After eight years on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, two of them is chairman. It is no understatement to say that Senator Sanders has truly taken care of wounded ill and injured veterans and their surviving family members. He has been a commanding voice against changing the coal calculations for disabled veterans, for the proper care and treatment of women veterans, for homeless veterans, for better employment opportunities and improved access to mental health programs, plus increased congressional oversight of the VA claims processing transformation. When the VA imploded last year, he was the lead negotiator for the Veterans Access Choice and Accountability Act, which the president signed into law last summer. The VA still has an uphill climb to fix what's broken to hold employees appropriately accountable and to restore the faith of veterans in their VA. But veterans everywhere should be proud and comforted to know that this member of Congress has their back. The VFW Congressional Award has been presented annually since 1964 to one sitting member of the House or Senate for significant legislative contributions on behalf of those who have worn the uniform. This award is extremely important to us because it recognizes that our military, our veterans and our families past and present have a champion in our corner on Capitol Hill. Please join me in honoring the recipient of the 2015 VFW Congressional Award Senator Bernie Sanders. Let me begin by thanking Commander Stroud and all of you for this extraordinary honor. This award means an enormous amount to me and I thank you very much for it. You know, when we think about human life, what life is about, then we think about sacrifices that people make. I think at the end of the day, it is hard to imagine anything more significant, anything more important, anything more courageous than when a man or a woman is prepared to put his or her life on the line and sometimes lose his or her life to defend our nation and other people. So I just want to thank the VFW as a great organization representing veterans and to thank all of you individually for what you have done for our country. And when we talk about the role of the government, the government which makes the Congress which makes those very important decisions on a given day saying we are going to send young men and women off to war knowing that some of them are never going to come home and some of them are going to come home wounded in body or wounded in spirit that we in the Congress have an awesome unwavering responsibility to say that if we send you off to war, we and the people of the United States of America have the moral responsibility to say that when you come home, we're going to do everything that we can to make sure that your life is as good as it could be. We have made real progress in lowering dealing with the embarrassment of veterans homelessness. We have a long way to go but we're making progress there. And last but not least in terms of our accomplishments as a result of work done in Congress post 9-11 veterans are now getting a very strong GI educational benefit. It is not acceptable to have veterans walking in to the VA or calling the VA and be put on waiting list week after week, month after month and worse even being lied to about their status. What we did is put $10 billion to making sure that veterans all over this country will get timely healthcare. If the VA can't take care of them, they'll be seen out in the private sector or someplace else, but veterans will get timely healthcare. Second area that we made progress in is that in many rural states, veterans have to travel hundreds and hundreds of miles to get to a VA facility that's wrong, that's unfair, and what we said if you live more than 40 miles away from a facility, you can go to a private physician. I think that's an important step forward. Thirdly, what we also did in that bill is something that I was very, very proud of. We talked to the gold star wives and what they had told us is that they could not gain, despite the loss of their husbands, gain the educational benefits that the GI bill, post-9-11 GI bill, provided, we took care of that in this legislation. And those wives are now getting the education that they are in private sector. By saying to the post-9-11 veterans, disabled veterans, that care givers, their care givers, wives, sisters, brothers, whoever, would be able to get some help. Being a caregiver is not an easy job. You're on that job 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you need support. And what we did as we said to the post-9-11 generation, we'll give you that support commander shroud. This morning made the point that that support should go to veterans of every generation and I strongly agree with it. We have a real crisis in this country in terms of dental care. A lot of people cannot get affordable dental care all over this country. And I believe that when you talk about health care, you should talk about dental care. Dental care should be part of VA health care. And I'm going to fight to make that happen. The country faces financial problems. You all know that. We have a large deficit and a very large national debt. And I know that I speak for the American people. We just have to make sure that we speak for the people here in Washington, Congress. But I speak for the American people who say that we are not going to balance the budget on the backs of veterans and people who put their lives on the line to defend our country. So thank you. Thank you all for your service and your sacrifice and your personal lives. And thank you all very much for what your great organization is doing to protect veterans. Thank you.