What Congress’s first 100 days meant for veterans

No matter the organization or interest, benchmarks are used as a way to measure the success or failure of an agenda. Since the 114th Congress just passed its first 100 days, its agenda as it relates to veterans and veteran issues should be examined.

One of the first pieces of legislation Congress and the Veteran Affairs Committees wrote and passed was the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans (SAV) Act. Building on the momentum created in the 113th Congress, both the House and Senate passed SAV and the president signed it into law close to within Congress’s first 30 days. This bipartisan effort proved that Congress and the president can find common ground on an important veterans issue. The SAV Act seeks to address and prevent the troubling fact that 22 veterans a day take their own life. Congress and the president showed the American people what is possible when they work together for veterans.

In the same manner of bipartisanship, on March 19, 2015, the 12th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) launched the bipartisan Congressional Post-9-11 Veterans Caucus in the U.S. House as a congressional member organization purposed to support the veteran community.

Open to the more than 30 House members who currently serve or have served since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the caucus seeks to identify issues impacting veterans of this era and work across the aisle to develop and debate legislation aimed at improving the lives of post-9/11 veterans and their families.

One piece of bipartisan legislation that aimed to improve the lives of post-9/11 veterans and their families was The Choice Act of 2014. The Choice Act, which provides veterans increased access to quality healthcare, was greatly hampered in its effectiveness by the “40-mile rule” (a criteria standard by which veterans seeking private healthcare would have to conform). The Choice Act and the 40-mile rule were slated to be addressed by this Congress in the first 100 days; however, the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) was able to beat Congress to the punch and address the ineffectiveness of the 40-mile rule determination without a legislative fix.

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