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The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, yesterday I introduced two amendments to help our military families to be able to contend with the death of a loved one and the problems that flow to these families when one of America's service people are lost either in combat or in the course of duty. The disruptions are obviously enormous and unimaginable in many ways, but one of those disruptions is that after a period of 180 days, even in the middle of a school year, a widow would have to move off the base notwithstanding the kids are in the middle of a school year. I can give the names of people I have met in a number of instances over the course of the last couple of years traveling the country, people who talked about the incredible disruption to their family because of this.
What we have learned listening to the commanders in the military and also to the families is that when we recruit, we are not just recruiting individual soldiers, and when we equip, we don't just equip by giving them the weapons and the technology they need to fight a war. We recognize we recruit a whole family and we retain a whole family. We need to have policies that are family thoughtful, family sensitive, so we can retain people in the military, particularly in a volunteer force where we expend enormous public dollars in order to train people to provide us with the superb capacity we have in our military.
One of my amendments would provide an extension of that 180-day period of time so you get a year for the school year issue and other issues of finding a suitable home and figuring out whether you are going to go back and live with your parents, what your job is going to be, and where you are going to live, so all of these things are not providing added pressure to families who are already remarkably disrupted.
The second is an amendment that would extend the death benefits, the total death benefits to families so those families who are unfortunate enough to lose a loved one are not suffering for the rest of their lives as a consequence of that contribution to their Nation.
These amendments would be the first strong steps in what I call the military families bill of rights. I am not going to go through all of the details and the arguments for that, but I would like to say to my colleagues that yesterday I sent out an e-mail asking Americans to send stories in about their personal struggles with these issues, or those of their friends and friends' families that they heard about.
In less than 24 hours over 2,000 families responded. They took the time out of their busy days in the hopes that we would listen, so I would like to share a few of those stories with my colleagues.
The first is a couple in Austin, TX, who e-mailed me about one of their two young children who has Job's syndrome. When their father was called to duty, Home Depot stopped paying his salary and cut his health insurance. His wife, who was a schoolteacher, had to purchase insurance on the open market, leaving her finances in complete disarray. Her daughter was in the hospital so often that she eventually used up all of her sick and vacation days. The school docked her pay for lost time, and her financial situation went from bad to worse.
This is because her husband was serving his country, but the Government did nothing for his family to make up that
difference.
I got an e-mail from a pharmacist whose nurses were upset about a woman who could not afford medication for her child because her husband had been called to duty in Iraq. They eventually found a way to get the mother the medication that her daughter needed, but the pharmacist was left questioning his Nation's leadership. Here is what he said:
I was dismayed that there apparently was no help available for this mother whose husband was serving his country.
A guy in Abilene, TX, e-mailed me about his first friend in the world who was shot down in Iraq. He left behind a wife and three children. Over 2,000 people honored him at the memorial service, but that did not do anything to help his parents, who were draining their retirement savings to get health insurance for their grandchildren. This fallen soldier's friend wrote:
Nathan's family is getting by because of their love and faith in God and each other, but after losing a son in service to America, they should not have to struggle to see that his wife and children will get by. His wife has already lost her husband, and his children will already grow up without their father. His daughter Courtney will not have her Dad to walk her down the aisle when she marries. They will not have a Dad at their High School graduations or at the birth of their children. They should not have to sacrifice anymore.
That is what this friend wrote to us, all of us Senators. Finally, I want to share a letter I received in February from Amy Beth Moore from Fort Hood, TX. Her two children, Meghan, age 13, and Sean, age 10, no longer have their father Jim. During his tour in Iraq, Jim was shot at, and his Hummer took a near deadly bullet in the gas tank. When he returned home, he was a senior officer in charge of refitting his unit for the next deployment. This required frequent helicopter flights back and forth from Texarkana.
On November 29, 2004, his Blackhawk crashed, killing Jim and six other soldiers. Listen to what Amy wrote:
Consider our predicament. But for the grace of God, my husband would not have survived a deployment to Iraq and then was working to ready the Fourth Infantry Division for its next deployment. Why should it matter where he was killed while serving proudly in the military? Why should we as his surviving wife and children not be entitled to the increased death gratuity and life insurance? I have been a full time mom, managing the home front of a career soldier and it is now up to me as a widow and a single parent to provide for our children. These benefits would greatly assist me in doing that and frankly, without them, we will have a serious challenge in the days and months and years ahead without Jim. I know that compensation in any form will in no way make up for the loss of a loved husband and father and all the missed moments that we would have shared as a family, but nothing is more important to me right now than trying to take care of my children, and it is on their behalf that I make this request.
We have heard from military families. We have heard from friends. There are thousands more such stories across the Nation. The test is whether we, as a matter of conscience and common sense, are going to do what is right for those who serve our country.
I thank the Appropriations Committee for fixing part of this, for going beyond the administration's request to limit the benefit to combat. But now I ask my colleagues to heed the advice of uniformed military leaders about those on active duty today and their families in the military. We need to provide this benefit to all Active-Duty personnel.
Amy Beth Moore is right. What difference does it make where he was killed? He was killed preparing the troops to do what we need to do in Iraq, and his loss is as real whether he was killed in Iraq or elsewhere. If we fail to adopt these amendments we are going to confirm the greatest fears of Amy Beth Moore and the over 2,000 Americans who e-mailed their stories to me, that Washington talks a good game but doesn't really care about these families.
For the survivors of our Nation's fallen heroes, much of life remains. Although no one can ever put a price on the loss of the life of any loved one, it is up to us to try to be generous, and I think correct, in helping them to put their lives back together. I urge my colleagues to join me in working toward a strong bipartisan military families bill of rights that does right by those who serve and by their families. I hope we can start that by taking the right direction in adopting these two important amendments today.
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