00:00Thank you, and thank you, Ranking Member Bozinski, for hosting us today and for allowing me to see a little bit of a glimpse of your district and appreciate both similarities and some of the differences between communities that we represent and how things are done.
00:15And I really can't say enough about how impressed I am by this facility, the outreach that is done, and the success stories that you've all had, and the work that's ongoing that you're doing.
00:24And kind of like we talked about earlier, Colonel, allowing veterans to find that next sense of real purpose, and I appreciate the work that you're doing here to make that happen.
00:37And one thing that I think can give us some really focused motivation for this is there's statistics around this.
00:47Of course, during that 20-year-long span of the War on Terror, we had just over 7,000 troops die on the battlefield.
00:55Every single one of them is an absolute tragedy.
00:58I have friends, and many of us who served have friends that were lost in that effort.
01:04We lost 35,000 more to suicide during the same period of time, and that really, to me, speaks about that total, the real total human cost of war that we have yet to fully appreciate.
01:16And we have a lot further to go in that and how we can prevent those, each of which are preventable with the right intervention and the right outreach and the right care and treatment.
01:26So that is a real mission of what we on this committee are focused on, and a piece of that is this technology aspect of how we deliver benefits to veterans and how we really do a better job of making sure that they have the adequate access that they've all earned to really head off at the pass, the next veteran who may be going down that path.
01:49And then also looking at veterans who aren't contemplating suicide but still need help for the back injury they sustained or the other service-connected conditions they may be facing or dealing with.
02:01What education benefits do they have that are available to them?
02:04What compensation and benefits are available for that continuation?
02:08And all of the other services that VA provides that are really, truly important and fall under this rather broad umbrella of the subcommittee and the work that we do.
02:19So I can't tell you how much we appreciate each of you being really on-the-ground advocates and with the firsthand knowledge and experience that you have of how we go about that.
02:27You know, Washington, D.C. is an 11-hour drive from here because we almost had to drive because of the weather with the flights yesterday.
02:37But it is a long ways away from here, and it's a long ways away from everyday America.
02:45But these are the communities that we represent, and I say this in my own district.
02:49It's my job to be my district's representative in Washington, D.C., not Washington's representative back home in my district.
02:57And that should really be a one-way street where we take our voices of our constituents and the folks that we represent and go advocate for them in our nation's capital
03:07and not come back here and tell you, well, you know, this is how it really works, and you just got to get on board with it.
03:12That's not the role of Congress, and that's never going to be what we do on this subcommittee.
03:17So this field hearing today really allows us to gather that insight from all of you here and take this with us back to our nation's capital to really do our best
03:27and strive to make the best public policy that we can on behalf of our veterans and on behalf of the communities that we represent.
03:34So I thank you again for hosting us today, and we look forward to welcoming you to Michigan in the future to do another hearing in my district.
03:43And certainly for those of you that have further insight or thoughts for us, we welcome your insight.
03:50And if you make it to Washington, we'd love to have you in our hearing there as well.
03:54So thank you again to everyone.
03:56Thank you to the staff, both committee staff on both sides, as well as the staff for arranging all this,
04:02for those that were here doing, providing other services, for hosting us today.
04:06I really do appreciate each and every one of you.
04:08With that, I will ask unanimous consent that all members have five legislative days to revise and extend the remarks
04:14that include extraneous material.
04:16And without objection, it is so ordered, and this hearing is adjourned.
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