of south Georgia as guiding principles during his tenure at Phoebe Putney, and for that, many have benefited and are grateful.

As Georgia's Senators, we are thankful for Joel's service and wish him well as he enters the next chapter of his life. May God bless him in his future pursuits.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

All time is yielded back on both sides, and I call for the rollcall vote.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, yesterday was a difficult day for me.

Before I get to that day, let me recognize the Senator from Oklahoma for a motion.

Yesterday was a difficult day for me. I am 74 years old. I was born in 1944. Like many Americans, my youth was during the Vietnam era. The prime of my youth was the Vietnam era.

In fact, my senior year in college, I got a graduation diploma and a draft notice on the same day. They were put in the same book. Everybody was going. Everybody was being called up for the draft. There was a lottery, but so many people were eligible that almost everybody in my age group would have been drafted if they didn't join the service.

I joined. I joined the National Guard, which I am very proud of, and I am still a guardsman to this day. It also gave me the chance to serve my country in a way that would not put me at as much risk to go to Vietnam as it would if I were drafted. I consciously did that because I wanted to do everything I could to stay here and get married a few months later to my wife Dianne. I was of the age to be drafted, and I made the decision to find a way to serve that would not put me in a position of being drafted, where I lost control. I was able to do it, and a lot of people were, but a lot of people weren't. I know that. The ones who could know it, and the ones who couldn't know it. The Presiding Officer knows what I am talking about, being a guardswoman herself.

I lost my best friend in Vietnam, Jackson Elliott Cox III, Waynesboro GA, Liberty County--Bird Dog Capital of the World.

Jack and I graduated from college together. Jack went off for a weekend and came back and told us all he had joined the Marine Corps, was going to OCS, and was going to go to Vietnam and fight the bad guys. We all said: Jack, don't volunteer to do that. You could get killed.

He said: No, I want to do it. It is a great country. I have had a great life, going to the University of Georgia, have a wonderful mom and dad, good friends like you all. I want to go to OCS and be an officer in the Marine Corps--and he did.

A few years later, he was shot by a sniper in the 11th month of a 13- month stint in Vietnam. Alex Crumbley, the superior court judge in Georgia years later; Pierre Howard, the Democratic Lieutenant Governor of Georgia; and myself--we were the three best friends, the ``Four Amigos,'' if you will. We went to 589 Liberty Street in Waynesboro and spent 3 nights and 4 days with Emily and Jack, Jack's dad and mom.

When the Marine Corps brought the body back, it was lying in state in their dining room, and we had a wake and a service for him. We stood guard. We cried. We talked about the good times. We talked about the bad times. We felt sorry for ourselves because the life that had meant so much to all of us was gone.

Jack felt a calling for the country, and he did a great service for the country. I am proud of him, and I am proud to have been his friend.

I tried to do what I could but never in the category of a John McCain or a Jack Cox. There were a lot people my age who didn't do as much as they probably could have or might have done, and probably from time to time have second thoughts about it, too, because the Vietnam war was so tough.

I had friends coming back who had to dress in blue jeans and khakis when they got off the troop train from wherever they were in Atlanta because people would get accosted on the street if they were in their uniform during that era. Today, we go to the airport, and if we have troops coming through who are going to fly back for duty somewhere, they will get standing ovations, and people will give up their seats to let them sit there. It wasn't like that in the 1960s and 1970s. It wasn't like that at all.

In fact, people were risking their lives--58,000 did give their lives for all of us--and in many cases, we were making fun of them as a nation. It was terrible. It messed up our politics, messed up our country, messed up our people, and messed up everybody else. But America is a great country. What I am telling you is tragic to me, and I apologize to everybody that I didn't do everything I should have done, but I think all of us owe each other a commitment to say that we are never going to let America get that way again.

Americans should always be as we were on 9/11 or 9/12 of 2001, when we all put American flags on our cars, we all sang the national anthem, and we said the Pledge of Allegiance after we were attacked. For a few months, we were the most patriotic Nation in the world. We ought to be that way every single day because every single day, just like those firemen and emergency medical people of 9/11, there are those who were in the Vietnam war, who signed up, who fought, risked their lives, and in some cases died, like John McCain and like my brother-in-law Rocky Davison, my wife's brother, who flew Navy A-4 reconnaissance planes in Vietnam--one of the most decorated pilots in the Navy during that era. People like him

were great. My father-in-law flew reconnaissance in World War II in the Pacific. He did everything he could to help the country during difficult times. There were so many people who did that for our country, and we owe all of them a debt of gratitude and a debt of thanks.

We need to remember that we are all Americans. To those who saved us as a country, kept our freedom when we were about to lose it, fought for us, risked their lives, and died for us, we owe it to them, at times like this, to elevate them to the appropriate place in history. That is what I am trying to do with John McCain today.

I want to elevate John. John was better than I am, and I know it. John was the best of my generation. John McCain was and is a great human being.

I don't know what is going to be said in the next few days about John McCain by whomever is going to say it or what is going to be done, but anybody who in any way tarnishes the reputation of John McCain deserves a whipping because most of those who would do the wrong thing about John McCain didn't have the guts to do the right thing when it was their turn. We need to remember that.

So I would say to the President or anybody in the world, it is time to pause and say that this was a great man who gave everything for us. We owe him nothing less than the respect that he earned, and that is what I intend to give John in return for what he gave me.

John took me to Kosovo 20 years ago when President Clinton said that we were going to send some people over there to verify the crime sites, the ethnic cleansing. I went to Pristina with John. I went to Montenegro. I went to the World Security Conference in Munich a few years after that and got to sit with Vladimir Putin. I saw John McCain talk to Vladimir Putin as if they were next-door neighbors but also as if they were Dutch uncles. I was so proud to be from a country that had a guy like John McCain, who could break the ice with the toughest of our adversaries, speak up with pride for America, and calm them down when they needed to be calmed down.

Yet John and I had some problems too. Mitch McConnell did me the worst favor of my lifetime when he made me the chairman of the Ethics Committee. That is a hard job, and nobody likes the person who chairs that committee because they are scared of them. But I got the Ethics Committee job at a time when John McCain was still on the special committee for the Ethics Committee to decide what to do on using airplanes during campaign events as candidates or for our PACs. John had access to a plane, which gave him an exemption from the rules that we passed. It made it tough as heck because he didn't have to worry about the cause and effects. But John took a second to understand the problems that a normal legislator, who might not have had access to a private plane, might have had. In the end, he took his circumstances and his ability to have a private plane and applied them to the changes that were made to be sure that everybody was being treated fairly. John didn't just expect things to be good for John; he expected things to be good for everybody. He always did that, and I always learned a lot from him.

The other thing I learned was how to cuss. Let me tell you, John McCain could do a lot of things, but cussing was one of the best things he ever did. He was a consummate cusser, and he knew how to do it to have emphasis added. That is what the papers always say when they put the pound marks and things like that after some statements Jim Inhofe makes or I make.

John and I were working on legislation. I am chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. He was chairman of the Armed Services Committee. We had a huge veterans bill that we had to come together and have a meeting of the minds on in terms of healthcare. John was late for the meeting. He came into the meeting. He pulled the door behind him and slammed it. For 10 minutes he laid the best cussing on me and everybody else in the room that I had ever heard.

He said: I haven't got time to put up with this anymore. Y'all just listen to what I have to say and tell me what you are going to do.

That is a tough way to convene business, but John sometimes knew how to get us all to think, to get us all to talk. He would intimidate you enough so you would have to fight him for what you believe in, and you would get a better piece of legislation than if he just let it pass or if he had intimidated you to death. John knew exactly what he had the capability of doing, and he knew exactly when to apply the intimidation--and the thanks and the grace. He did it at the right time every single time. Did we agree all the time? No, but I know I am a better person, our country is a better country, and the world is a better place because of John McCain.

In the next 3 or 4 days, as we go through and run into kids we know or relatives or my own children, whom I will be with this coming Sunday in the mountains, we are going to have a little meeting about John McCain just to make sure they know what I know and so I know that they know about a great American hero because I want them, when they have kids in their 40s--my kids are in their 40s today--to remember on Veterans Day, on Memorial Day, and on all other days, the John McCains of the world and those who will come after John, who will put their life and future and fortune on the line for the greatest country in the world, the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, all postcloture time be considered expired at 1:45 p.m. today.

Mr. President, I come to the floor of the Senate today to express myself on Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who has been named by President Trump to the Supreme Court of the United States, subject to the confirmation of the U.S. Senate.

Probably the most serious responsibility all of us have is the confirmation of those who are appointed to lifetime appointments in the judiciary and certain other high places in our government. It is a responsibility that should be treasured, respected, and never abused or never trivialized.

President Trump has done what every President has done in the past: He has nominated the best available--Brett Kavanaugh, who stands before this Senate today. There is no better person for the job on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Brett Kavanaugh is the real deal. He is the real deal, and he went to Yale. That doesn't make him great. I think the University of Georgia is great, myself. But the Yankees have been bragging about Yale, so we always say nice things about them. He is very smart. He graduated cum laude from Yale.

He has trained so many young lawyers in his career, it is not even funny. He has had so many clerk with him. He has written so much that has been copied by other courts and adopted as a part of law; it is a great testimony to his ability and his intellect.

He served several years as a partner at Kirkland & Ellis, a private firm. He served as a clerk at the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. He has been a teacher and today teaches at Harvard University in the Samuel Williston lecture series and was nominated by Elena Kagan, a member of the U.S. Supreme Court.

He is the real deal in a lot of ways, and I want to take a minute to share why I am going to vote for him. I want somebody on the Supreme Court who understands me--an average American, somebody who has a family, two kids, works for a living, loves their country, and would do the right thing and will not do it for any other reason than to do the right thing.

My motto in life has always been Mark Twain's quote: When confronted with a difficult decision, do what is right. You will surprise a few, but you will amaze the rest. Doing the right thing is the right thing to do every time, but it is the hardest thing to at do almost any time. In fact, as my father used to say: Son, do what you want to do when nobody is looking, and when nobody is looking, do the same thing you do when they are looking because you always want to do the right thing regardless of the question and regardless of what answer you have to give.

The Supreme Court is a tremendous responsibility in our government. It is one-third of our government. We have a three-legged school of government: the bureaucracy--we are in the legislative branch; the executive branch, which the President runs; but the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter. I want a level-headed person who understands me making those decisions.

I think the following qualifies as a level-headed person: More than a dozen times, his opinions have been endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court. His 100 most cited opinions have been cited by more than 210 judges across the country. More than 50 circuit court opinions discuss or cite one of his concurrences or dissents. Of his 48 clerks, 39 have gone on to clerk for the Supreme Court of the United States. One of his clerks, Britt Grant from Georgia, was confirmed last week by this U.S. Senate to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals. That is a pretty high testament to a man of his youth and a man of his experience.

He has two beautiful children, a lovely wife, and is a committed family man. But let me tell you what makes him special: He is not pretentious. My first meeting with him was an odd meeting. It was a rare meeting. It was on the first floor outside of the elevators coming to this Chamber. I had just come in from the rain. I was standing there, trying to get myself halfway dried off, and there came a slew of police. I figured the President was coming. You know, they always run us out of there. The cops came in, and the dogs came in--and everybody else. All of a sudden, there was a guy; at first, I didn't recognize him. Then I realized, with all the press trying to get up close to him, he must be somebody really important. He wasn't us; he was Brett Kavanaugh.

He saw me. He stopped, came over, and said: Johnny, how are you doing? That impressed me a lot. Of course, I know he had been back there studying, just like the pages, so you can remember who we are, so you can say our name, and it is a good thing to do. He talked to me as though I was his long-lost friend. He stopped, and we talked for 4 or 5 minutes.

Two days later, when we came to my office and we talked again, we talked about family, we talked about food, we talked about fun, we talked about the United States of America, and we talked about the greatness and potential of our country and its future. We talked about everything we loved about it and what we would do to protect it, save it, and how we both felt honored to be in the positions we were in.

Toward the end of the conversation, I said: Now, one thing about it, Mr. Kavanaugh, I understand you had a little issue with buying season tickets to the baseball games. In fact, the first thing Democrats came up with is that he makes too much money or he has too much money because he bought season tickets and used his credit card. I don't think that is a dumb idea. I think that is a compliment--a guy who loves baseball, loves politics, and loves America. It doesn't get any better than that.

So I am going to vote for Brett Kavanaugh to confirm him to the U.S. Supreme Court because he is a regular guy, he is a brilliant man, he cares about his country deeply, he believes in this country, and he feels a responsibility that he wants to assume at this time in life. I can't think of any better reasons to vote for him.

I am going to vote for him with pride, and I urge all my fellow Senators in the U.S. Senate to join me as well.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be granted enough time to complete my remarks before the vote.

Mr. President, I come briefly but quickly and proudly to recommend Britt Grant to this body and to the United States of America to be the next judge from the State of Georgia to be on the circuit court of appeals.

Britt Grant is an outstanding jurist. She became a judge on the Georgia Supreme Court at the age of 40. She went to Stanford University Law School, and she went to Wake Forest University as an undergraduate. After she left Stanford University, she came to clerk for Brett Kavanaugh, who is now nominated for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Throughout her legal career, whether it was practicing as an attorney, whether it was serving as a judge, or whatever she did, she was always at the top of her class, at the top of her case, or at the top of her ability. I don't remember ever having a judge come before this body, since I have been in Congress, from my home State of Georgia who had more people pulling for her, more people wanting her to win, more people who think she is the right person at the right time for the United States of America.

So I come to the floor as the senior Senator from Georgia to tell my colleagues this: You have the chance to invoke cloture tonight with your vote and to vote tomorrow for the confirmation of the Honorable Britt Grant of the Georgia Supreme Court to be on the U.S. Circuit Court for the Eleventh Circuit of the United States of America.

I urge my colleagues to vote yes for cloture and yes for Judge Grant tomorrow.

I yield back the remainder of my time.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Montana, Mr. Tester, for his remarks. I thank him more so for his hard work, as ranking member, over the last 2 years with me, as chairman, and for bringing us to the point at which we are today. Jon and I are very excited because we know that Robert Wilkie is the real deal. We know the things that we have gone through with some of the previous appointees and with some of the problems at the VA now have a chance to be overridden and solved and that we will step forward in a new day for the VA.

We no longer want somebody who is going to make excuses for the VA. We want somebody who is going to make a difference at the VA. Robert Wilkie understands the needs of our veterans in rural areas. He understands their needs in large urban cities. He understands the threat of suicide and the need to have mental health care accessible and available to our veterans at all times. He knows all of the things we need to do. He also knows we have given him a quiver of arrows that he can use as he hunts through the VA to root out the bad players and lift the big players.

The VA MISSION Act, as Jon Tester just mentioned, is absolutely rule No. 1. The implementation of that change gives our veterans the choice, our rural veterans the access, our urban veterans the accountability, and the VA the chance to maximize the delivery of healthcare services to our veterans at a cost that, over time, will be less than if the VA had done it all by itself.

The VA is a tremendous organization. It is the state of the art in many things--in ophthalmology, for example, and in treating a lot of the signature wounds that we have today from the war--PTSD and all of those. Our VA does a phenomenal job with all of those. Yet there are a lot of healthcare services that are routine for which veterans shouldn't have to wait 3, 4, and 5 months but that they ought to be able to get in a reasonably accessible period of time. They ought to be able to get services closest to home, where they are, and be able to get them from those who can deliver the services to them when they need them. The VA MISSION Act lets that happen.

I am going to say a few things tonight in my remarks on the early warnings with regard to the VA MISSION Act--that it is costing a lot of money because they are going to see some requests come in for money. Yes, it is going to take us a little while to get over the bubble with the initial implementation, but when we do, we are going to minimize the cost and give greater service to the veterans and, over time, reduce the cost to our veterans.

Every time we don't require the VA to build another hospital or another clinic, we are lowering the cost of our real estate and uplifting the opportunity for us to spend more money on services. Every time we have doctors in hospitals who treat veterans who want to participate in the VA MISSION Act and the Veterans Choice Program, they will not have to add all of the other costs of infrastructure, and our veterans will get better choice, better service, better medical care, and better time.

This is an opportunity to make the change of a lifetime. We are going to make the VA something it has always wanted to be and give the veterans something they always thought they had--the best possible care at the most affordable price to the taxpayer. We will deliver a difference for our veterans and their families.

I am proud of what the committee did 2 weeks ago when it passed the VA MISSION Act and when it brought about caregivers' legislation for those family members so that they may take care of loved ones from the Vietnam war era. We are going to have bills coming up that have to do with the Navy and other things like that in the year ahead. We have a lot of things we are going to do.

I want us to stop, here and now, dragging out old stories about the VA and talking about what the VA isn't and, instead, talk about what it is. I want to give a specific example. The press needs to stop giving a 3-, 4-, 5-year IG's report and reporting it as today's news. Jon and I have spent more time in responding to reports about the IG or someone else--I am just picking on the IG--and about failures within the VA when, in fact, it turns out that they are from a study from 2006 when we finally get the report. They make a big deal out of it as if it were yesterday.

Most of the issues from the Veterans Administration's major stories-- I didn't say ``all,'' and it never will be all--are being met and addressed faster than ever before. We have to report the good news as well as the tough news. I will stand there and respond to the tough news all day long, but I hate it when I have to call my own press conference to talk about what is really going on at the VA that is really good.

It is absolutely essential that we be in partnership with the media-- the VA itself, the VA's employees, its service providers, and all of us in our roles in Congress as committee chairs, in leadership. It is essential that all of us join in and put our arms together and move forward in order to have a stronger, more productive, more responsible

Mr. President, I yield back all time.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I am delighted to stand today, shoulder to shoulder with all my colleagues on the Veterans' Affairs Committees in the House and the Senate, to thank the Senate for a very strong vote on cloture yesterday to take us to a point today where we will pass the VA MISSION Act, which is this legislative body fulfilling a promise to those who fought and sacrificed for each of us to be here today--our families and loved ones as well.

For years, there have been problems in the VA in terms of healthcare. You read the headlines. I read them, too, and our constituents read them. In Arizona, we had veterans who died waiting to get a routine appointment. We had scheduling errors. People were getting bonuses for scheduling things they had falsified. We had a lot of things that were disappointing to all of us. We worked hard in the Veterans Affairs Committee in the House and Senate to address these tough issues head-on and fix them so that the VA would be the best functioning health delivery system it could possibly be for the people who were willing to risk their lives for each of us when they joined the military.

I think it is appropriate that we are doing this the week before Memorial Day. Next Monday, we will celebrate all of those who, in all the wars that preceded the fight we have today, represented our country, volunteered unselfishly, fought, and in some cases died for America's peace, freedom, liberty, and the perpetuation of our democracy.

One promise we made to them was that they would have good quality healthcare, and it would be successful. Four years ago, with the leadership of John McCain, we started the movement toward Veterans Choice. We passed a good bill with a 40-mile rule and a 30-day rule. The 40-mile rule said that if you live within 40 miles of a VA clinic or service, you can go to a closer clinic in the private sector, as long as it is approved by the VA. The 30-day rule said that if you couldn't get an appointment for a routine medical service in 30 days, you could get an appointment in the private sector, and the VA would approve it. But the labyrinth of the approval process for that 30-day appointment or that 40-mile access made it almost impossible for the veteran, in many cases, to get access that is as timely as we would like it to be.

It was a good start. It was an improvement in our process. It addressed the problem--but not well enough. We learned enough as a test bed to know that veterans liked Choice, as long as it was not so cumbersome that they couldn't use it. The VA liked Choice, as

long as they were a partner with a veteran who made the choices, so we lost no continuity in healthcare.

With the passage of the MISSION Act, we are repealing both the 30-day rule and the 40-mile rule. Instead, we are saying the following: If you are an eligible veteran for VA healthcare services, you can choose a private sector doctor if you want to, as long as the conditions and circumstances, in concert with your VA primary care doctor, fit. In other words, the VA needs to know about it and work with you in making that decision and work with you in finding that private doctor. We are not going to have mountains of paperwork and third-party administrators breaking the rules and regulations and slowing things down. Instead, the VA will be motivated to see you, the veteran, get fast, timely service and quality healthcare, whether it is private or the VA.

There have been some who have talked about this being privatization. It is not privatization; it is mobilization. We are mobilizing healthcare for the veterans to see to it that they have access in a timely fashion. The VA is an instrumental service for our veterans who come home. Many of them come home with injuries and sicknesses and illnesses and diseases that, quite frankly, nobody ever contemplated people surviving.

Who heard of PTSD and TBI 20 years ago? Who saw veterans lose arms and legs--in some cases, all of their arms and legs--and survive a battlefield wound? How many of you have seen people wear an eye prosthesis, where they had an eye replaced? The VA has specialists who can do all of those things, the best in the world. They can deliver high-quality healthcare and high-quality rehabilitation to veterans with the most serious injuries in the history of warfare. We will always continue to do that, but we also have to understand that when healthcare in the private sector can be utilized for the convenience of the veteran--not as a competitor to the VA--we can use it as a force multiplier to lower the number of people we have to hire and, in addition, lower the number of hospitals we have to build and instead provide that money for services to our veterans. It is a win-win proposition for the VA and for all of us.

It is no secret why every former VA Secretary who has served this country has endorsed the VA MISSION bill. All of them have endorsed it, every one of them, whether a Republican appointment or appointment by a Democratic President. They all know this is something we needed to do for a long time. It is no secret why we got a vote of 91 to 4 yesterday on the floor of the U.S. Senate to invoke cloture and go to a vote today on the VA MISSION Act. It is past time we made sure our laws for healthcare available to our veterans are as high quality as our veterans are when they go to fight wars for us.

Secondly, I want to focus on another feature which is very important to me because I was in the service. I was not in Vietnam. I am a Vietnam-era veteran. I was in the Georgia Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. I lost buddies in that war. I know a lot of our soldiers sacrificed in that war and made it home with terrible injuries, but because of our healthcare delivery system in the battlefield and at other hospitals around the world, we were able to save veterans and rehabilitate them, but the need for ongoing medical healthcare for the basic essentials of life is sometimes one of the byproducts for some of the injuries and for some of those who survived those wounds.

There are veterans who have difficulty feeding themselves. There are veterans who can't dress themselves. There are veterans who need assistance in the five basic essentials of life, and then from time to time, they have to call in a caregiver. There are spouses, moms, in some cases, dads, brothers, and sisters who come and deliver those services to their brother or sister or son or daughter. If they are a veteran of almost any area except Vietnam, they get caregiver benefits from the VA or a stipend benefit provided to that volunteer to help that veteran. It helps the veteran pay for their service, and it helps the VA not have to go out to find someone to do it because there is someone offering to be their caregiver. We are expanding the caregiver services in the VA to all veterans, so finally the Vietnam-era veterans and their families will be as eligible as anybody else who is entitled to VA benefits.

Patty Murray of Washington, Susan Collins of Maine, and a lot of Members of this Chamber today deserve credit for that. We fought for caregivers for a long time. It is a big step forward, and it is going to be a lifesaver and a life extender for many and remove just one of the major burdens that some have to care for a spouse or a loved one injured in battle or who has fought for us.

I can go on and on and on about detail after detail after detail in this bill, but I don't want to bore everyone. I want everybody to realize, when they go home this weekend, how important it is to tell them what we have finally done. We have finally dealt with the accessibility of healthcare to our veterans. There will be no more headlines of veterans dying because they can't get an appointment because they are going to be able to get an appointment. They are going to be able to make the choice with the VA at that appointment. It is not the case anymore where a veteran is going to die because they can't get a basic service to stay alive at their home, that if they don't have the money to pay for a caregiver, they therefore languish, unable to feed themselves or clothe themselves or live in a sanitary condition. That is the very least we owe to our veterans. Today, when you cast your vote for the VA MISSION Act, you will do just that.

I want to address some individuals, if I can, and thank them. One, I thank John McCain, whose idea this was originally. He is a great hero to all of us, a friend to all of us, one we love and pray for today as he recovers from cancer. John is the one who started the movement toward Choice, and he deserves the credit for it.

I thank all of those Secretaries who have worked with us over the past 3 or 4 years to get to the point where we are able to pass the VA MISSION Act today.

I will tell you whom I really want to thank. I want to thank all those veterans who sacrificed and died for us in the wars before now. The reason we enjoy our freedom and you, Madam President, can preside freely without fear of retribution, I can say what I think without fear of retribution, I can say to our constituents who gather in the Gallery and listen to what we have to say, and protest if they wish, is we have a Constitution and 10 basic amendments, the first 10 being our Bill of Rights. It gives us everything, but the ones who protected that gift are our veterans.

It is not a stretch to remember that had it been a different outcome in World War II, I might be speaking Japanese or German today, not English, but because of our veterans and because of our soldiers who fought in the Battle of the Bulge, who fought in the Pacific--my father-in-law flew reconnaissance in the Pacific. My brother-in-law was in the Air Force in Vietnam. If those vets had not risked their lives and really offered their lives in exchange for our liberty and freedom, we wouldn't be enjoying this today. So we owe no less than the MISSION Act to our veterans. I am proud to be part of it, and I am proud of my committee and my committee members who are doing so much to help us.

Let me just say thank you to my colleagues for your vote yesterday. I urge you to vote today for passage of the VA MISSION Act. It is an honor to serve our country as a Member of the U.S. Senate. It is an honor to be an American. May God bless our country.

I yield the floor.

I thank the distinguished Senator from Oklahoma. I will tell him that the story of his veteran from Muskogee led us to the way we wrote a lot of the provisions in section 101. Comfort, ease, and accessibility for the veteran are equally important to every other consideration that will go in.

The veteran who was sent to Seattle before would now be able to get treatment in Oklahoma City or in Muskogee or wherever else closer to home that is more convenient as long as it is in the best interest of that patient. Specifically, it says that a veteran and the veteran's referring clinician agree that the care or services in the community would be in the best medical interest of the veteran after considering criteria, including--and then all those criteria. So every personal criterion, as well as medical criterion, is considered. So that should never happen again because of the VA MISSION Act. I appreciate the Senator bringing it to our attention, and I hope it never happens again in Oklahoma or anywhere in the United States.

Mr. President, the Senator is correct. The term Indian Health Service includes Indian Tribes and Tribal organizations that operate healthcare facilities in lieu of the Indian Health Service pursuant to a contract or self-governance compact with the Federal Government.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I come briefly to the floor to encourage all Members of the Senate to vote for the VA MISSION bill. It is long overdue, a lot of hard work went into it, and it had a great vote on cloture of 91 to 4.

I am sure we will have an outstanding vote today because it is a vote for our veterans, for the promises we made to them for better quality healthcare and a better VA. It would not have happened if it were not for a lot of people, but one of the most key persons in making sure this bipartisan bill passes with the overwhelming margin it deserves is Jon Tester, my ranking member on the committee. We worked together hand in hand for about 3 years. We had enough pitfalls to want to quit many times but never did because we knew the ultimate goal was to meet our veterans' needs.

Today, when we adopt this bill, and later on this month when it is signed, it will be because of the hard work of a lot of people but none more important than Jon Tester from Montana.

I thank my ranking member for encouraging everyone to vote for the bill, and I thank the Presiding Officer at this time.

I yield to the ranking member.

Mr. President, I have 7 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Committee on Armed Services

The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 23, 2018, at 9:30 a m. to conduct a hearing.

Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 23, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Ten years of Conservatorship: the Statue of the Housing Finance System.''

Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

The Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 23, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing.

Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 23, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Emory A. Rounds III, of Maine, to be Director of the Office of Government Ethics, Kelly Higashi, to be an Associate Judge of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia, and Frederick M. Nutt, of Virginia, to be Controller, Office of Federal Financial Management, Office of Management and Budget.

Committee on the Judiciary

The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 23, 2018, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Britt Cagle Grant, of Georgia, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Eleventh Circuit, Allen Cothrel Winsor, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Florida, Patrick R. Wyrick, to be United States District Judge for the Western District of Oklahoma, and Edward W. Felten, of New Jersey, and Jane Nitze, of the District of Columbia, both to be a Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

Special Committee on Aging

The Special Committee on Aging of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 23, 2018, at 2 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Preventing and Treating Opioid Misuse Among Older Americans.''

Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration

The Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, May 23, 2018, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``TVPRA and Exploited Loopholes Affecting Unaccompanied Alien Children.''

I say to the Democratic leader, it is a pleasure.