I am working diligently to ensure I encapsulate the factual information on Congress.gov for this book. I realized, as we close in on the end of the 118th Congress/Senate, that I was very focused on Congressional Bills in the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and not the Senate. Since I have most of the book written for the Congressional Committee on Veterans Affairs from the 113th to the 118th (and while waiting for 2024 to close out), I felt it was important to include the Senate results.
With 3 months left in the 118th, I am able to fill my time with collecting, accurately, the data for the Senate VA Committee(s), to ensure the book is ‘all-encompassing’ and full transparency from the 113th to the 118th (close). I say this because I’ve been collecting that data.
That being said, I am starting to collect the 115th Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs and decided to leave a snippet here, to paint a picture of what I had collected for the 113th and 114th Senate Committee on VA.
Here is what I have (and please remember that I am introducing my own bias on what I consider to be bull$h!*) in the categories that I created to track the most popular (in my research):
113th Senate VA Committee:
The categories:
| Topic | # 113th Bills Proposed | 113th Bills voted into LAW(s) | # 114th Bills proposed | 114th Bills voted into LAW(s) |
| Name Clinics | 18 | 8 | 6 | 1 |
| Memorial/Monument/ cemetery | 9 | 1 | 9 | 1 |
| Education | 27 | 0 | 14 | 0 |
| Pension/ Disability/ Benefits | 66 | 3 | 39 | 0 |
| WWII / WWI | 4 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Adaptive housing/ vehicles | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Social Security | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| VA Accountability | 51 | 0 | 56 | 0 |
| Life/ Health Insurance | 6 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Loans | 6 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| VA Construction / Programs / Land Acquisition | 18 | 0 | 47 | 1 |
| Veteran/LTCF Homes | 6 | 0 | 8 | 0 |
| Vietnam Veterans | 6 | 0 | 8 | 0 |
| Radiation exposure | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Herbicide / Agent Orange (AO) | 2 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Prisoner of War (POW) | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Homeless Veterans | 9 | 1 | 8 | 0 |
| Gulf War / Desert Storm/Shield | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Burn Pit / Toxic Agent Exposure | 5 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Sex Assault / PTSD / TBI | 13 | 0 | 10 | 0 |
| Veteran Suicide | 2 | 0 | 5 | 1 |
| Bu!!$hit | 40 | 0 | 22 | 0 |
For clarification, the category of “Bull$h!t” is defined, by me and only me, as subjects that:
-Proposed at the end of a term, just to dump a bill into official record(s).
-Proposed after another representative proposed the same bill, just to a) appear as if the topic was partisan; b) ensure no representative from the other party(ies) are entered as cosponsor(s), to again make the topic appear to be partisan in nature and concern.
-Does NOT belong in the Veteran Affairs Committee but is proposed into in anyways.
-Is a bill that had been consistently proposed previously and left to die.
-Is a bill that was proposed for optics, with the representative never planning to fight for the topic.
-Is a space-waster and is only entered to further fill a clogged Committee docket
Hopefully, that makes sense on why I would have to add that category. Unfortunately, I have witnessed so much waste and deliberate deceit on these bills. It makes me sad that most veterans have no idea this is going on and are still relying on their elected representatives to do the right thing, follow through on their promises to help veterans, and propose bills that would help the community.
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