Today we have eight bills before us that seek to: authorize the VA to make a grant to the United States Olympic Committee to provide and develop activities for service members and veterans with physical disabilities; allow military service members to terminate certain contracts when called to active duty service or ordered to change permanent duty assignment; require the VA to develop and DoD to distribute a compact disk of benefits information to service members preparing to depart from the military; amend the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act to allow a military spouse to claim the same state as the service member in regards to state and property taxes, and voter registration; and reauthorize the Service Members Occupational Conversion and Training Act of 1992.

Some of you might recall that on February 13, of this year, we conducted a hearing on expiring programs. In this hearing, we received recommendations on ways to improve on the programs and expand on veterans rights. One such recommendation came from Mr. Matthew Tully of Tully and Rinckey LLC who specializes in law under the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, also known as USERRA.

Mr. Tully brought up an example of how a service member who had sought injunctive relief from his employer but the court denied his request. Mr. Tully recommended that the Subcommittee consider amending USERRA to allow service members, such as the one that was cited, to ensure equitable relief is available to USERRA victims when the courts decide it’s appropriate.

I share the concerns expressed by Mr. Tully and recently introduced H.R. 6225, Injunctive Relief for Veterans Act of 2008. This bill will amend Title 38 by changing “may” to “shall” and it is our expectation that more courts will use this remedy when deemed appropriate that equitable relief is warranted. This legislation is a step in the right direction to providing greater protections and safeguards to those that have answered the call to duty.

A second bill that I recently introduced is H.R. 6224, the Pilot College Work Study Programs for Veterans Act of 2008. This bill contains similar language that I proposed in H.R. 5684, the Veterans Education Improvement Act of 2008, which would improve on existing educational entitlements for our veterans.

H.R. 6224 would direct the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs to conduct a five-year pilot project to expand on existing work-study activities for veterans. Currently, veterans that qualify for work-study would be limited to working on VA related work. My bill would allow those veterans the option of working in academic departments and student services. This change would put them at par with students that qualify for a work-study position under programs not administered by the VA.

Furthermore, this bill would conform to existing paygo rules by funding this pilot program from discretionary appropriations.

I look forward to working with Ranking Member Boozman and other Members of the Committee to discussing my two legislative proposals and those being considered in today’s legislative hearing.

It is very important that Congress continue to reevaluate existing laws and review legislative proposals so that we may provide our men and women in uniform, our veterans and their dependents the benefits and safeguards they need to reintegrate back to civilian life. This hearing has provided us with good feedback and I look forward to continuing this important dialogue.