Remarks to Texas VFW State Convention: January 29, 2010

Remarks to Texas Veterans of Foreign Wars and Ladies Auxiliary 2010 mid-winter conference in Austin on Friday, January 29.

Good Morning, Texas Veterans of Foreign Wars!  Thank you, Roy, for your very kind introduction, your words mean a lot.  More importantly, thank you for your leadership for our state, both with the VFW and with the Texas Veterans Commission.  It was my honor and privilege to work alongside you in the last session of the Legislature, and I look forward to continuing our work together.

I am truly honored and humbled that you asked me to speak to you this morning.  It’s a privilege for me to be on the same stage as Governor Rick Perry and former Houston Mayor Bill White and other distinguished guests.  But the greatest honor is to be with all of you, the veterans of our nation’s armed forces who have risked life and limb to serve our nation, and the VFW Ladies Auxiliary.  For the spouses of veterans who are here today, we owe you a special thank-you, as well.  Families of service members sacrifice so much for our nation, sacrifices that are difficult to measure and impossible to repay.

As a member of the House Defense and Veterans Affairs Committee, I have the privilege of working on a variety of issues affecting our servicemen and women, our veterans and their families.  My work on these issues is guided by a recognition and a realization that there is simply no way that the tremendous sacrifices made by veterans and their families can ever be appropriately repaid, no matter how many laws benefitting veterans are passed in Austin or in Washington.  The sacrifices made by those who serve, and their families, are simply too great.

What I hope we can do is honestly recognize and appropriately honor those sacrifices with efforts that will have real meaning for those who have worn our nation’s uniform.  This morning I will mention a few such efforts that came out of the recent legislative session.

As you all know, we passed an important and overdue measure to provide a complete property tax exemption to all veterans who are 100% service-connected disabled.

Because of the leadership of Senator Leticia Van de Putte, who chairs the Veterans Affairs and Military Installations Committee, we extended education benefits for veterans and their families through the Texas Hazelwood Act, and I am pleased a provision I authored to extend benefits to the spouses of 100% disabled veterans was included in that measure.

I also authored legislation to require Texas colleges and universities to have a designated financial aid employee who is well-trained on the GI Bill and Hazelwood so that veterans and their family members have help navigating those bureaucracies.  It is my goal to see that our veterans receive every last dime, whether it is state or federal, of education benefits they have earned through their service.

But what I am most proud of and worked so closely with the VFW and a number of our veterans groups on was our bill to create a single lottery scratch off game to benefit the Fund for Veterans Assistance.  The fund was created by the Legislature a few years ago to help individual veterans in times of needs and to support groups and organizations, such as the VFW, that provide crucial services to veterans and their families.  While this was a noble idea, the budget writers failed to put any money into this fund.

That’s when statewide veterans leaders came up with the idea of creating a lottery game to benefit veterans, as a few other states have done.  I was honored to carry this legislation, and I have to say, it was quite a challenge to get passed.  It probably didn’t help that I was a freshman and really didn’t have any experience passing laws.  But there’s a reason we have had a lottery in Texas for nearly 20 years and no one has ever managed to create a “dedicated” game like this.  The lottery is an institution that the Legislature does not like to change.  But we want to work on my colleagues in the House.

We explained that if we passed this bill, in no way would we impact public education funding.

We told them that if we were bold and visionary and passed this bill, we would generate up to $8 million a year to help TX veterans.

We could help more veterans with transportation assistance to VA Hospitals.  We could help fund PTSD counseling services that are so critical to so many of our veterans.

We  would be able to do more to reduce the shameful number of homeless veterans in Texas.

And we told them, frankly, that Texas veterans – including the 240,000 young Texans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan – more than deserved this bill.

In the end, we overcame the opposition and the skepticism and passed this bill minutes before the deadline in the House.  We went through a few other legislative gymnastics before it was all said and done, and then Senator Van de Putte passed it out of the Senate on the last day of the session and the governor signed it a few weeks later.

Now, some folks were skeptical when we passed this bill how much of an impact it would really have for Texas veterans.  Would it really work?

I am pleased to be able to stand here this morning and give you a progress report on the Veterans Cash game, which the Lottery Commission launched on November 9th, right before Veterans Day.

In just over two months, as of January 23rd, sales of Veterans Cash totaled $11.2 million.  That means over $2.5 million in proceeds, which are going straight into the Fund for Veterans Assistance to help Texas veterans.  You think that’s going to have an impact?  I do too.

So far, this game has been more successful than I think any of us ever imagined.  We know that the Texas Veterans Commission is carefully reviewing applications for the first grant award, which will be directed to emergency needs for Texas veterans and their families.  The TVC will be considering that award at their February meeting, so we can look forward to real, tangible help for veterans and their families in the very near term.

While this session was undoubtedly a success when it came to veterans issues, I don’t think we should stop there.  I think all of us – not just in the Legislature – but all in our state who care about veterans and their families, need to keep asking what more we can do to honor the service and sacrifice of those who have served.

Can we see that any veteran in the state of Texas who wants to work can get a decent paying job to support his or her family, especially in this tough economy?

Can we do a better job of providing tax relief to the widows and surviving spouses of disabled veterans and service members killed in the line of duty?

Can we see that every veteran who wants to go to school and continue his or her education have the opportunity to do so.?

Can we make sure that every veteran who has PTSD or a Traumatic Brain Injury as a result of serving our country can get the help he or she understandably needs?

And can we agree that no veteran of this nation’s Armed Forces should be sleeping on the streets of any Texas city tonight, and that we’ll do all we can to end the disgrace of veterans homelessness?

I think the answer to all these questions is yes. And by working together, I know we can make these goals a reality.  In closing, as we commit ourselves to taking on these challenges, consider the wise words of our nation’s first President, George Washington:  “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were appreciated and treated by their nation.”

Those words are as true today as they were in Washington’s time and it is my hope that they serve as a guiding principle for elected officials and policy makers in our state and nation.

Thank you very much for having me today.