“Saturday is the eleventh day of the eleventh month – a date set aside by our grateful nation in honor of those who have served our country in uniform.  We call it Veterans Day.

 

Today, veterans are a wide cross-section of the population.  They are young and old, men and women, combat and non-combat.  They have served at home and abroad with courage and distinction, in China, India, Burma; at Normandy; in Vietnam and Korean; in peacetime Germany, Japan and throughout Europe; in Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan; along the U.S. Gulf Coast and pretty much everywhere in between.

 

And when our veterans return home from duty, they continue to serve, through veterans groups, community organizations, in business and as valued members of their families. 

 

Congress has a year-round responsibility to reflect the pride and appreciation we feel for our veterans on this day.  The staff of our veterans affairs departments, our veterans health care services, and our military branches work hard every day to provide the services and care our veterans have earned and deserve.  Still, it is an appropriate time to revisit some of the things our federal government is working on to ensure we are taking care of the men and women who have taken care of us.

 

For starters, next year’s funding for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been passed by the House of Representatives at $77 billion.  Within that amount, important funding for veterans medical care will be raised 16 percent over this year’s amount, up nearly $2.7 billion.  And a long-overdue component of veterans health care funding – money for veterans mental care – is set to be raised by 6.3 percent.

 

We are also tacking the real-life issues veterans face outside of health care.  Congress has increased Montgomery G.I. Bill educational benefits to veterans by 59 percent over 2001 levels.  We have passed legislation to increase life insurance coverage for servicemembers and veterans to $400,000.  Expanded housing grant programs for disabled veterans ensure that those who have sacrificed their well-being in the line of duty have a secure roof over their heads in a home that facilitates the special care they might require.

 

Finally, military retirees are the only group of federal retirees who must waive their retirement pay in order to receive VA disability compensation.  Each month, more than 400,000 disabled career military veterans must sacrifice their hard-earned retirement pay.  This unfair policy is a slight to men and women who have long served our nation, many of them on multiple tours of combat duty.  I am a proud cosponsor of the Retired Pay Restoration Act to eliminate the offset between military retirement pay and VA disability compensation.  I also pressed to accelerate the concurrent receipt issue by four years and three months, to September 30, 2009.  The sooner we can resolve this problem, the better quality of life we can promise to the disabled veterans who most need our care and support.

 

These gains in the funding for our veterans programs are meaningless, however, without the respectful gratitude we owe to our veterans on a daily basis.  They can be small public gestures, like displaying the flag or volunteering at a veterans care facility.  Our thank-yous can be personal: helping out a neighboring veteran by mowing a lawn or providing a meal.  We can do this civic duty within our families simply by telling the veterans at our family gatherings that we love them. 

 

However we choose to express these sentiments, we should take care to do so often.  Because our veterans once stood vigilant for us, we must always stand up for them.  Please remember the veterans in your family and community this Veterans Day.”