Southern california, the issue is not with the food being d available itstribution problem. Woodruff all that and more on tonights pbs newshour. Maj funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by s porting social entrepreneurs and their solutions to the worlds most pressing problemsou skolation. Org. The lemelson foundation. Committed to improving lives through invention,d n the u. S. Andeveloping countries. On the web at lemelson. Org. Supported by the john d. And catherine t. Macarthur foundation. Committed tojuuilding a more , verdant and peaceful world. More informati at macfound. Org nd aith the ongoing support of these institutions this program was made possible by the corporation for and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Woodruff a major storm dumped heavy snow across the midwest today, fouling travel o the fore thanksgiving. As much as a foot fell in some, pllaying flights at chicagos ohare airport, one of the nations busiest. A separate
45 minutes. Chairman tester i am going i want to thank secretary mcdonough and her friends and partners for joining us today. For those of you joining us on television, you will hear a great opening and questioning of the secretary of the v. A. We have three people who were going to do a combined statement , which will be particularly entertaining. So we have something to look forward to. Chairman tester we do. We are here to take a closer look to the president s 2024 budget request for the department of Veterans Affairs. We have to ensure the department is wellequipped to care for our veterans. The v. A. Completed more than 1. 7 million disability claims. They served over 6. 3 million veteran patients, more than 150 million employments. Demand is only increasing. This law created a fund to cover the new cost of delivering. I have serious concerns to got the fund. Gut the fund. It is all bad news. We send people off to war, we put it on the credit card. They come back and we make excus
Live here on cspan three in the Senate Veteran Affairs Meeting testifying on the president s 2024 request for his department. May join this meeting live in progress. I visited there, as you have, as your staff had, you do the right thing. We want to keep working with you. I want to talk about the pact act a little bit. Do you have numbers, up to date numbers of how many veterans are taking advantage of it . I like to say when i do these round tables that this is government and right. This bill passed if, i remember, of august 2022. By january you had it up and running. Hundreds of thousands of veterans were getting care. That is exactly the way governments should run. All of us are proud to be part of that. Do you have an eye to the number of how many people have been served . Yes. Thank you very much. As of may 6th, 251,584 total veterans or survivors have had completed pact act relating claims. We are granting at about 80 . That is the beauty of the presumption we are able to grant a
Ms. Mikulski mr. President . The presiding officer the senator from maryland. Ms. Mikulski mr. President , i ask that the call of the quorum be scraicted. The presiding officer without objection. Ms. Murkowski mr. President , what is the pending business before ms. Mikulski mr. President , what is the pending business before the senate . The presiding officer were on the motion to proceed to s. 815. Ms. Mikulski mr. President , i ask unanimous consent to speak 10 minutes as if in morning business. The presiding officer without objection. Ms. Mikulski thank you very much. Mr. President , i come to the floor today to really speak about how we could avoid another shutdown of our government and also even more important, avoid another shutdown or slowdown of our economy and thats how we in the congress, both sides of the aisle, both sides of the dome need to work to arrive at a budget agreement and then an appropriations agreement for the rest of the fiscal year. Earlier today on the floor,
Morning business. The presiding officer without objection. Ms. Murkowski thank you, madam president. This morning in the help committee we had an opportunity to hear from the administrator of the health exchange, ms. Tavenner who came before the committee to talk about where we are in the process now with the exchanges that have been set up through the Affordable Care act. And it was an opportunity in the five minutes that we have allocated to each of us to pose questions to speak to the situation in alaska as it relates to the exchanges. And i come to the floor this afternoon because there was so much that i as one senator had to say that you cant possibly condense into a fiveminute exchange, but it did cause me to to want to take a moment to speak about whats happening on the ground in the state of alaska. I think its probably not an unfair assessment to say that most of the constituents that i am hearing from are not supportive of the Affordable Care act, and have been very skeptica