[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 186 (Thursday, November 9, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5442-S5443]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REMOVING EXTRANEOUS LOOPHOLES INSURING EVERY VETERAN EMERGENCY ACT--
Motion to Proceed
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 30,
H.R. 815.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 30, H.R. 815, a bill to
amend title 38, United States Code, to make certain
improvements relating to the eligibility of veterans to
receive reimbursement for emergency treatment furnished
through the Veterans Community Care program, and for other
purposes.
Cloture Motion
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under
rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Cloture Motion
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to
proceed to Calendar No. 30, H.R. 815, a bill to amend title
38, United States Code, to make certain improvements relating
to the eligibility of veterans to receive reimbursement for
emergency treatment furnished through the Veterans Community
Care program, and for other purposes.
Charles E. Schumer, Patty Murray, Peter Welch, Angus S.
King, Jr., Brian Schatz, Mark Kelly, Tim Kaine, Thomas
R. Carper, Jeff Merkley, Debbie Stabenow, Elizabeth
Warren, Sheldon Whitehouse, Jack Reed, Mazie K. Hirono,
Richard J. Durbin, Christopher Murphy, Christopher A.
Coons.
Mr. SCHUMER. I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call
for the cloture motion filed today, November 9, be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. SCHUMER. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.
Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to
15 minutes prior to the scheduled rollcall vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Veterans Day
Mr. YOUNG. Mr. President, days before he died, Frederick Knefler
composed a letter of instruction to be read once he was gone. There
was, he wrote, to be no memorial service or expensive coffin. His
funeral should be private and simple, attended only by a handful of
fellow Hoosier veterans. When it was lowered into the ground, his body
should be wrapped in an American flag.
Republics such as ours are uncommon. It is of great value for us, its
citizens, to recall our blessings, and it is our heroes who provide
that reminder. Although he was born an ocean away from America,
Frederick Knefler dedicated his life to defending those blessings. He
was one of those heroes. As a contemporary remarked after his death,
``No descendent of a Mayflower Pilgrim was ever more wholly or
intensely American than he.''
As we mark Veterans Day, his story is worth sharing. He was a Jewish
immigrant; one of the soldiers who saved our Union; a private citizen
who spent his final days building a still-inspiring monument to their
example.
Before he ever set foot in America, though, as a teenager, he had
already fought in a civil war, the Hungarian Revolution. Its failure
and the sorry state of liberty across Europe inspired Knefler to look
elsewhere for freedom. He found it across the Atlantic. He and his
family arrived in New York and then settled in Indiana in 1850. There,
they were among the earliest members of the Indianapolis Hebrew
Congregation, the city's first and today its oldest synagogue family.
Knefler fell in love with America. He embraced its laws, customs, and
institutions. He even taught himself English by reading Shakespeare.
Then he moved on to military history and tactics.
In 1861, when the Southern States deserted the Union, Abraham Lincoln
called for volunteers to form an army to bring them back. Knefler,
whose adoration of America was equaled only by his hatred of slavery,
answered the call. He vowed he wouldn't do a day's work until the war
was over and the Nation reunited.
True to his word, he left his job as a clerk and enlisted in the
spring of 1861, after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and he didn't
return to civilian life
[[Page S5443]]
until the summer of 1865, after the surrender at Appomattox Court
House. He joined Indiana's 11th Regiment, serving as lieutenant to Lew
Wallace, and then was promoted to colonel of the 79th Indiana Infantry.
Knefler's language was notoriously gruff. In fact, Governor Oliver
Morton was so offended by his profanity that he was hesitant to offer
him a military appointment.
He was a man of strong opinions. ``A talk with him was like a stiff
breeze,'' a friend once said. His men labored greatly under relentless
discipline and constant drilling but came to admire their leader. And
he whipped the 79th into a formidable fighting machine.
From their organization in Indianapolis in 1862 till they mustered
out in Nashville in 1865 as part of the Armies of the Ohio and then the
Cumberland, these Hoosiers saw action:
At the deadly Union victory at Stones River, which helped embolden
Abraham Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation; at the disaster
at Chickamauga, which sent a damaged Army of the Cumberland into
retreat; with William Tecumseh Sherman, as he marched through Georgia,
captured Atlanta, and cut off Confederate supplies, leading to Abraham
Lincoln's reelection and the South's defeat.
But it was in November 1863 from the foot of Missionary Ridge that
the 79th ascended into history. You see, at that time, the Army of the
Cumberland was cornered and cut off in Chattanooga. Winter neared;
rations were low; soldiers were starving and disheartened. The
Confederate Army arrayed its artillery and waited for the Yankees to
surrender. Jefferson Davis himself even arrived to take in the scene
and predicted that victory was near.
As Knefler recalled, the ``gift of prophecy'' was not the Confederate
president's strong point. Desperate to break the siege, General Joseph
Hooker's men climbed and took Lookout Mountain on November 24. On the
following afternoon, the 25th, Union soldiers mounted an offensive, and
they cleared the rebels from the base of Missionary Ridge.
Then, without orders, they spontaneously--Knefler said they were
guided by a ``mighty impulse,''--they spontaneously followed the
retreating enemy up the steep ridge. When the Confederates looked down,
they saw a flood of blue rising up. The Rebels unleashed shells, shot,
and rifle balls down the mountain. Soon the entire ridge was enveloped
in a cloud of gray smoke, shooting off lightning bolts of musket fire.
The 79th, joined by another Indiana regiment, the 86th, charged up
through it.
Through the fierce fighting and incredible determination, they took
Missionary Ridge. They sent the enemy into retreat, and they broke its
lock on Chattanooga.
That defeat heralded, as a rebel lamented, the death knell of the
Confederacy. General Ulysses S. Grant later recalled that Frederick
Knefler was the first field officer to reach the top of Missionary
Ridge.
At the conclusion of the conflict, Knefler was breveted as Brigadier
General, the highest ranking Jewish officer to fight in the Civil War.
This Hoosier returned to Indianapolis. He settled into private life. He
practiced law. He advocated for fellow veterans.
Fittingly, the final years of his life were dedicated to the
construction of a monument to them in Indianapolis.
In 1895, when the long-discussed project reached an impasse, Indiana
appointed Knefler to lead the board of regents responsible for rescuing
the project. Knefler threw himself obsessively into the work, raising
money, scrutinizing design plans, fixating on details, dealing with
temperamental artists.
When a sculptor complained the model of a figure representing
``peace'' was not wearing an overcoat, as he intended, Knefler reminded
him that when the Union men came home in 1865, it was summer. ``Who
ever heard of a soldier wearing a big overcoat in July?'' he snapped at
the sculptor.
Because of Knefler's exertions and urgency--he desperately wanted the
monument finished while veterans of the Civil War remained--the
Soldiers and Sailors Monument was dedicated on May 15, 1902. On that
day, bands played, battle flags waved, soldiers marched, statesmen
delivered speeches, and crowds wept at the foot of a towering column,
built of Indiana limestone, of course.
Among the thousands of attendees, Knefler was absent. He had died the
year before. But in the days leading up to his death, stricken with
disease, he worked to honor his promise that the monument would be ``as
great a work of art as the world ever saw.'' He didn't live to see it
complete, but that work of art would have been neither great nor
completed without him.
Folks, we don't celebrate Veterans Day in order to venerate war but,
rather, to reflect on its horrible cost. But we also honor our veterans
like Frederick Knefler on this holiday for the same reason we build
monuments to them, doing these things reminds us what is precious, and
that what is precious is fragile.
For over two centuries, this Nation, however imperfectly, has been a
rare outpost of freedom, an outpost of tolerance in a world where both,
throughout history, were the exception, not the norm.
Look to the monument Knefler worked so hard to raise, the focal point
of Indiana's capital city. On its crown sits a brown statue of Lady
Victory, her arm outstretched, the torch of liberty in her hand. Below
stand statues of the Hoosier soldiers and sailors, who risked and gave
their lives to protect it, to preserve the sacred pledge that all men
are created equal.
This Nation, with its singular values, has endured thanks to our
veterans. Men and women--to use Knefler's words--of ``heroic mold,''
who have ``held it with fire and steel.''
So on Veterans Day, we give them our deepest gratitude and our
pledge, our pledge to do our part to guarantee what they have held is
never lost.
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