 Hi everybody welcome I am very proud to be here today to sign House bill can you hear me I am very proud to be here today to sign House bill 168 the stolen valor act into law this bill let me just give you a little background this bill will make it a crime to impersonate a soldier to impersonate a veteran of the armed forces or a recipient of a service medal or decoration in order to gain access to benefits resources job opportunities that we set aside specifically for veterans or people who have served the legislation is really important right here in Pennsylvania we have the fourth largest veteran population 900,000 actually over 900,000 people one out of every 12 Pennsylvanians is a veteran in our Commonwealth in our country we have set aside as you know certain benefits certain resources job opportunities for our service members so that we as a society can pay in some small way the gratitude that we owe to our service men and women and our veterans for the sacrifice that they've made on our behalf for someone to fraudulently present themselves as worthy of the benefits of you know and the gratitude that the men and women of the armed forces have earned that's really inexcusable it's actually offensive to the memories of our veterans and it should be offensive to everybody in Pennsylvania so that's why I think this legislation is so important we must make sure that in Pennsylvania we're doing all we can to protect the benefits and resources we set aside for our veterans and service members so that they are never compromised and that those benefits are not sent to people who are not deserving the penalties for this action that we signed into law today will make people think twice the hope is before deciding to attempt fraudulently to gain some of those benefits for themselves we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to our veterans and members of the armed services they protect us they service they keep us safe they don't blink in the face of danger and they're prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to safeguard our way of life they do all of this without expectation of reward or recognition and there's really no way that we can repay the debt that we owe them but through actions including safeguarding the benefits the things that we do for them things that were we're actually trying to protect with the stolen valor act we can show our appreciation for what they do and for we can play a small part in showing that gratitude so let me just one here let me just take the the opportunity to say that the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs the DMVA we are doing a lot of things to try to make sure that we are trying to say thanks in concrete ways to our veterans our programs aim to connect veterans with all the services care program options they need in one place the DMVA again we know that we can't repay the debt that we owe but through our work to support veterans and their families back home we can show them the gratitude they deserve and have earned so I want to thank every Pennsylvania service member and veteran for their service to our community to our commonwealth and to our country and I pledge that we're going to continue to do all we can to provide you the veteran with all the benefits and resources you have earned we'll stop those who decide selfishly to attempt to benefit from the work that you've done so let me just thank senator Tony Williams isn't here he was the one who first introduced the legislation that representative Rick Saccone's amendment was passed unanimously by both chambers but both Tony and representative Saccone for your really good work in getting this important legislation passed Chris Sinaito is also a prime cosponsor Steve you were prime cosponsor to yes so all three of these folks really deserve our thanks for actually trying to protect our our veterans and service members so thank you very much for your your support and for your hard work on this and leadership now I will take questions on topic from the podium then I'm going to go over and sign the bill with Chris and Rick next to me Steve you can stand there too and then I will take off topic questions in the gaggle off on the side afterward are there any questions on this bill yes Dennis I mean it's it's a big enough problem that we we want to I'm actually not sure how big the problem is but the the issue is if it happens once that's a big problem because no one should feel empowered to to actually come and claim there's someone they're not especially when it comes to claiming that there's someone who actually offered to lay their life down for for us that's that seems to me the height of arrogance and hypocrisy so so if it happens once that's too often I don't know Rick do you have the numbers to hell often this happens I don't have all the numbers but we've had a number of cases in Pennsylvania we had one in Berks County we've had a couple across the state where people representing themselves as veterans have raised money or have used their veteran status to try to gain advantage and they were caught on it and called on it and so it has happened here in Pennsylvania and as the governor said this bill will hopefully be a deterrent now that people know that we're out there looking for him and there's there is a penalty for that yeah it makes it a third-class misdemeanor no I can't can you put that yeah that's misdemeanor I think it's up to a thousand dollars less than less than a year in jail I believe I have to check that anything else okay I'm gonna go sign the bill and I have some pens here and then I'll take questions off topic over here straight ahead okay look straight ahead Steve's gonna sit down okay thank you thanks for taking time