Date: 2004-03-24
Speaker: GINNY BROWN-WAITE (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Flor

ida. Mr. Chairman. I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman. when I could go home on the weekends and get away from Washington. D.C.. where the lobbyists have all the Gucci loafers and the couple of thousanddollar suits and get home with the real people. what the people back home are saying is. "Ginny. work on cutting the deficit. protect our homeland. and be sure that our military. our brave young men and women who are fighting the war against terrorism. are adequately funded." And then they add a p.s. and the p.s. says. "And dont forget to adequately fund veterans health care." In Florida. we have a huge number of veterans. I have a great debate going whether I have the second or third largest number of veterans in my district. But I can just tell you that it is a huge number of veterans. approaching about 300.000. Taking care of the veterans and veterans health care while meeting all of the other needs that the constituents tell me back home are important to them is something that we were able to accomplish in this budget. I actually think that the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman NUSSLE) deserves like nine stars up there. or ten stars. He and the Committee on the Budget have done a great job. We have increased funding for the Department of Defense. we have increased funding for homeland security. and in the committee we actually increased veterans health care funding. The chairman raised his mark by $1 billion. and I added in another $200 million. which meets the amount that the Secretary says that he needs. When I was in the Florida senate. we cut department budgets left and right. We told them. go back and cut your request. We are adequately meeting the needs of veterans. according to Secretary Principi. When we had a vote on the budget that increased veterans health care funding by the amount that the Secretary said he needed. because I grilled him in a previous committee. when we had that vote. guess what? The other side voted against the budget. I was not here when Congress increased eligibility for veterans health care. As a result. as this chart shows. the number of veterans using VA medical care has increased from 2.5 million in 1995 to 4.7 million today. and is certainly growing. The next chart shows that also since 1995. total spending on veterans medical care has increased from $16.2 billion to $28.3 billion. Mr. Chairman. let me remind you that this has been since the Republicans have been in control. You can see the large increases as shown in the yellow bars. This is a 75.2 percent increase. where the Republicans have made sure that veterans health care and the mandatory programs are adequately funded. This chart just shows the veterans medical care increases. When the Secretary took over. he had long waiting lines in many of the communitybased outpatient clinics. He worked to whittle them down. He worked to reduce the amount of time that it takes for a VA disability claim. He made that a priority. They put additional people on. There is still a waiting list. but we funded them to the point where they have reduced the waiting list by more than 50 percent. and we are continuing to work very. very hard to make sure that veterans funding is there for the VA.