Dan Benishek

Mr. BENISHEK

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today wearing my red tie because this March marks the first national Bleeding Disorders Awareness Month. Bleeding disorders, such as hemophilia or Von Willebrand disease, are currently estimated to affect more than 3 million people nationwide. These disorders are frequently underdiagnosed, and many victims of these disorders often struggle to get proper medical care. As a doctor who treated patients in northern Michigan, I have firsthand experience with patients tackling these difficulties. While the medical community has made great strides over the years in improving the quality of care available for those impacted by bleeding disorders, we can do more. I met recently with constituents in my district who are impacted by bleeding disorders, and they shared with me the great work being done in northern Michigan by Munson Healthcare's Bleeding Disorder Center to provide better care for patients throughout northern Michigan. I hope that my colleagues and I can all join together with the medical research community to build on these gains and find commonsense and bipartisan ways to develop new treatment options for those suffering from bleeding disorders.

Mr. BENISHEK

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, as a lifelong resident of Northern Michigan, I know how important it is to protect and conserve our precious natural resources. Northern Michigan's economy depends on our Great Lakes and outdoor spaces for tourism, agriculture, and sporting activities. Generations of people in my district have grown up experiencing the outdoors, from the shores of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, to Isle Royale National Park. However, we need to make sure that there is a balance and that we do not undertake rash and unproven regulatory policies that are almost guaranteed to negatively impact our economy in the hope of some potential, and often unquantifiable, environmental gain. All too often, the consequence of overly burdensome regulations here in America is the flight of manufacturing and industry to nations such as China and India. Mr. Speaker, these nations simply do not have the same level of protections or respect for the environment that we have here in America. I fail to see how this benefits our planet's environment. I know that far too often the result is American citizens losing their jobs. I hope we can join together to find commonsense and bipartisan ways to continue to protect our environment.

Mr. BENISHEK

Mr. BENISHEK. The gray wolf was recovered in the Great Lakes and ready for delisting and State management. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Wisconsin for this amendment and the time. I rise today in support of this amendment for the SHARE Act. This amendment directs the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to reissue a rule to delist the gray wolf in Wyoming and the Great Lakes region, which includes my State of Michigan. In 2011, the Fish and Wildlife Service determined that the wolf recovered in Wyoming and the Great Lakes and would remain recovered under federally approved State management plans. I can speak from personal experience about the impact that wolves and their recovery are having on my district. This photo next to me is of a constituent in my district. One of his calves was attacked and eaten by a wolf, which may not mean much to the opponents of this, but it means pretty much to small farmers in Michigan. It isn't just the cattle. As the number of wolves have increased well beyond the recommended number for recovery, we have seen drastic declines in the deer population in northern Michigan. My camp has no deer. The economy of the whole area is in collapse because there is no hunting anymore. I understand that some are opposed to ever delisting the wolf, but as numbers continue to expand, we must consider the impact the wolf has on the landscape as a whole. This amendment does not change the Endangered Species Act. It simply allows for the following of true sound science.

Mr. BENISHEK

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of National Invasive Species Awareness Week, 2016, from February 21 to February 27. Invasive species cause widespread damage across the United States. Billions of dollars of damage are caused by animals such as nutria in the South, sea lampreys in the Great Lakes, Asian carp in the Mississippi Basin, and quagga mussels in the west. We must work together to raise awareness of the economic and environmental damage that invasive species are wreaking on our lands and waters. In Congress, I along with Congressman Mike Thompson of California, are co-chairs of the Congressional Invasive Species Caucus. This large, bipartisan group of Members of Congress from across the country seeks to bring attention to the danger invasive species pose. We often work together on policies that will reduce the impact of these species. This week, the Congressional Invasive Species Caucus hosted an informational session in honor of National Invasive Species Awareness Week that saw over one dozen groups, ranging from federal agencies to non-government organizations, presenting on the dangers of invasive species and ongoing efforts to control their populations. On behalf of all residents of Northern Michigan and the United States, I wish to honor the many citizens and organizations who work each day to stop the threat of invasive species to our country. I, along with my colleagues in the House, will continue to work to stop invasive species and bring awareness of this important issue to the American public.

Mr. BENISHEK

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2406, the Sportsmen's Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act of 2015, or the SHARE Act. The SHARE Act has 13 important provisions that will work to expand opportunities for sportsmen and -women to enjoy their favorite outdoor activities around the country. Title II of this bill, which I authored, is the Recreational Fishing and Hunting Heritage and Opportunities Act. I grew up in northern Michigan and, like many of my constituents, spent my summers fishing and the fall hunting grouse in the UP woods. These traditions--spending quality time outdoors with our kids and grandkids--are the kinds of things we must make sure are preserved for generations to come. This portion of the SHARE Act seeks to create an open until closed policy for sportsmen's use of Federal lands. As you know, nearly one-quarter of the United States landmass, or over 500 million acres, are Federal lands that are owned by all Americans. It is important that the right to fully utilize these lands is ensured for future generations. Over the years, legislative ambiguity has allowed antihunting groups to pursue an antihunting agenda that has eliminated opportunities for many of these activities on our Federal lands. Groups like these are taking advantage of loopholes in the law to deprive our constituents of the right to fully use Federal lands. Recreational anglers, hunters, and sporting organizations, many of whom have endorsed this bill, are passionate supporters of the conservation movement. These dedicated sportsmen and -women deserve to know that the land they cherish will not be closed off to hunting, fishing, and shooting for future generations. This is a bipartisan issue. Both Presidents Clinton and Bush issued executive orders recognizing the value of these heritage activities. It is time we finally close the loopholes, firm up the language, and make sure that future generations will always be able to enjoy the outdoors, hunting, fishing, shooting, or just taking a walk in the woods. I encourage all my colleagues today to join me in supporting this piece of commonsense legislation.

Mr. BENISHEK

Mr. BENISHEK. Madam Chair, I rise today in support of H.R. 2406, the Sportsmen's Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act of 2015, or the SHARE Act. This legislation is vital in ensuring that Federal agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management can no longer continue to prevent or deny full access to Federal lands for activities like hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting. Access to public, Federal lands for these heritage activities is not only an important part of our shared American value, it is also a significant contributor to national, State, and local economies. In 2011, in the State of Michigan alone, over 1.9 million hunters and anglers spent over $4.8 billion in hunting and fishing. To put this in perspective, spending by sportsmen and -women in Michigan generates over $576 million in State and local taxes each year. That is enough to support the average salaries of over 10,000 police officers. Madam Chair, when I was a kid, my family owned a small hotel and bar. I worked by making beds, by filling ice buckets, and by hauling beer in order to save for college. Our business depended on hunters in the fall and winter and on fishermen in the summer. Without those sportsmen, we would have had no small business. There are small businesses like this all over northern Michigan and across America today. There are also grandparents, parents, and children all across the country who are excited for their next hunting and fishing adventures. That is why we must make sure that we do everything possible to ensure access to public lands for hunting, fishing, and recreational shooting for all Americans, including for future generations to come. Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support the SHARE Act.

Mr. BENISHEK

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate 2016 National Catholic Schools Week. Across the First District of Michigan, there are 22 Catholic schools providing a first rate education to over 4,100 students that combines faith with academic excellence. Since coming to Congress, it has been an honor to meet with students in Catholic schools across my district at St. Francis de Sales in Manistique, Manistee Catholic Central School in Manistee, and Menominee Catholic Central School in Menominee, among others. This year, the theme of National Catholic Schools Week is ``Catholic Schools: Communities of Faith, Knowledge, and Service.'' As a lifelong Catholic, former student, and frequent guest of schools across Northern Michigan, I know that the Catholic schools in our region are certainly living up to these goals. This year, Congress was blessed to hear from Pope Francis. Pope Francis has called on all Catholic schools to ``provide an education which teaches critical thinking and encourages the development of mature moral values.'' In light of this, I have signed onto House Resolution 35, a resolution that honors the contributions that Catholic schools have made to the United States and its people. I rise today in strong support of H. Res. 35, and urge my colleagues to support this resolution as well. Together, we must all recognize the significant contributions that Catholic schools have made to our country.

Mr. BENISHEK

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Chair, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1937, the National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act. Over the past several decades, our Nation has lagged far behind much of the world in the development and extraction of domestic mineral resources. Falling behind on this front has made our Nation dependent on foreign sources of many vital mineral resources that our economy and national defense need to continue functioning. Falling behind has also led to the loss of good-paying jobs throughout the country. We have seen this in my district in northern Michigan in the mines that have shut down and the mines that have not been permitted. There is a mine in the western part of my district that has been over 10 years in the permitting process and is still not near open. These jobs are critically needed in my district. The mines of the U.P. have served our country in times of need, providing many of the raw minerals that we have needed for national defense. If the resources that we have beneath our feet were needed today, these mines would have to go through a significant permitting process that would likely take almost 20 years. While I support making sure that we behave in an environmentally responsible manner, it is ridiculous that overly burdensome Federal regulations are keeping us from being competitive in the world economy. This bill will cut through some of the bureaucratic red tape that is holding our economy back, leading to a nation that is less dependent on foreign resources for vital natural resources and creating jobs. I urge all my colleagues to support the responsible development of our domestic natural resources and to vote in favor of this commonsense and long-overdue legislation.

Mr. BENISHEK

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Dusty Shultz, superintendent of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore upon the occasion of her retirement on November 2, 2015, after 42 years of service, including 14 years with the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in my district in Northern Michigan. Ms. Shultz has had a long and industrious career with the National Park Service. Ms. Shultz's interest in a career with the Park Service began early. Following an opportunity to attend an Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site near her home in Central Pennsylvania, Ms. Schultz remained in touch with contacts at the event and was hired by the service upon her high school graduation. After a long and distinguished career with the National Park Service, Ms. Shultz was appointed as Superintendent of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in August of 2001. Under her leadership, she worked with local residents, landowners, local communities, and the National Park Service to re-work the plans for the general management plan of the lakeshore. I was honored to work with all stakeholders, including Ms. Schultz, to pass legislation that codified the new general management plan that garnered tremendous support in our local communities. I was happy to sponsor the ``Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Conservation and Recreation Act,'' which was signed into law by President Obama on March 13, 2014. This legislation ensures that the park will remain both protected and accessible for generations to come. Ms. Schultz played a key role in ensuring that the balance of accessibility and conservation in the park was maintained, and stakeholders from around our local communities have praised her efforts. On behalf of all residents of Northern Michigan, I wish to salute Ms. Shultz for her many years of dedicated service to the National Park Service, and the citizens of the United States.

Mr. BENISHEK

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on the topic of preventing veteran suicide.

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize September as Suicide Prevention Month. I want to thank my colleague, Kyrsten Sinema, for joining me and putting together this Special Order hour. For the next hour, we will discuss an issue that is very important to me and should be unacceptable in a nation of our resources: veteran suicide. A veteran in this country commits suicide every 65 minutes. That is 22 lives extinguished every day. As the father of a veteran, a doctor who worked at a VA hospital in northern Michigan, and the chairman of the Health Subcommittee on Veterans' Affairs, I know that the challenges of military life do not end once our servicemembers retire from Active Duty. The mental wounds of war may be invisible, but they are no less real to the young men and women suffering from them. Facing high unemployment rates, the stigma of post-traumatic stress disorder, and a loss of military fellowship, returning veterans often face a crisis of confidence at the very moment they should feel nothing but relief and rest. Congress did make a real impact early this year when we passed the Clay Hunt SAV Act, which is helping the VA put the very best mental healthcare professionals to work for our veterans and creating peer support groups to help catch those transitioning servicemembers who may otherwise fall through the cracks. However, so much more needs to be done. I am grateful to my colleagues for standing with me today for our most vulnerable veterans and their families. I look forward to hearing what they have to say and to working with them to end veteran suicide. I yield to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Abraham).

Mr. BENISHEK. I yield to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Ms. Sinema).

Mr. BENISHEK. I thank the gentlewoman from Arizona (Ms. Sinema). I really appreciate your comments and your concern for this significant problem. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a moment to outline something that I have become aware of in my time here in office. While this problem is very monumental, there are many small things that the VA can do right now to make a difference. One of these changes can be made by the VA immediately. I would like to read a letter I received recently from an American Legion representative in my district that illustrates the problem better than I could. Dear Dr. Benishek: Here is the situation. Recently I encountered a suicidal veteran from the Sault area who had severe PTSD, 100 percent VA disabled. He called me on a Wednesday hysterical and said that he was contemplating suicide. He was traveling around with his wife in the car at the time. I thought this was a very dangerous situation. After several back-and-forth conversations with him, I found out he was not taking any medicines and had not seen his VA psychiatrist in a long time because, as he put it, the psychiatrist was not helping him and it seemed that he didn't really care. He insisted that he stay at Wilwin, the American Legion veterans facility, but I told him we needed his psychiatrist's okay. As a veteran myself, I thought I should try to help him the best that I could. So I called the VA Suicide Hotline to get answers on how I should handle the situation. Here's the problem. I called the Iron Mountain VA. The call started out saying, if you are having a medical or mental health emergency, please hang up and dial 911. If you are having thoughts of hurting yourself and want to talk to a mental health professional, please hang up and dial 1-800-273-8255. If you are thinking of committing suicide, you are already frustrated to the point that you would be glad to talk to anyone, even if it is someone at the VA. Can you imagine a veteran in this position even having a paper and pencil in hand to write the number down? If he is unable to get the correct number the first time, he must redial the VA, go through the whole spiel again and, hopefully, write the number on a paper the second or third time before he can try dialing. Once dialed, the voice comes on the phone and says, if you are a veteran push 1 and so on. When I called the hotline after I pushed 1, listened to music for several minutes before a voice came on the phone, she told me that she was not a veteran, nor did she know much about PTSD veterans. What I needed was advice on how to handle the veteran I was working with, which she did give me. How many veterans have committed suicide because of the VA's red tape? Here's a solution. When the VA is called and the veteran is contemplating suicide or hurting himself, you should be able to push 1 to get a direct line to the suicide hotline. It should automatically register that the call is coming through the VA system and, yes, it is a veteran calling. This constituent was able to get the veteran he referred to the help that he needed, but he raised an incredibly good point that I brought up repeatedly with the VA. The VA told me it would take 6 months to change from an 800 number to simply dial 1. This is unacceptable. I call on the VA again today to make this change immediately. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague from Nebraska (Mr. Ashford).

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Costello).

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague from Illinois (Mrs. Bustos).

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte).

Mr. BENISHEK. Thank you very much, Mrs. Walorski. I really appreciate your comments. I think Dr. Murphy brought up a good point when he was speaking. We just recently in this House passed the 21st Century Cures Act, H.R. 6. That has been endorsed by a wide variety of professional and medical organizations, such as the American Association for Cancer Research and The Cure Alliance. We passed this bill by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote of 344-77. This is a piece of legislation that is going to change the way we do research at the NIH, that is going to change health care for all Americans. There is no reason that we shouldn't be able to pass a mental health care bill similar to that with a wide bipartisan effort. Today Ms. Sinema and I are leading a bipartisan group of Members of Congress to make mental health care an issue on which to move forward, and it has really been a great way to get this started. I yield to Ms. Sinema if she would like to add a few more thoughts in that regard.

Mr. BENISHEK. I yield to my colleague from Michigan (Mrs. Dingell).

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, nearly 10 million Americans have serious mental illness, and millions go without proper treatment or care because our Nation's mental health system is broken not only for our veterans, but for our nonveterans as well. My next speaker is Dr. Tim Murphy from Pennsylvania, the author of the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, H.R. 2646. This will overhaul our Nation's mental healthcare system, adding grants for more psychiatrists, authorizing intervention programs, and fixing current nationwide shortages of crisis mental health beds. I yield to my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murphy).

Mr. BENISHEK. I would like to thank my colleague for his passion on this issue. I would now like to yield to my colleague from California (Mr. Peters).

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining?

Mr. BENISHEK. I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho).

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

Mr. BENISHEK. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cartwright).