Bob Filner

Mr. FILNER

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I want to just thank the gentleman for his comments, but also to thank the gentleman for holding a series of meetings across his district in El Paso. I was able to attend a town hall meeting with him. Representatives of the 60,000 veterans that he has in his district were there. I would just say to the chairman, and I am sure he is aware of this, the veterans that I represent in San Diego, the veterans that the gentleman represents in El Paso, and I am sure that the gentleman represents in Syracuse, all of them are frustrated. They do not understand how we can have this surplus and talk about these tax cuts, yet they walk into the VA and they are told that this specialist does not exist, or they have to wait 8 months for that appointment, or they cannot get honors at this funeral, or their family member has to be released even though they have Alzheimer's, and on and on and on. I would just say that this frustration is going to break out and come back at all of us unless we can find a way to adequately fund these programs.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FILNER. Again, Mr. Chairman, this is one of a series of amendments to show how we are underfunding our veterans in this Nation. This one specifically asks for $9.5 million to reduce the repair backlog at veterans national cemeteries. I know the chairman will say that the Department is authorized to do that, that we have plussed up the money, that we have put in the biggest money in the history of our Congress. The fact remains, Mr. Chairman, that while that could be said about any one item that I bring up today, the sum total of all the items that are in this budget that was prepared by our veterans organization, the independent budget, we simply cannot fund all of those with the present funding. We need another $1.5 billion or so to do that. While any individual item I may bring up can be handled within the appropriation, all of the needs our veterans have cannot be. Over the years the national cemetery system has struggled to maintain the appearance of our 115 national cemeteries, but budget shortfalls in the past have forced the system to address only the highest priority projects. As a result, preventative maintenance and infrastructure repairs have been neglected. Broken sprinkler systems, for example, which result in parched and dead grass and sunken graves which have not been reinforced contribute to an appearance of neglect in many cemeteries. This is not a way to treat the memory of our veterans. Some cemeteries have not had the funds to repair badly cracked walkways, and they are actually hazardous to the many older people visiting the grave of a loved one. Backhoes and other important equipment stand idle because funding is not available for repairs. Families must postpone funerals, they must postpone funerals, Mr. Chairman, because the equipment required cannot even be used. National cemeteries are hallowed ground. They must be properly maintained if they are to look like the national shrines that all Americans consider they should be. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is to plus up funds specifically to maintain our cemeteries. I know this amendment will be challenged on a point of order and will be sustained. I would hope that the veterans of this country would understand that on technicalities this Congress is being prevented from funding urgent needs for our Nation's veterans.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentleman, who knows full well that the needs of the VA are far in excess of the money we granted to them, they have had to prepare for layoffs; have had to prepare possibly for closure of hospitals. There is not sufficient money within the budget to treat all of the different areas that we want to do. You can play off any one I bring up and say, Oh, we have the money to do that, but you do not have enough money do all the things that veterans need in this budget. I would just say again to the Chair, who, again, maybe rightfully says this is the biggest increase in history, it presupposes the biggest decrease in history over the next 10 years and is based on, under the Congress, of which his party is a majority, the biggest decrease over the last 8 years or so in real spending in the VA.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, speaking to the point of order, I understand the arguments of the gentleman. The department is authorized to move people around. It is authorized to put people in different positions. But the fact of the matter is, there are not sufficient funds that would allow them to put money into one area without taking it from another area. If you drop the backlog of one, you hurt healthcare somewhere else, so we are robbing Peter to pay Paul in this issue. We need more money. I know the gentleman agrees with me that we need more money. If only we could get through these technicalities, we could provide the money. Our veterans do not understand with a $1 trillion surplus why we do not have $6 million to put in to improve the backlog.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, again, this is one of a series of amendments that shows specifically where we are underfunding the VA budget for the fiscal year 2000. I think any of us who have talked to veterans during the recent recess period, town hall meetings and tours of VA facilities, have constantly heard the complaint that our veterans are prevented from knowing about the adjudication of their claims for month after month after month after month after month. Six, 8, 12 months go by, maybe even 1 or 2 years, and if a process has to be appealed, it can go even longer. The independent budget of the veterans organizations of this country proposed that an additional 250 positions dedicated to reduce the backlog and waiting time for the adjudication of these claims was absolutely necessary. Mr. Chairman, we have an emergency situation amongst our veterans. These are the folks who fought for us, who have given us our freedom, given us our liberty, and we make them wait 1 year, 2 years, even longer, to find out whether their claims for disability or other such legal situations will be in fact granted to them. I think this is an emergency situation which would allow us to put in the $6.25 million that we need for this situation. Point of Order

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleagues for their patience in dealing with these amendments. Mr. Chairman, once again we have a situation which is an emergency dealing with veterans of World War II who are in their late seventies and early eighties and do not have long to live if we are going to recognize their service in World War II. I would preempt the advice from my distinguished friend from New York who said this should be authorized by our committee. Again, the chairman of the committee would not allow this particular amendment to come before our committee, so the process breaks down in a circular sort of argument. When you advise me to get authorization, the authorizing committee says we will not take it up, so we have to come here to the floor. We have a situation, Mr. Chairman, where there are approximately 75,000 living veterans of World War II, who happen to be two-thirds of them Filipino in nationality, one-third Filipino in ethnic origin but U.S. citizens. These veterans of World War II fought as brave soldiers and helped us win the war in the Pacific. After being drafted by President Roosevelt, they fought side by side with us in the battles of Corregidor and Bataan, and many marched to their death in the famous Bataan death march. We rewarded this service to the United States as a Congress in 1946 by taking away all of the veterans benefits that had been promised and due them. For 52 years now, 53 years, this really dishonorable and immoral action by an earlier Congress has clouded our relationships with the Philippines and has made sure that we have a body of people who are rightfully claiming that their grievance be redressed. My amendment would go partway toward restoring benefits to these heroic veterans of World War II. Whereas veterans are entitled to, under conditions that are given by law, certain pensions and certain medical care, this amendment gives medical care to those Filipino soldiers who fought alongside Americans. It would make available monies for care in this country and a small portion for our VA clinic in Manila, which serves U.S. citizens there. What we are saying in this amendment is that the honor and bravery of veterans of World War II be recognized finally by the Congress, 53 years after they were taken away. I would ask again this body to say let us recognize the bravery of our allies in World War II, our Filipinos who we drafted, and provide with them the eligibility for benefits, healthcare benefits, that are given to U.S. soldiers of the same war.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, out of respect for the courtesy offered by the Chair I will be very brief and point out that the $4.6 million included in this amendment goes to establish parity for the dentists who are employed by the VA, parity with physicians. I embody this amendment in legislation which I called: ``put your money where your mouth is.'' That is that we ought to be funding dentistry where we have an enormous recruitment and retention problem parity with physicians. Over the past 5 years, in fact, VA has experienced a decline of dentists from 830 to 677, and the turnover rate in the last 2 years has been over 11 percent. Young and mid-career dentists are leaving the VA in increasing numbers, and there are fewer higher qualified applicants available to fill these positions. We must, I think, establish parity and make sure that dentists in the VA system are given the same pay respect that physicians are. Point of Order

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FILNER. In response to my good friend from New York, Mr. Chairman, the advice that he gave me is good advice. In fact, the Democrats on the Committee on Veterans Affairs tried to offer a budget which included these items. Not only did we not fail on that vote, we were not permitted a vote by the chairman of that committee, and as the budget rules point out, unless the budget that is accepted by the Committee on the Budget includes these items, the authorizing committee cannot later add them. So the gentleman's advice is good. I wish the chairman of the authorizing committee had allowed us to have a vote on these issues so we could include them in the budget, and now I am asking for an emergency designation to make sure that we keep our commitment to our Nation's veterans.

Mr. FILNER. Again, Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for courtesy, for discussions of these issues. Mr. Chairman, this is another in a series of amendments that I am offering this evening to show that the veterans health budget and the Veterans Administration budget in general is greatly underfunded. We have a chance in this Congress to fund adequately what veterans need. We know what that figure is. All the veterans organizations of this Nation came together to recommend to us what they call the independent budget, a budget that recommended $3 billion more than the baseline we have been dealing with. The President's budget that was submitted to this Congress was inadequate. It was $3 billion under what this recommendation was as it kept a straight-line budget. The budget, as recommended by this committee, does put in an additional 1.7 billion but that is only 50 percent of what all the veterans organizations say they need, and I might point out, Mr. Chairman, that that 1.7 billion increase presupposes about a $3 billion decrease for veterans programs over the next 10 years. So what we see here is the biggest cut in veterans funding over a long period of time. Now we have argued on this side of the aisle for additional funding that would do some things for our Nation's veterans that just will not be able to be handled if this budget goes through. We will not be able to have care for veterans who are involved in radiation risk activities and subsequently develop cancer. We will not have funding to increase long-term care programs for our aging veterans. We will not have funding to restore the VA psychiatric wards and an increase in mental illness research education. We will not have funding to keep Alzheimer's veterans in hospitals. We will not be able to treat the Persian Gulf war veterans who have come down, tens of thousands of them, with an unexplained illness; and, Mr. Chairman, we will not have the money as this amendment will try to correct to fund new health care initiatives for veterans suffering from hepatitis C-related illness. Now this is a new situation, Mr. Chairman, and is why I have designated this funding as emergency. Hepatitis C is a disease which was only recently identified by reliable laboratory tests. So in the past, there has been no way to diagnose it at the time when veterans became infected. This infection may not have produced any symptoms or mild ones similar to a flu at the time of service to our country. The virus hides latent in the body for many years and may not show up for 20 or 40 more years after the initial infection. Veterans at a particular risk for the disease include those who received blood or blood products prior to 1992 and veterans who worked in health care occupations are exposed to blood in combat situations. Veterans who were infected many years ago are now showing symptoms of the disease, and too often this disease, Mr. Chairman, is fatal. A fatal disease, hepatitis C, is now known to infect hundreds if not thousands of our veterans, and we do not put the money in for this program. Mr. Chairman, my amendment would say that we have an emergency medical situation, that we should fund $3 million to provide funding for service- and presumed service-connection for veterans who are exposed to hepatitis C and make sure that we treat our veterans with the respect and commitment that we should. Mr. Chairman, I know this amendment has been challenged by point of order. I assume that that challenge will be upheld by the Chair. At some point in the evening I will, as the Chairman knows, challenge the Chairman's interpretation of these points of order, but I am hoping that this Congress will not on a technicality, because we know we legislate on appropriation items all through the course of this process, will not on a technicality refuse the refunding for veterans who have hepatitis C and face death unless we come to their aid. Point of Order

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) for offering this amendment. It shows clearly that this Congress is playing off the needs of the veterans against the politics of tax cuts for those who least need them. That has been made very clear. Now, we do not have any misunderstanding about what is going to happen to the gentleman's amendment. It is going to be ruled out of order on a technicality and the veterans all over this Nation should know that this Congress on a technicality will not pass additional funds for veterans health care.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FILNER. If I may reply just briefly, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I assume that legislating in the appropriations bill refers to making this an emergency designation. I would just point out to the gentleman from California (Chairman Walsh) that is exactly what he would have asked the Committee on Rules to support had his subcommittee prevailed in those considerations for emergency designation.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member for the time. Mr. Chairman, I am going to vote against this bill because it seriously underfunds our commitment to our veterans. The gentleman from my hometown of San Diego, California (Mr. Cunningham) said we ought to fund our Nation's veterans, but we cannot. We cannot because of this agreement we made a couple years ago. The subcommittee saw that as a problem and asked the full committee for an emergency designation for which it could receive an extra $3 billion for our veterans. They were overruled. I think the chairman was right. It is an emergency situation to fund our veterans. We are not keeping our commitment that we made to them. This must be classified as an emergency today. Providing veterans health care is emergency. The VA health system is drastically underfunded and in danger of actual collapse. The national cemeteries that we should pride ourselves on are also facing disaster. We are releasing our veterans from the hospitals with Alzheimer's disease. We have serious illnesses that were contracted either in Vietnam or the Persian Gulf that are not getting adequate treatment. Mr. Chairman, this is an emergency. Now when we say we ought to put more money in the budget, my friends on the majority side say well the President underfunded the veterans in his proposal. Yes, he did. I agree with that; underfunded by $3 billion. But remember this is not the President's budget. This is a congressional budget. It is our responsibility, and we underfund veterans by at least a billion and a half. Mr. Chairman, the veterans organizations of this Nation, all of them, combine to come up with what they thought was a reasonable amount to keep our VA health system going. They said $3.2 billion additional. This budget underfunds that by a billion and a half. We need that money, and it is an emergency. Let us put more money in for our veterans, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, speaking on the point of order, Mr. Chairman, I say to my friend, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Walsh), I want to legislate on this appropriations bill. We were not allowed to do any legislation in our authorizing committee. The Chair just refused to allow motions from the minority side. The gentleman says we have real dollars for our $1.7 billion. I am asking for real dollars here. We have it in our command. It is being given to people, special interests, in the utility industry. It is being given to special interests for multinational corporations. It is being given to those who make $200,000 or more a year. Why not give a billion to the veterans who made our country as great as it is? So we have the real dollars, Mr. Chairman, and we should legislate on this appropriations bill, and I hope the Chair would find in our favor.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. FILNER

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the veterans of San Diego, California, I rise in opposition to this rule. Mr. Speaker, this bill simply does not address the emergency our veterans are facing. Keeping the promises that we made to our veterans is an emergency; providing veterans health care is an emergency. It is vital to improve the Montgomery G.I. Education bill, reducing incredible backlog in claims, provide care to those facing illness of unknown causes from the Persian Gulf War. Not only has this bill failed to address these critical needs, it has compounded this emergency situation by approving hundreds of dollars of individual congressional projects, most of which pale in importance to the health care of our veterans. So our veterans can wait months for a doctor's appointment, die from hepatitis C because care is being rationed, live on the streets because there are no services to help them get back into productive lives. But this bill answers these needs by putting $1 million into a machine to grow plants in space and a half million dollars into improving paints for ship bottoms. Well, improve my ship bottom. Defeat this rule.

Mr. FILNER

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell) and thank him for his recognition that legal residents in our country have human and constitutional rights. As his amendment shows, many changes to our Nation's immigration laws in 1996 have proven to be anti-American, denying those living in the United States the right to due process and judicial review of their cases. Remember, we are talking about legal immigrants, many who have been in the United States for most of their lives and are the primary bread winners for their families. They are denied due process, denied bail, and cannot even see the evidence in many cases with which they are accused. We are deporting as criminals thousands of legal residents who committed minor crimes 20 or 30 years ago, served their sentences or probations and have become hard-working taxpayers, men and women with families. They are being ripped from those families, their children, their jobs, their businesses, and held without bail. This is not what America should be, Mr. Chairman. I support this amendment to reinstate a little bit of sunshine into our deportation process. This House needs to go further and reverse many of the unintended consequences of so-called immigration reform bills of 1996.

Mr. FILNER

Mr. FILNER. Mr. Speaker, and colleagues, I rise in support of the Veterans' Millennium Health Care Act. This bill improves the VA health care system in many ways--it will extend long term care and emergency care services--provide sexual trauma counseling--and will give the VA access to a portion, if funds are recovered from tobacco companies, to compromise for its costs of tobacco-related illnesses. I am especially pleased that this legislation ensures that the Veterans Administration (VA) will work with licensed doctors of chiropractic care to develop a policy to provide veterans with access to chiropractic services. Even though chiropractic is the most widespread of the complementary approaches to medicine in the United States, serving roughly 27 million patients--and even though Congress has recognized chiropractic care in the other areas of the federal health care system (Medicare, Medicaid, and federal workers compensation), VA has chosen not to make chiropractic routinely available to veterans. This bill changes that! As a Member representing a portion of San Diego County, I am also pleased that H.R. 2116 includes a biomedical research facility for the VA San Diego Healthcare System to accommodate current and pending research programs on diabetes, immunology, hypertension, Parkinson's Disease, AIDS, and memory. I encourage my colleagues to support and vote in favor of the Veterans' Millennium Health Care Act.