Lawmakers continue to push suicide prevention bill, but can't explain why

I don't know what it will take for all the talk to stop and for lawmakers to actually listen. They keep pushing the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention Bill, even though all the others just like it failed.

Families have heard all the excuses and speeches. The results were condolences and eulogies said over flag covered coffins that didn't need to be filled.

"Josh took his own life," the Rev. Lisette D. Baxter told the gathering Monday morning at Ira Allen Chapel on the University of Vermont campus. "I think we ought to say that out loud ... and not whisper it so it's a secret among us."

Blumenthal pushing to resurrect vets suicide prevention bill
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
01/06/2015

HARTFORD, CONN.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal pledged Tuesday to resurrect federal legislation designed to help prevent suicide among military veterans, calling it the nation's obligation to improve mental health services for those returning from war.

The Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act was blocked last year by Republican Tom Coburn, who has since retired from the Senate.

Blumenthal, a Democrat, said he hopes the bill will be one of the first successful bipartisan votes by the new Senate, which opened Tuesday.

"Every day, 22 veterans take their own lives. They take their own lives largely because of unmet needs for help, mental health help that the United States has an obligation and solemn duty to address," said Blumenthal, who spoke of a friend and Afghanistan veteran from southeastern Connecticut who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and took his own life in 2013.

"None of those 22 veterans who commit suicide today are destined inevitably to be victims of these inner demons. We can save them," said Blumenthal, flanked by leaders of Connecticut veterans' organizations.
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UPDATE
It is time to know what veterans are saying. They think Congress has no intention of doing what works for them. The American people support veterans. Most lawmakers wouldn't dare vote against them. A lawmaker comes up with some fancy crap on paper and can claim he wrote a bill for them. The end result doesn't seem to matter. They want to know, "Who is getting rich over our deaths?"

Can you blame them? After all, how many more years are they supposed to wait? When will Congress actually hold people accountable they paid to save lives?