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Today, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), the Chairwoman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health, delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared, at the start of the subcommittee’s legislative hearing on 16 bills which would enhance the delivery of healthcare and services to veterans:

Good morning.

This legislative hearing of the Subcommittee on Health will now come to order.

I want to welcome all the members of the subcommittee and our witnesses. We look forward to a very productive discussion today on some impactful veterans’ legislation.

Before we begin, however, I’d like to take a moment to remember the nearly 3000 American lives that were lost 23 years ago today. Please join me in a moment of silence for the 9/11 victims and their families.

Thank you.

Today, we will be discussing sixteen bills. Each bill would attempt to improve the delivery of healthcare to the men and women who have served.

These bills include creative solutions that would seek to address difficult problems, including a pilot program to fill vacant shifts; reforms to ensure that VA has the authority to prescribe medicine; and a study which looks at the mental health crisis that affects our veteran community.

I would now like to take a moment to discuss my bills, H.R. 9438, the No Wrong Door for Veterans Act, and H.R. 9478, Veterans SPORT Act.

H.R. 9438 would seek to reauthorize an incredibly important VA mental health care program, the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program.

The Fox Grant Program is a successful grant program that enables VA to provide grant funding to community-based organizations, to help organizations in communities where veterans live expand the reach of their mental health efforts. My bill would reauthorize the Fox Grant program for an additional three years, until 2028.

It would also make changes to the administration of the program, including improvements to coordination of care between VA providers and grantees, and standardization of the veteran intake process.

This program is another avenue for veterans to receive mental health support. There should be no wrong door when it comes to seeking mental health, and I am proud to have introduced this bill to continue and improve this incredible program.

My second bill is H.R. 9478, the Veterans SPORT Act. This legislation would provide access to adaptive limbs for amputee veterans by ensuring that they are able to have the highest quality of life that we can provide them.

This bill would amend existing law to ensure the availability of adaptive sports and recreation prosthetics limbs by recognizing them as clinically necessary for veterans living with limb loss.

We must ensure that critically disabled veterans have the tools they need to live active lifestyles as they please, in order to live life to the fullest.

I am proud to introduce these bills and look forward to discussing the many others on our agenda.

I want to again thank our witnesses for being here today, and those organizations that submitted statements for the record.

It is a privilege to collaborate on crafting impactful legislation for our veterans and to address some critical issues facing them.