Patty Murray

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. I yield to the ranking member on the Veterans Committee, the Senator from Hawaii.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators Conrad and Mikulski be added as cosponsors to the original amendment.

Mrs. MURRAY. I ask unanimous consent to be added as a cosponsor as well.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I know there are a number of other Senators who would like to speak. Certainly, I would like to yield to the Senator from West Virginia. Let me say, again, that I appreciate my colleagues on the other side of the aisle for coming together with us right before the Fourth of July recess. I can't think of a better time for all of us to send an American issue forward and to stand up for our vets. I thank them for working with us.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, we are about to vote on the Murray amendment, as amended. I remind all of our colleagues, this has been a long road in coming to get to the point today where we stand as a united body to make sure we provide the funds for our veterans that are needed in this coming fiscal year. As I said when we ended this debate, this is not a Republican issue; this is not a Democratic issue; this is an American issue. It is the right thing to do as we head into the Fourth of July recess to know that we are providing the funds in an emergency supplemental to make sure none of our members in the service from prior conflicts or the wars today who are coming home will be denied the services they have been promised. This is a proud moment for the Senate. I want to work with my colleagues now to make sure the House and the White House work with us to expeditiously get these funds in place for our veterans. I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY. I ask that Senator Corzine be added as a cosponsor to the Murray amendment, as well.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, as we wind up the debate, it would be easy for me to stand here on the floor of the Senate--after months of saying we need to address this issue, we need an emergency supplemental and we are finally here--to say I told you so. But that is not how I feel right now. What I am thinking about at this point is my own father, who was a veteran of World War II, one of the first soldiers into Okinawa, who was injured, sent to Hawaii, was in the hospital there for 3 months, and he went back to serve in Okinawa again and then was in a wheelchair for most of my life before he passed away. I am thinking of the men and women in the veterans' hospital in Seattle WA, back in 1972 when I was a senior in college and I volunteered at the veterans' hospital there during the Vietnam war, working on the psychiatric ward with young men and women my age who were returning from Vietnam and understanding what they were going through, and then going back onto the street and the public not aware of the sacrifice of these soldiers. I am thinking of the young men and women I recently met in Iraq serving us today, who were asking us: Will my country be there for me? I can assure you none of those soldiers were saying: Will the Republicans be there for me? Will the Democrats be there for me? They were asking: Will we, as Americans, be there for them? With Democrats and Republicans alike just about to vote for this amendment--that will make the underlying amendment $1.5 billion with the amendment of the Senator from Pennsylvania--what we can say is that this Senate stands in full support of our soldiers, from previous conflicts as well as the ones who are serving us today. I think that is a powerful message and one of which I am very proud. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY. We will shortly vote on the Santorum amendment, then the Murray amendment, as amended. I urge all of my colleagues to support both amendments.

Mrs. MURRAY. The Senator from Colorado is here and would like to make a statement. I ask if he could use 3 minutes, and I can use the remaining time.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. I thank the chairman and ranking member, and appreciate the suggestion that we clarify this in the conference report accompanying H.R. 2361, so that the report will read ``Mt Baker- Snoqualmie National Forest--I-90 Corridor'' in the State of Washington.

Mrs. MURRAY. The project called ``I-90 Corridor'' is listed in the committee report as being in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. The parcels that are designated for acquisition by the Forest Service in FY 2006 are actually located in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest. I ask the Chairman and Senator Dorgan if that is their understanding as well?

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I engage the Senator from Montana, the distinguished subcommittee Chairman, and the Senator from North Dakota, the distinguished subcommittee ranking member, in a brief colloquy to clarify the location of the Forest Service land acquisition project listed as the ``I-90 Corridor'' on page 87 of the committee report.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask for the regular order.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.

Mrs. MURRAY. Will the Senator yield?

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to speak to amendment No. 1052, an amendment offered by myself, Senator Byrd, and Senator Feinstein regarding emergency supplemental funding for the Veterans Health Administration. As my colleagues know, throughout the last 6 months I have been talking to this body about my deep concern that we were not going to have sufficient funding for our veterans, both our current veterans who are accessing the system, nor for our veterans who are now returning home in record numbers from Iraq and Afghanistan. Throughout the budget process, I asked that we consider making sure we have additional funding. I was rejected in that request. Throughout the appropriations process, I have made it known time and time again that looking at what we know, we are not going to have sufficient funding for our veterans health care. On the supplemental emergency bill, I offered an amendment to add an additional $1.98 billion for veterans services, and I outlined on this floor for all of my colleagues the exact numbers we were looking at as we went out and talked to our regional veterans administrations, as we heard the stories of shortfalls in every single place across this country, about service men and women who are waiting in line, about the high number of returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan who would need access to mental health care services for post-traumatic stress syndrome, and I asked that we add emergency supplemental funding because I knew, looking at the numbers, we had a shortfall. On this floor, I was defeated on that amendment. Why? Because the Secretary of the VA, Secretary Nicholson, sent a letter to this body saying they had sufficient funds. That was less than 3 months ago. Several weeks ago in the Veterans' Committee I asked the Secretary, when he was before us, if they had sufficient funding, and he told us they had adequate funding. Last Thursday, to everyone's surprise, except a few of us, we were told that the VA is now over $1 billion short in funding this year. This is surprising to some, but it should be appalling to all of us. As I told my colleagues when I was on the floor talking about the supplemental, we all know that the veterans in VA care have gone up by 88 percent. We know that medical inflation has gone up 92 percent. But the VA continued to go on a formula based on 2002 figures that did not adequately take into account our military who were going to be accessing the veterans services, nor the fact that we all know of medical inflation. So here we are today, and it would be easy to say I told you so, but that is not going to solve the problem. So last Thursday, I called Secretary Nicholson. I said: How are you going to solve this problem? What are we going to do? Well, he said to me that we were going to take the money out of maintenance and construction projects. I would let every one of my colleagues know that all of them have VA facilities in their own States or in their own region that are serving our veterans today that need asbestos removal. There are new clinics that have been promised for years. There is maintenance due, long-term backlogs that have not been completed that we voted on in the 2005 appropriations bill and promised to our men and women back in our home States would be taken care of this year. We cannot go back on that promise right now. Those veterans are waiting for that service. If we were to say, well, we have to suck it up and take the money out, that means we are just going to defer those costs until next year. If we are today basing our figures of the VA on 2002 numbers, then we know the $1.5 billion we are short this year is going to be multiplied by two or three times next year and those facilities will not be fixed. So we have a problem. We have a big problem, and we need to address it now. I believe the best and most important way we can do that quickly is through an emergency supplemental bill passed through the House and Senate to get the VA the money they need to serve our veterans. This is an emergency. None of our veterans who served in previous conflicts should be told that they have to wait 6 months or a year or 3 years. None of our veterans who are being served in our hospitals today should be looking at facilities that are falling down around them. None of our veterans who are coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan should be told that they do not have adequate care and we are not there for them. I was just in Iraq 2 months ago and the first question that my soldiers from Washington State asked me is: Will my country be there for me when I get home? The Senate has been responsible by passing a bill last year to begin to put in place those contracts, maintenance, and important facilities projections. We cannot take that away now. Our only responsible choice remaining is to pass an emergency supplemental. I have to say I am deeply concerned about how our VA came to this, and I am frankly quite angry. Less than 3 months ago, our VA said, no problem. Our VA, 2-plus weeks ago, said no problem, and now they tell us they are well over a billion dollars short this year. In fact, what they are saying is we can fix that; we can take $600 million from construction, as I just talked about. We cannot let them do that. The other $400 million they are talking about coming up out of a reserve fund. I have been on this floor before talking about this. There is not a reserve fund. I asked Dr. Jonathan Perlin. He is the VA's Acting Under Secretary for Health. I asked him on April 5th: Is there a $500 million reserve? He said to me: No . . . I do not know where that might have been suggested, but there is no $500 million reserve that is sitting there for future projects. So the White House's solution, the VA's solution, to take $600 million from construction and $500 million from this reserve account does not exist. Those are already part of our appropriations and there is no reserve account. So it is time for us to be responsible. It is time for us to face up to the fact that we have not been given accurate figures from this administration on veterans, and we need to act responsibly to pass an emergency supplemental. I want to say that Senator Craig, the chair of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and Senator Hutchison, the chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies, have been responsible in the last few days by addressing this crisis. We have held a hearing this morning under Senator Craig's direction to hear from the VA what their solution was. As I have said, that is simply unacceptable to me. It should be unacceptable to this Senate. I want to work with anyone to solve this problem. We have an amendment that is now pending. It is amendment No. 1052 to have an emergency supplemental to deal with this crisis. I know that my colleagues on the other side feel that we must address this as well, and I hope that we can work this amendment out and get it passed on the Interior appropriations, get it passed through the House and sent to the President so that our members who are serving us, both in previous conflicts and in Iraq and Afghanistan today, can look any one of us in the eye on the Fourth of July recess, when we all go home to march in parades and carry our flags, and we can say, yes, this country is there for you. I can think of no more important issue that this body should address before the upcoming recess than this pending crisis before us. We owe it to the troops who have served us so honorably to be there for them when they come home. We cannot say to them that your clinics will not be built, that your hospitals will not be maintained, that there is a hiring freeze and you will not be seen if you show up. We all have talked to generals who are in Iraq, and every member of this body knows that this is a 360-degree war. We have been told that time and time again. Our members in the military who are serving us in Iraq and Afghanistan do not have a front line to go behind to get some ease from this conflict. They are in this conflict every single minute of every single day that they are there, and as a result of that many of them will be facing emotional stress and post-traumatic stress syndrome when they get home. It would be wrong of this country to tell those members who served us so well that there are no services for them when they come home. We have a responsibility not as a Republican, not as a Democrat, but as an American to be there for them. The most responsible way to do this is through this amendment with an emergency supplemental. I think who said it best was George Washington back in 1789: The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their country. I urge my colleagues to adopt this emergency supplemental funding, get it to the House, and get it to the White House so that we can address this crisis that has come before us. We can say a lot of stuff about the VA and why the numbers were wrong and why what we knew on this floor were not listened to and were not told to us honestly. We can spend time doing that, but I think the most important thing we can do is make sure this funding is there for our soldiers, and we do it through an emergency supplemental in a responsible way. The President is going to address the Nation this evening. He is going to talk to us about the importance of staying the course in Iraq. Well, I would say to the President and to the Members of the Senate, when we send our troops to war, part of the cost of that is making sure we are there for them when they come home. I urge the President, when he addresses the Nation tonight, to tell us how this administration is going to be there for our soldiers when they return and work with us to pass this emergency supplemental as expeditiously as possible. I yield the floor.

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I will ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment at the appropriate time.

Mrs. MURRAY. I wanted to ask if the Senator was aware that when our amendment was offered on the supplemental, Senators on this floor were told by the VA that they didn't need the funding. And last Thursday, the VA announced that they were indeed well over $1 billion short for this fiscal year alone for VA funding. That is why I needed to offer this amendment on this bill, and hopefully the Senate will pass it. I hope it will pass unanimously tomorrow. Is the Senator from North Dakota aware that is the situation we are now in?

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise to speak briefly on the pending amendment No. 1052, which is the emergency supplemental funding for the veterans services which I spoke about earlier. I thank my colleagues, Senators Akaka and Kerry, for their remarks. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to add the following Senators to our amendment as cosponsors: Senators Jeffords, Salazar, Bill Nelson, Dayton, Rockefeller, and Harkin.

Mrs. MURRAY. I was asking if the Senator from North Dakota was aware that during the consideration of the emergency supplemental, when we offered our amendment, we were told by the administration they didn't need the funding. And then last Thursday they announced that they were, indeed, as we had warned, well over $1 billion short. That is why we are offering this amendment.

Mrs. MURRAY. Thank you, Mr. President.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, 15 minutes.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I would like to express my support for a provision in this energy legislation that provides relief for Washington State ratepayers who suffered from Enron's market manipulation schemes. All of us from the West Coast remember the energy crisis of 2001, when consumers and businesses were hit with massive increases in the cost of energy. Many in California faced shortages and brownouts. In Washington State, we felt the impact as well. Washington State ratepayers have been continually penalized for failures in the energy market and failures by Federal energy regulators. While there were many causes for the energy crisis, the most disturbing is the fact that energy companies, such as Enron, manipulated the marketplace to take advantage of consumers. As we saw throughout the crisis, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission did not take aggressive action to protect consumers from market manipulation. In fact, over the last several years, as we in the West have sought to clean up the mess that these companies left in their wake, FERC has continued to drag its regulatory feet. For more than 3 years, many of us in the Northwest delegation have been urging FERC to better protect consumers, and provide relief to ratepayers affected by market manipulation. At the height of the 2001 energy crisis, FERC was urging companies to enter into long-term contracts at highly-inflated rates, advice which many Northwest companies followed. In 2003, FERC found that market manipulation occurred during the 2001 energy crisis, but indicated it would be unlikely that Washington State ratepayers would be reimbursed for the harm caused by the manipulation. When Western utilities--including Snohomish PUD, which was hit particularly hard--terminated their contracts with Enron, Enron turned around and sued them for ``termination payments.'' It was very disturbing for all of us to see FERC agree that there was manipulation, but leave Washington ratepayers holding the bag--with no relief--for the harm they experienced in 2001 and continue to experience today. I am pleased that this energy legislation addresses this important issue by giving FERC exclusive jurisdiction to determine whether termination payments are required under certain power contracts are unjust and unreasonable. This is wonderful news for Washington State ratepayers because of a March 2005 order, in which FERC found Enron in violation of its market- based authority at the time Snohomish PUD signed its power contract. This provision ensures Snohomish PUD's ratepayers will not be required to pay the now-bankrupt Enron for power the region did not receive. Mr. President, I support this provision as it will protect Northwest ratepayers and give FERC more tools to better police the energy market.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, today I cast a vote for the McCain- Lieberman climate stewardship and innovation amendment to H.R. 6. My vote is a statement on the need for the United States to take action to address global climate change in a real and proactive manner. The authors of the amendment have recently added provisions related to nuclear power. I don't agree that these two policy issues should be linked, but it was my colleagues' option. The real message and point of this amendment remains that the United States needs to acknowledge and rapidly begin addressing global climate change. Voluntary measures are constructive but not good enough. We cannot afford to sit back and indulge those who choose against making reductions in harmful emissions at the expense of those who do. Scientific evidence shows that global warming poses a real threat to the Pacific Northwest environment, way of life, and economy. As the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, we should lead by example and innovation. We should not wait for other countries to lead on this important priority. We should seek and promote technologies that promote energy efficiency and make significant cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, as the climate stewardship and innovation amendment would have us do. Mr. President, I support this amendment because it commits the United States to a mandatory program that makes real cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. This amendment will make our country, and the entire globe, a safer, cleaner place.

Mrs. MURRAY

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Mr. Andrew Ivy, an exceptional history teacher and role model from Kirkland, WA. Mr. Ivy has been named Teacher of the Year by the Richard T. Farrell Teacher of Merit Award for outstanding success in teaching history. This national award is presented every year to an educator who develops and uses innovative and creative teaching methods that interest students in history and help them make exciting discoveries about the past. As a teacher at International Community School in Kirkland, WA, Mr. Ivy has shown exemplary commitment to making history education engaging and exciting, while involving his students in the National History Day Program. National History Day is a yearlong program in which students explore historical topics related to an annual theme. Participants qualify for national competition after competing in several local and State competitions. In preparing his students for the program, Mr. Ivy's work ethic and research skills provided students with the tools necessary to be successful in competition. Teachers like Mr. Ivy play an important role in education. By teaching about the nations past they keep our history a part of our current lives. When children question, and discuss our history, teachers are doing something profoundly patriotic; they are helping students understand who we are as a nation--the importance of our common heritage and the values that make us unique. Andrew Ivy has proven exceptional. His drive to offer his students the best education possible has led him to invest a great deal of personal study in his curriculum. He regularly attends training classes to ensure that the material he teaches is accurate and current. Additionally, Mr. Ivy often tries new approaches to his teaching method in order to keep his classroom interested and challenged. His curriculum often changes to meet his very own high standards and his students greatly benefit from all of his efforts. Mr. President, I find it heartening that there are educators in this country who devote so much time and effort to shaping the minds of our young people. I hope you and our colleagues will join me in recognizing Mr. Andrew Ivy for his dedication to educating the potential leaders of tomorrow.