Senators Harkin and Feingold Introduce Veterans Suicide Tracking Bill

Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) on April 23rd introduced a bill requiring the Department of Veterans Affairs ("VA") to track veteran suicides.  The "epidemic" of veterans' suicides has been in the news recently, both because of the Federal court case being waged in San Francisco this week and next by veterans rights groups against the VA, and because of the recent CBS News investigation into the same.  It turns out the CBS report's high numbers were accurate; and documents produced during the trial implicate the VA's chief psychiatrist, Ira Katz, M.D., Ph.D., in attempting to suppress the true figures.  Various groups have called on Katz to resign.  The proposed legislation, entitled "The Veterans Suicide Study Act" would require the VA to report to Congress how many veterans committed suicide since 1997; and the VA would continue to issue reports annually.  For more information about the bill's introduction, click here.