A Thank You to Our Nation's Veterans
November 11, 2011
Today we honor the tremendous sacrifices our veterans made for our great country. I hope you will join me by taking some time to think about the veterans in our community and thank them for their service.
As a combat Vietnam veteran and co-chair of the Congressional Military Veterans Caucus, I believe we must maintain a strong commitment to providing our servicemembers access to quality health care and economic opportunities. With our troops coming home from Iraq, and hopefully soon from Afghanistan, it is important that our country's more than 2 million active duty servicemembers and reservists are welcomed with the full benefits and services they earned. It is a priority of mine that we keep our promises to our nation's 23 million veterans - including the 54,000 veterans in our Congressional District - and their families.
A part of keeping these promises to our veterans is working to help them find jobs when they come home. With one-in-five veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan looking for employment, it highlights the need to get our economy moving again. We have an obligation to provide our veterans with the tools they need to transition back into the civilian workforce. One of those tools is a college education. That's why I am proud to have supported a new Post 9-11 GI Bill to restore the promise of a full, four-year college education. Since Congress passed this landmark legislation, more than 600,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have been able to afford and attend college.
In addition to getting our economy moving again so that our veterans can find work when they return home, we must also make sure they receive the health care they need. Over the last few years, Congress has vastly improved health care treatment and access for the nearly six million veterans currently in the VA health care system by providing more medical services, better care and shorter waiting times for doctors' appointments. We have provided thousands of new health care workers including doctors and nurses system wide. We have also helped the three million veterans living in rural areas by increasing the number of Community Based Outpatient Clinics in places like Lake, Mendocino and Humboldt counties. As more and more veterans return home, I will keep working to make sure the care and treatment they have earned is available and accessible.
As we support and honor the service of our veterans today, I also know we can and must do more to remember their stories and sacrifices so that their experiences are never forgotten. For a second year in a row, I am urging students and others to participate with local veterans in the Veterans History Project, which allows young people to interview and record the stories of our nation's veterans. This project is an invaluable history lesson for young people to hear firsthand what serving our nation during war time means. The video and audio recordings are kept in posterity at the Library of Congress. So far, local high school students from our Congressional District have recorded more than 60 testimonials. You can learn more about the project by going to https://www.loc.gov/vets/.
If you would like to participate in this project, either by telling your story as a veteran, or to record one of these oral histories yourself, please call one of my local offices listed below:
- Humboldt or Del Norte Counties: (707) 269-9595
- Mendocino County: (707) 962-0933
- Napa, Sonoma or Lake Counties: (707) 226-9898
- Yolo County: (530) 662-5272
Again, my heartfelt thanks to those men and women who have served or continue to serve in our armed services. Our country deeply appreciates the sacrifice you and your families have made.
As a combat Vietnam veteran and co-chair of the Congressional Military Veterans Caucus, I believe we must maintain a strong commitment to providing our servicemembers access to quality health care and economic opportunities. With our troops coming home from Iraq, and hopefully soon from Afghanistan, it is important that our country's more than 2 million active duty servicemembers and reservists are welcomed with the full benefits and services they earned. It is a priority of mine that we keep our promises to our nation's 23 million veterans - including the 54,000 veterans in our Congressional District - and their families.
A part of keeping these promises to our veterans is working to help them find jobs when they come home. With one-in-five veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan looking for employment, it highlights the need to get our economy moving again. We have an obligation to provide our veterans with the tools they need to transition back into the civilian workforce. One of those tools is a college education. That's why I am proud to have supported a new Post 9-11 GI Bill to restore the promise of a full, four-year college education. Since Congress passed this landmark legislation, more than 600,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have been able to afford and attend college.
In addition to getting our economy moving again so that our veterans can find work when they return home, we must also make sure they receive the health care they need. Over the last few years, Congress has vastly improved health care treatment and access for the nearly six million veterans currently in the VA health care system by providing more medical services, better care and shorter waiting times for doctors' appointments. We have provided thousands of new health care workers including doctors and nurses system wide. We have also helped the three million veterans living in rural areas by increasing the number of Community Based Outpatient Clinics in places like Lake, Mendocino and Humboldt counties. As more and more veterans return home, I will keep working to make sure the care and treatment they have earned is available and accessible.
As we support and honor the service of our veterans today, I also know we can and must do more to remember their stories and sacrifices so that their experiences are never forgotten. For a second year in a row, I am urging students and others to participate with local veterans in the Veterans History Project, which allows young people to interview and record the stories of our nation's veterans. This project is an invaluable history lesson for young people to hear firsthand what serving our nation during war time means. The video and audio recordings are kept in posterity at the Library of Congress. So far, local high school students from our Congressional District have recorded more than 60 testimonials. You can learn more about the project by going to https://www.loc.gov/vets/.
If you would like to participate in this project, either by telling your story as a veteran, or to record one of these oral histories yourself, please call one of my local offices listed below:
- Humboldt or Del Norte Counties: (707) 269-9595
- Mendocino County: (707) 962-0933
- Napa, Sonoma or Lake Counties: (707) 226-9898
- Yolo County: (530) 662-5272
Again, my heartfelt thanks to those men and women who have served or continue to serve in our armed services. Our country deeply appreciates the sacrifice you and your families have made.