First, I'm proud that the House passed my bipartisan provision to honor “Atomic Veterans,” service members exposed to radiation during U.S. nuclear weapons tests. It passed unanimously by a vote of 424-0.

Between 1945 and 1962, about 225,000 members of our Armed Forces participated in hundreds of nuclear weapons tests. Now known as Atomic Veterans, these GIs were placed in extremely dangerous areas and were constantly exposed to potentially dangerous levels of radiation in as they served our country.

Tragically, more than 75 percent of Atomic Veterans have already passed away, never having received this recognition. They served honorably and kept a code of silence that most certainly led to many of these veterans passing away all too soon.

We are 16 years into the war in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. The costs are already in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And the human costs to our troops, our veterans and their families have been enormous. Yet, Congress has not taken a single vote on this war for 16 years. So, in the absence of debating an updated war authorization for Afghanistan, the very least we can do is debate whether we will, once again, escalate our military footprint there.

Congress has to stop kicking the can down the road. Both Democrats and Republicans agree that protecting the lives and safety of our troops is one of the highest priorities of Congress and it’s time for us to debate and vote on the path forward. Our troops and military families deserve nothing less.

Finally, as the House considered Defense spending this week, I was deeply disappointed that my bipartisan legislation, the Military Hunger Prevention Act, was left out of the bill.

It’s shameful that military families, like lower-ranking enlisted servicemembers with larger households, are among the 42 million Americans suffering from food insecurity.

While up to 22,000 military households rely on anti-hunger programs like SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, many military families are unable to receive modest benefits due to an unintended provision that counts certain housing allowances as income when determining eligibility for SNAP.       

Our servicemembers and military families deserve better. This common-sense technical fix should not have been left out of the defense authorization bill and I plan to continue working with Republicans and Democrats to move this essential bipartisan legislation forward. It’s the right thing to do.


Watch me speak on the House floor about why no military family should ever go hungry>>