00:00 The gentleman is recognized. Thank you Mr. Chairman. The VA provides a purely administrative
00:06 function for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to process medical claims. Moreover, ICE pays for
00:12 these services, not the VA. There are no funds in this bill to prohibit being spent. ICE pays VA
00:24 to process medical claims. This is an amendment that doesn't even apply to funding in our bill.
00:31 This amendment is misplaced and conflates the services that the VA actually provides with the
00:36 larger issue of immigration because our friends on the other side of the aisle never miss an
00:41 opportunity to bash immigrants who are simply trying to come to this country and make a better
00:45 way of life for themselves and their families. And it's once again injecting unnecessary policy
00:50 debates into a historically bipartisan bill. Another poison pill culture war rider. Whatever
00:58 your position is on immigration, this amendment does not belong in the MilCon VA bill and does
01:03 nothing to move us forward towards better health care and services for our veterans. The reality is
01:09 is that if the gentleman's amendment passes, then ICE would have to stand up an entirely separate
01:15 process that would have to be set up to process these claims because the claims have to get
01:21 processed if VA didn't manage it for them. That would be incredibly expensive, fiscally
01:27 irresponsible, and makes no sense. But again, we shouldn't miss an opportunity to bash veterans.
01:34 I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, particularly because this amendment purports
01:42 to prohibit funds from being spent that you can't spend because they're not in this bill.
01:47 I yield. I reserve my time. The gentleman reserves. The gentleman from Florida is recognized.
01:54 The gentlelady just admitted that the VA is administratively using resources to help illegal
02:00 immigrants. I think that the VA's mission, being a veteran myself, should be to support veterans,
02:05 not illegal immigrants. And any resources that we have, having in my first Congress, I served on the
02:10 VA committee, and you heard time and time again, despite adding more and more money to the VA,
02:14 because they can't deal with the backlogs, they need more funds to do that, then why are we using
02:19 resources that are at the VA to assist illegal immigrants and the processing at ICE? I think
02:25 that's completely unconscionable, not only as a veteran, but somebody that served this country.
02:29 I think if the people in my district certainly knew that money that was appropriated to the VA,
02:34 that those people are using those resources to help illegal immigrants through ICE, would be
02:41 completely objectionable to everybody in my district. And I would ask all the members of
02:45 this body to support this great amendment, and I yield back. The gentleman yields. The
02:49 gentlewoman from Florida is recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps the gentleman has
02:54 selective hearing, because there are no funds being spent by the VA to process these claims,
03:00 because ICE, from their budget, pays the VA to process the claims. There are no resources that
03:09 are expended by the VA, because the funding comes from ICE's budget. So this amendment
03:17 is inapplicable to our bill, and is just a culture war opportunity to bash immigrants.
03:22 It's irresponsible, and it's also fiscally irresponsible, because the claims from ICE
03:28 have to get processed, and they would have to stand up an entirely separate claims processing
03:34 system in order to get those claims processed. This saves money, and does not take any funding
03:40 away from processing claims for our veterans. With that, I yield back the remaining balance
03:46 of my time in opposition to the amendment.
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