Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this past weekend the House of Representatives voted to congratulate the Government of Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement for their willingness to compromise to end the conflict in Aceh. Indeed, I join with my colleagues in marking this important milestone towards peace.

However, at the same time, I must rise to express my grave concerns about the recent Administration decision to waive conditionality pertaining to Foreign Military Financing for Indonesia (FMF). While Indonesia has made great strides in democratization in recent years, it is unfortunate that the Indonesia military (TNI) continues to tarnish that progress.

As my colleagues know, the Fiscal Year 2006 Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs Appropriations Act that was signed into law on November 14 included certain restrictions upon FMF for Indonesia. The legislation required that the Indonesian Government hold members of their military accountable for gross violations of human rights. Congress held FMF contingent upon the Indonesian military's cooperation with civilian judicial activities and international efforts aimed at bringing perpetrators to justice. Furthermore, Congress demonstrated its support for strengthening democratic governance in Indonesia, and required that improved civilian control of the military be demonstrated before FMF could be provided.

Those conditions have not yet been met. However, only two days after the Foreign Operations Appropriation bill was signed into law, and despite the clearly expressed will of Congress on this issue, the Administration unilaterally decided to exercise waiver authority that it was granted in good faith.

The evidence does not support this waiver. At least 15 human rights defenders, including Indonesia's foremost human rights advocate Munir, have been murdered since 2000. No perpetrator has been brought to justice for these crimes. No senior Indonesian officer has been held accountable for crimes against humanity in East Timor in 1999 or before. Today, in West Papua, reports continue to come in of the TNI terrorizing the people of West Papua, even as the military restricts access to the area.

I am deeply disappointed by this action taken by the Administration. It removes the U.S.'s leverage to press for human rights improvement. It undermines our credibility with those who have suffered and seek justice. And it threatens the democratic advances that have been made by the Indonesian people.

I strongly urge the Administration to retract this decision.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for yielding me time, and I thank the chairman as well.

Mr. Speaker, what we are doing here today is simply renewing an act that will allow mental health insurance to have the same limits in insurance coverage as every other insurance legislation that you would ever have for a physical illness. However, the problem is that we keep doing this each year without addressing the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that we have here in the Congress a bill that would require parity in insurance coverage, meaning equal copay, equal deductible, equal premium for those illnesses, for those mental illnesses, when it comes to insurance coverage as there would be for any other physical illness.

Mr. Speaker, I have two major illnesses. I have asthma, which is a chronic illness; and I have an EpiPen, and I have prednisone, and I also have bipolar disorder, and I have Prozac and I have lithium.

Now, I am fortunate enough to have insurance coverage where when I go to get my coverage for my medications, I do not have to pay a higher copay for my mental health drugs as opposed to my asthma drugs. Do you know why? Because the Congress of the United States has mental health parity. Yes, Members of Congress are not discriminated against when it comes to mental illnesses.

However, you in the public out there in America, when you try to go and try to get treatment for bipolar disorder, for schizophrenia, for major depression, for any number of mental illnesses, you are told you have to pay a higher copay, a higher deductible, and you are told that you have to pay a higher premium on top of that, all because this country still treats mental illness as if it is not a physical illness.

Mr. Speaker, I have a chart here that shows that mental illness is a physical illness, for those that do not truly believe it. Here we can see in what is an x-ray called a PET scan the difference between two brains, each differentiating from the other based upon a difference in the disorder that the illness represents. In this case, we have bipolar disorder, and you can see that there is greater activity in one part of the brain here for those that do suffer from it, as opposed to this brain.

The physical qualities of mental illness are well known, so why do we not have parity in this country? Well, we do not have parity because some think that it is going to cost us more money.

Well, the tests are in, the studies have been done, and, quite frankly, to my colleagues who think that this is going to cost the Chamber of Commerce more money, all they need to do is look at The Wall Street Journal for evidence to the fact that it actually saves businesses money. It saves businesses money because it costs us $31 billion a year, $31 billion a year in productivity lost because businesses do not ensure adequate coverage for their employees in mental illness.

Just understand this: anyone who has depression, are you truly able to make it at work and focus on what you are doing? That is called presenteeism. That is when you are at work, but you really are not at work because you cannot concentrate. That is called presenteeism. Then, of course, you have absenteeism. Of course, that is easy to measure.

The fact, my friends, is that an average person who has depression loses 5 hours a week of productivity compared to one that does not. So would you not think that some mental health coverage for the person suffering from depression might actually improve productivity?

Guess what? It does. The studies are in, and, frankly, that is why I cannot understand why the majority of this House has not even brought to the floor of this House a mental health parity bill that will allow us to end the discrimination that currently exists in this country.

We are sanctioning discrimination. We are basically saying, like, for example, cancer, well, we are not going to cover cancer because it is costing too much. That is essentially what we are being told by those who do not want to cover mental illness. We are basically being told ``your illness costs money.''

Well, if it is about saving money, why not just cut out cancer coverage, because, you know, that costs us a lot of money. That is a foolish argument. And equally as foolish is the fact that we would cut out from insurance coverage mental illness simply because of stereotypes and because of stigma in this country.

This legislation today is simply one part of a farce to make people think that we are actually doing something on mental health parity when, in fact, with this legislation what we are doing today, all it does is allow the insurance companies to play the game where they do not actually have to provide the coverage. They can organize various days that actually can be utilized and the number of appointments that someone can have or the kind of drugs that they are prescribed. This legislation might as well have been written by the insurance industry when it comes to coverage for those with mental illness.

So, Mr. Speaker, let me just conclude by stating a few facts. Those who are 65 or older are the highest rate of suicide in this country; 65 and older have the highest rate of suicide in this country. The third leading cause of death for young people is suicide. This year alone we are going to see 1,400 young people take their lives in colleges and universities in this country.

We are not taking this issue, this illness, seriously enough. And if it pulls your heart strings and it is simply about whether you think it is going to save money or not, you can see from these charts that even the Surgeon General of the United States has said that mental illnesses comprise the second leading cause of morbidity, meaning the lost days in life, productive life; and the World Health Organization has ranked it number one.

So how could we be so blind to look at such a significant part of our health care system and then just look the other way when it comes to insurance coverage?

I hope my good friend from California will help me in getting his leadership to help bring to the floor of the House a parity bill that will allow us to finally end the stigma and discrimination that still exists in this country towards those with mental illness.

Let me just say, with respect to our veterans coming back and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, when we say that we are not going to cover mental illness, we are making an implicit message out there to America that somehow it is not real, somehow it is not real health care, it is something on the order of cosmetic surgery. You know what that does? That means that there will be fewer veterans coming forward and asking for help. Ninety-six percent of the veterans coming back from Iraq right now are not signing up for any mental health consultation whatsoever. And the reason they are not is because of the stigma.

And by not bringing a bill like parity to the floor, another thing that we do that is unjust is we reinforce the image in America that if you are mentally ill there is something wrong with you, that you ought to just get up, pull yourself up by you bootstraps, and you ought to get with the program, and that it is some moral failure of yours as opposed to it actually being a physical disorder with its roots in the biology of the brain.

I thank the chairman and my good friend, the ranking member from California, for giving me this time to speak. There is so much here to discuss. I would not have all the time that I would need to discuss it. But hopefully if we do get a parity bill on the floor one of these days, we can have an even fuller discussion of this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member, Mr. Obey, and I thank him and applaud him for his steadfast voice on behalf of those who need a voice on the hill, who always speaks up on behalf of those without a voice. And I want to thank the chairman for his steadfast work trying to make the best of a bad situation.

You know, Mr. Chairman, I think that when you got on to that Republican bus and you were trying to find a seat up front for the people's bill, a seat up front for education, a seat up front for health care, a seat up front for human services, all the front row seats were already taken.

They were taken by the tax cut bill, they were taken by the corporate loophole bill for energy companies, and they were taken by the big pharmaceutical giveaways.

I tell the chairman, in many respects, just like Rosa Parks, whose life we celebrated just recently, you were told to take your people's bill to the back of the bus.

Right now, Mr. Speaker, that is just where all of our Nation's priorities are, at the back of the bus. These are priorities that ought to be at the front. These are priorities, like education, that are going to lead our country to the future.

We are talking about a war now in the Middle East. We are going to have another war on our hands. It is an economic war. We used to use our military for political and military hegemony. Now, for us to have political hegemony, we need intellectual power. Our military analogy is our young people need to have textbooks, not tanks. They need to have pencils. They need to have schools that are not falling down on them. They need to be able to go on to higher education.

But, unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, this bill represents the single biggest cut in higher education that we have ever seen in the history of this country. Imagine that at a time when our Nation's economy demands that our soldiers, our men and women who were trying to make a living for themselves, are being taken hostage because they do not have all the protective gear that they need. They do not have an education to wrap themselves around so that they can go out into that economic workforce and be protected and know that they can make a living for themselves in this new-world economy.

So I thank the chairman for doing the best job that he could; but I am sure, as he knows, the people's bill, unfortunately, in this budget took a back seat to many other bills that, unfortunately, I do not believe it should have taken a back seat to.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take the opportunity to express my enthusiastic support of subsidized guardianship. I understand that many times grandparents or other relatives become the primary caregivers to children who are not able to live with their parents. This can become a significant financial challenge and we must offer these families more resources. In my home state of Rhode Island, 4,176 grandparents were financially responsible for meeting their grandchild's basic needs in 2003. Subsidized guardianship programs, which are increasingly used by states around the country--including Rhode Island--allow children living safely with relatives to exit formal foster care and achieve legal permanence. That is why I am proud to be a cosponsor of H.R. 3380, The Guardianship Assistance Promotion and Kinship Support Act, which would allow the use of federal funding to support subsidized guardianship programs.

Today I offer my formal acknowledgement and deepest appreciation for the ongoing service of these caregivers to our country and our nation's most valuable asset, our children.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor an Icon of American Culture and one of our country's finest citizens, Tony Bennett. Much has already been said and written about the life and work of Tony Bennett, but I am honored to have the opportunity to say a few words about my friend here.

Tony has been a part of the experience of being an American for the last six decades. His arrival as a force in our culture was announced nearly seventy years ago at the opening of the Triborough Bridge in New York City. At 10 years old, the son of an Italian immigrant and grocery store operator, Anthony Dominick Benedetto was invited to sing at a ceremony to open the bridge by another famous son of Italy, New York's iconic Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. At the time, our country was in the midst of a staggering Great Depression, President Roosevelt had begun the ``New Deal,'' and that bridge was a concrete symbol that New York City, that America, and that Americans, would persevere. The Bridge stood as the accomplishment of our American ingenuity, our hard work, and our craftsmanship. Looking back, with those values in mind, it is altogether fitting that Tony Bennett was there.

The ingenuity of his voice and his style have transcended generations of American music fans. Tony once quipped that he was spoiled because he, ``never had to sing songs [he] didn't like.'' But it is generations of Americans

who have been spoiled by a sound that, no matter where or when it is heard, is always fresh, always new, and uniquely American.

As Tony approaches his 80th birthday, he has sold more than 50 million records, he has won the praise of musicians across the spectrum, and been acknowledged by his industry for his lifetime of achievement. Yet, he continues to work, bringing enjoyment to thousands of fans each year, and winning new ones each day.

His accomplishments are not limited to just music. He is also an accomplished painter in his own right. He is a tireless advocate for Juvenile Diabetes research, and the American Cancer Society--each year he donates one of his paintings for the ACS holiday card. He has been a friend of Presidents and Heads of State, singing at the Inaugural festivities for President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and President Bill Clinton in 1993.

Tony has never been afraid to point out injustice and advocate for equality. He marched with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Selma, Alabama, and was an activist throughout the Civil Rights Movement. Coretta Scott King, bestowing the Martin Luther King Center Award for Excellence upon Mr. Bennett in 2001, said, ``Tony is not only one of America's premier performing artists, but he was a deeply- committed friend and supporter of my husband and the Civil Rights Movement, and he has continued to support the efforts of the King Center to fulfill Martin's dream.''

The list of accomplishments for Tony is innumerable, he has embodied the American spirit and he has lived the American dream. I could not be more pleased that the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has chosen to honor Tony Bennett with its highest honors on December 4th, 2005. Tony is truly a credit to his Italian heritage, and to the contributions of millions of immigrant families who have made this country great.

His story is that of what is possible in America, what is great about America, and his life is the embodiment of what it means to be an American. In short, Tony Bennett is a national treasure, and it is with great pride that I speak today as his friend to say thank you for his contribution to our Democracy.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity to say a few words about why I think this bill is a bill that says that the best days of this country are behind us, not before us. I call attention to some statistics, statistics that say the high school dropout over the course of their life will earn $260,000 less than a graduate. This legislation, I think, does very little to support more students graduating from high school when it cuts after-school programs by 25 percent. If you spread that across 23 million high school dropouts in this country, that adds up to $50 billion a year less in taxes.

So if we are really concerned about generating more taxes, we ought to be investing in our people, not taking away the kinds of resources that contribute to their ability to become greater taxpayers in this country.

Mr. Speaker, $1 invested in preschool leaves $7 saved in welfare, health care and criminal justice. Let's invest in our people.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to share my concerns on the language in the Budget Reconciliation Act on Medicaid pharmacy dispensing fees. As I understand these provisions, states are required to pay dispensing fees to pharmacies for Medicaid prescriptions. While this might seem like a step forward, all states pay such fees now. Thus, we are really not assuring adequate access to pharmacies by just specifying that states have to pay a dispensing fee. I represent a state with almost 200,000 Medicaid beneficiaries and by the end of this decade, one in five Rhode Islanders will have no choice but to turn to Medicaid for basic health care. As more and more working families are forced to enroll in Medicaid, it is our duty to ensure that they are able to access providers and pharmacies to receive the care they so desperately need.

This legislation sets a minimum $8 dispensing fee for generic drugs, however there is no specific minimum fee set forth for brand drug dispensing fees in the bill. Currently, more than half of all prescription drugs dispensed in the Medicaid program are brand name drugs with no generic competition. I am concerned that we are not requiring states to provide a minimum dispensing fee for these drugs.

If states do not set appropriate dispensing fees, I am concerned that pharmacies will be paid below their cost to dispense prescription drugs in the Medicaid program. As a result, Medicaid recipients could have difficulty obtaining the prescription drugs that they need from their neighborhood pharmacy, and many pharmacies may have to close or reduce hours.

The total payment to pharmacies for the drug product and dispensing fee must be adequate to pay pharmacies to buy the drug, dispense the medication, and have a reasonable return. It is my understanding that if the current proposed reductions to pharmacy reimbursement in Medicaid are enacted, states would have to pay double or triple the dispensing fees currently being paid just so pharmacies can break even. However, states are already faced with limited funds and I am concerned that they will not choose such high dispensing fees without being required to.

Community pharmacies play a crucial role in providing Medicaid beneficiaries with lifesaving medications. I hope that my colleagues will take my comments under consideration when moving forward with these reforms in the Medicaid pharmacy payment system in order to provide adequate reimbursements to pharmacies dispensing Medicaid prescriptions.

Mr. Speaker, as of today, a bipartisan majority of the House has cosponsored the Paul Wellstone Mental Health Equity Treatment Act. This marks the fifth year in a row that the majority of our colleagues have supported ending this arbitrary insurance limit on the treatment of a whole category of what this poster makes clear are neurological, physical diseases.

In the last 5 years, more than 150,000 Americans have lost their lives to suicide, 90 percent of them with serious mental illness.

In the last 5 years, American employers have lost over $150 billion of productivity to depression alone. That is more than the GDP of 28 different States during the same period.

In the 5 years, well over 60,000 American families have been broken apart by the absence of insurance because the only way for parents to get treatment for their children is to turn the custody of those children over to the State.

And, in those 5 years, Mr. Speaker, the leadership of this House and the committees of jurisdiction have yet to even give this bill an up and down vote. We need a vote on the Paul Wellstone Equity Act for mental health insurance.

Mr. Speaker, in October 1999, a presidential candidate from Texas said that House Republicans ``shouldn't balance the budget on the backs of the poor.'' He criticized his fellow Republicans for projecting ``pessimism, indifference, and I disdain for government.''

That man was President George W. Bush, and what a sad, tragic difference 6 years in power has made.

Today, too many Americans are struggling just to get by, let alone get ahead. They're trying to scratch out a living . . . [pause] . . . and some hope for the future in the face of rising energy prices, higher education costs, stagnant wages, and for some, the complete loss of homes, jobs, and even loved ones to Hurricane Katrina.

To them, this reconciliation bill says, ``we need you to sacrifice more so that the energy companies can get their subsidies and the wealthy elite can get their tax breaks.''

Democrats believe that government should reflect the sense of community that Americans demonstrated after Katrina--the sense of community that has defined and united America throughout its history.

We believe in some basic human principles--everyone should have the opportunities not just to survive, but to excel with their God-given talents and abilities. Those are the values that should be reflected in our budgets.

We could have a budget that brings Americans together.

But sadly, instead, we have a budget that will widen the divide in America between those who have plenty, and those who struggle just to have enough.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina.

In our pledge every day, we pledge one Nation under God with liberty and justice for all.

Mr. Speaker, with this reconciliation package, this is not one Nation, one liberty and justice for all. If you look at those students, this is not liberty and justice for all. For students today, only 10 percent of children from working-class families graduate from college by the age of 24 as compared to 58 percent of upper-middle-class and wealthy families. This is not liberty and justice for all.

If you are disabled, mentally retarded, poor, hungry or a foster family, this is not liberty and justice for all. This reconciliation package slams the door on those with disabilities trying to gain a foothold in society. It cuts the Medicaid program, taking away opportunity from those with intellectual difficulties. It takes food out of the mouths of the poorest children in our society. And it goes after those that are trying to make an opportunity for themselves in this society by getting an education when an education is more important than at any other time in American history.

Today, our economy is about an economy of ideas. If we do not provide education for every single American, we are consigning those without an education to second-class status. This reconciliation bill consigns millions of Americans to second-class status by cutting aid to education that opens up the doors of opportunity for millions of Americans.

Franklin Roosevelt said the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance to those who have much; it is whether we provide enough to those who have too little. This reconciliation package fails that test as well.

Mr. Speaker, on the evening of October 17, I missed three Rollcall votes. It was my intention to vote:

``Yes'' on Recorded Vote 521 Journal Vote.

``Yes'' on Recorded Vote 522 H. Res. 457. Recognizing the importance and positive contributions of chemistry to our everyday lives and supporting the goals and ideals of National Chemistry Week (Rep. Holt-- Science).

``Yes'' on Recorded Vote 523 H. Res. 491. Expressing the sense of Congress with respect to raising awareness and enhancing the state of computer security in the United States, and supporting the goals and ideals of National Cyber Security Awareness Month.

Mr. Chairman, the most important people in a child's life are their parents. The success of Head Start has been that the parents have been involved at the earliest of ages in their child's development.

The amendment by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), which I rise to support, is an amendment that simply says let us take the evidence based on how we should approach education for children and let us apply what we know is the best way to include measurements of a child in their formative years of life.

What I think all of us saw in the expeditious movement to put in place these tests was the fact that we rushed into it without taking enough time to take a look at it. All of my Head Start teachers have told me that the testing that is currently in place is testing that is not effective and that what would be more effective would be finding out through the National Academy of Sciences what they recommend in terms of the evaluation of those children.

So I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) and I want to join him in saying that learning, as we know and as the chairman knows so well, does not begin in first grade. It begins at birth, and the parents need to be involved in their child's life. Head Start is about the emotional and social development of a child which can guide their ability to learn literacy all the way down their educational life.

They will not learn unless they have the best emotional and social development from early on because they will not be able to sit still; they will not be able to focus; they will not be able to do those things that we are going to be testing them for down the line.

With that, I thank the chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce for this time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my colleagues in recognizing Recovery Month sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and by the Center for Substance Abuse and Treatment.

As the co-chairman of the newly formed Addiction, Treatment and Recovery Caucus, it has been an eye-opening experience to speak with recovery groups working to bring an end to the stigma surrounding addictive disorders.

At every event and every meeting, someone will inevitably take me aside, quietly whisper to me about how their parent had abused drugs for years without knowing it or how their child was attempting to rebuild their life after spending time in a juvenile detention facility for a drug-related crime or how they lost one after years of battling addiction. While these people quietly share their most intimate family secrets, they may not realize that addictive disorders impact over 63 percent of our Nation and that they are far from alone.

In the past several years, advancements in medical science have allowed us to take incredible images of the brain. The National Institutes of Drug Abuse, NIDA, has found evidence of tissue malfunction in the brain of those with addiction.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to show a few of the slides of what a new technology called the PET scan reveals to us about the various afflictions of the brain and brain disorders and how those brain disorders can appear now under a particular kind of X-ray. As everybody can see very clearly, brains operate differently; and those differences come from different metabolic differences and, in many respects, come from simply genetic differences that predispose some people to having mental disorders or having addictive disorders or having alcoholic disorders.

The fact of the matter is now we do not have to be quiet because there is no stigma to alcoholism or drug abuse. This is no reflection on someone's character.

My mother is still battling alcoholism. I am a recovering alcoholic. I know many other members of my family are recovering. I know many of my friends who have families where alcohol and drug abuse plague their families and run amok.

The fact of the matter is, for so long, people have kept quiet about these illnesses because they felt that there was something wrong with them. The fact is now we have been able to look into the brain, see the areas that are affected, see the genetic components to alcoholism and drug addiction and begin to repair those.

Just like every other illness, whether it be diabetes or asthma, drug and alcohol abuse is a chronic disorder like those illnesses. Yet, unlike diabetes and unlike asthma and like every other physical illness of the body, the physical illness and disorder of the brain is discriminated against by insurance companies in this country. As a result of it being discriminated against, millions of Americans do not get the treatment that they could be benefiting from in such incredible ways.

Why should we provide this treatment? Well, aside from the fact that it is the humane thing to do, it actually saves us money. For one thing, it saves us all the cost to our prison system. We have, as a Nation, the largest prison population of any industrialized nation in the world; and Mr. Speaker, the sheriff of Los Angeles County says he runs the largest treatment and drug abuse facility in America. He runs the Los Angeles County jails, and that is appropriate saying that because, quite frankly, our jails are becoming the treatment of last resort.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to offer my support for National Addiction Counselors Day, today, September 20, 2005. As we recognize the tremendous success of treatment for addiction disorders during the entire month of September, we must also acknowledge the great work of addiction counselors.

A staggering 63 percent of Americans say that addiction to alcohol or other drugs has had an impact on them at some point in their lives. Recovery Month, sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, SAMHSA, focuses on helping individuals with addiction problems access treatment and support services, as well as promotes measures that make treatment more affordable, equitable, and available. As a cosponsor of the Paul Wellstone Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act, I am working to end discrimination within the health insurance system against those with mental illness and addiction disorders. Unfortunately, lack of insurance coverage is only one of several barriers that prevent individuals from seeking treatment. In fact, of the 22.2 million individuals needing treatment for substance abuse disorders, 20.3 million have not received it.

No one is immune from addiction; it afflicts people of all ages, races, classes, and professions. The impact is felt not only by individuals and their families, but by society as well. Addiction costs our society and economy billions of dollars each year, in health care costs, property damage, and lost productivity. It also costs lives, and causes immense amounts of grief and pain. The professionals who treat this destructive disease are a dedicated, knowledgeable group which has committed themselves to this serious health crisis. Today there are hundreds of thousands of clean and sober individuals living productive lives only because, in a moment-of-truth, a counselor was there and made the difference.

I urge my colleagues to join me in recognizing the valuable contributions of addiction counselors by honoring National Addiction Counselors Day.

Mr. Speaker, we have talked a lot about making sure that we not overlook those who have been affected by this terrible tragedy. Today, Mr. Speaker, I rise to support this bill, but also just to say we should make sure that we do not overlook those significant numbers of people that have been traumatized by this terrible event.

The mental health impact of this horrifying event, it cannot be measured in dollars. If trauma can disable even those who are trained for battle, we have seen police officers commit suicide already because of what they have witnessed, who can begin to even calculate the fallout on those who are most vulnerable, those who suffered trauma in the past, those who deal with mental illness every single day?

In addition, there is an extreme need for those with mental illnesses who have become evacuees themselves. Untreated, their diseases can be debilitating or even fatal under extreme stress. I know that efforts are under way by SAMPHSA and FEMA and many private organizations to meet the mental health needs today and in the future, but I also know that there are never enough resources when it comes to mental health, even in the best of times.

So I look forward to working with the committee to make sure that these and other needs are met in this bill.