 Every great organization must have an effective leader. The DAV is privileged to have the best of the best in National Adjutant, Mark Burgess. Since his appointment as National Adjutant in 2013, his dynamic leadership and commitment to the organization's ideals are continued, the direction to remain the premier and most capable and effective disabled veterans service organization. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our National Adjutant, Mark Burgess. Thank you, Teresa. Good morning. I'm pleased to come together with all of you at the greatest demonstration of strength in the realm of veterans advocacy. Our annual midwinter conference in the Commander's and Adjutants Association meeting. Your presence here is always one of the most important ways we can put a face on these issues and show lawmakers their actions affect real people, real veterans, and their families each and every day. That personalization is extremely powerful, and you've always carried that message to the Hill and your local communities with passion and with dedication. For that, DAV and your fellow veterans are profoundly grateful. If there's one thing I know about this crowd and about the base of DAV's membership, it's that we stand up for the rights and benefits we've earned when they're threatened. It's been extremely difficult to ignore the swell of interest surrounding veterans issues over the past three years. If you've watched the news, picked up a DAV magazine, or received an alert or newsletter for the national organization, you know we stand at a critical juncture when it comes to the future of our healthcare system. The 2014 access to care crisis and its aftermath highlighted the need for significant budget and policy reforms at the VA healthcare system. Many of you are aware the current veterans' choice program is set to expire this summer as the Secretary just indicated. We have a new president, a new Congress, and a new VA secretary. So the time for debating what's next for VA is over. We must move from talk to action. National Legislative Director Joy Eland will go over this issue in greater detail during the benefits protection and legislative workshop later today. She will also be going over DAV's other legislative priorities for your visits to the Hill on Tuesday and debuting a new video, DAV's communications team produced to help facilitate your conversations with lawmakers. I highly encourage everyone to attend in order to get up to speed and make the most of your time with your elected representatives. But here's the bottom line. I want everyone to remember this week, and when you go back home, we need to work together. If we don't speak up collectively, if we don't voice our opinions together on what's working and what isn't, others will not hesitate to make the decision for us, and we may not like the outcome. It's not enough to stand by and listen. Together, we must remain active in the conversation. Everyone here today has one thing in common. We've been at risk or have seen a brother or sister who fell through the cracks. One of the greatest horrors facing those who've been in battle is the fear of being left behind. This is the concern that unites and bonds us. It's the moral obligation that we feel in our hearts to fight injustice. We can probably all agree that we don't want to be left to fend for ourselves in the private sector that lacks the expertise to care for our unique needs, especially after what we sacrifice together to earn those benefits. Now, in addition to the issue of veterans' health care reform, you know we're bringing to Congress this week a few more agenda items of great importance. Women veterans, family caregiver and support services, appeals reform, and the VA budget for fiscal year 2018. In 2014, DAB's special report, Women Veterans, The Long Journey Home, Identified Gaps and Benefits and Services, across the federal landscape for female service members and veterans, and offered 27 specific recommendations regarding health care, transition services, disability compensation, employment, and housing. The report resulted in more than a dozen bills being introduced into the 114th Congress, one of the most significant being the Female Veterans Suicide Prevention Act, which was signed into law by President Obama last June. The passage and signing of this law was a step forward in addressing the unique transition needs of women veterans. This was clearly a victory, but there's still more work to be done. While VA has made notable progress in improving services for women, there are still a number of issues that need to be addressed. First and foremost, we must ensure all women veterans have access to high quality comprehensive health care services throughout the VA health care system. To do so, VA must have the resources to attract and retain qualified providers with expertise in women's health and meet the increasing demand for care. Identified issues surrounding privacy, safety, and environment of care standards for women veterans must be resolved. Our sisters in arms deserve our full support, and it's up to us together to ensure they are treated with dignity and respect and that their contributions in military service are recognized. Another inequity that must be addressed, as you know, concerns our nation's veteran caregivers. Studies show caregivers improve our veteran patient's health, reduce hospital re-admissions, and delay institutionalization, decreasing overall health care costs. However, by serving in this role, caregivers often make personal sacrifices in terms of their own health and well-being. A study from the National Alliance for Caregiving found the vast majority of caregivers for disabled veterans reported increased stress or anxiety and sleep deprivation. The report also shows declines in healthy behaviors of caregivers, such as exercising, eating habits, and keeping their own medical appointments. Over half of the caregivers in the study had to cut back their own work hours and almost half stopped working all together or took early retirement, resulting in financial hardship. While DAV was instrumental in ensuring caregivers receive support services, like caregiver education and training, respite care, mental health services, and a monthly stipend through the passage of the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010, Congress limited the law's applicability to veterans injured owner after September 11th 2001 due to cost concerns. This means countless caregivers do not receive these services due to an arbitrary date. Last Congress, DAV continued working on this issue. While our efforts resulted in measurable progress to expand the eligibility for comprehensive caregiver support to veterans of all eras, legislation was not enacted to correct this inequity. Together, we will renew our efforts in the 115th Congress to ensure veterans of all eras and their caregivers have access to these extremely important services. In March, 2013, the claims backlog at the Veterans Benefits Administration peaked at 611,000 claims. Today, it stands close to 96,000. That's a significant transformation, but we won't rest until that number moves towards zero. Appeals, on the other hand, are a different story. Today, there are over 450,000 appeals pending. Roughly 370,000 of those are within VBA's jurisdiction, while the other 80,000 are awaiting action at the Board of Veterans' Appeals. On average, a single appeal can take upward of three years or more to be completed. Currently, veterans who choose to appeal VBA decisions must follow a process that begins at the local VA regional office where most of the delays take place. Further resolution can be pursued before the Board when a local VA regional office decision remains unfavorable. However, the Board also faces serious processing delays due to its workload and resource mismatch. DAV believes the 115th Congress must quickly enact legislation to create a new framework that would reform the way VA processes claims and appeals. Within this framework, claimants should have the opportunity to select one of several options, including supplemental filings, seeking higher level review, and filing formal appeals directly to the Board. Congress must also ensure any legislative reforms enacted preserve effective dates, as well as current due process and duty to assist rights. Adequate resources must also be provided to address the backlog of appeals with regular oversight to monitor and measure VA's progress so these reforms achieve their intended purpose. Veterans should not face barriers in accessing their earned care and benefits due to lengthy and unnecessary delays. DAV will continue focusing on this issue in 2017 and together we will press Congress to enact legislation to reform the appeals process. Because of decisions made in the 114th Congress, VA began the current fiscal year with a number of congressional mandates without the required funds to implement them. This left VA's advanced funding for fiscal year 2018 woefully inadequate. When visiting the Hill on Tuesday, I ask you all to bring the 30th edition of the independent budget to the attention of your elected representatives. DAV and two of our fellow VSO partners, the VFW and PVA, released the collaborative report last month outlining legislative and policy issues for the veterans community that must be addressed in 115th Congress. I've already discussed four of our critical issues facing the new Congress. The need to strengthen reform and sustain the VA healthcare system, reforming the claims and appeals process, improving caregiver assistance, and ensuring that VA provides high quality, effective programs and services to meet the unique needs of women veterans. It's imperative though, that while you're in your meetings, you also mentioned the remaining critical issues from the independent budget. This includes resolving budget constraints that negatively impact veterans programs and realigning and modernizing VA's capital infrastructure. I cannot underscore these points enough as these financial pitfalls are often what keeps Congress from enacting legislation. Together, we can ensure VA receives a sufficient budget to meet the needs of ill and injured veterans, their families and survivors. One more point I'd like to address is that of our upcoming 100th anniversary in 2020. While we are currently working on a number of ways to mark this tremendous occasion, we would like to ask for your help here at Midwinter Conference in achieving just one piece of that plan. We're going to undertake a letter writing campaign requesting the Citizen Stamp Advisory Committee issue a commemorative stamp in honor of DAV's centennial anniversary. The committee receives thousands of requests every year, so we need your help to call their attention to the need to make this happen. Outside the room here, there'll be a table set up for you to write your letter. We have a pre-written introduction and salutation. We just need you to fill in your own explanation of what DAV means to you as a disabled veteran and why it's so important to mark this date in our history, and then we'll be happy to mail the letter for you. I strongly urge everyone to participate in this campaign. If all of us here at Midwinter Conference submits a letter, we will hopefully make a notable impression on the committee and get one step closer to making the DAV 100th anniversary stamp a reality. I cannot thank you enough for the support you've always readily shown when our commander calls on you and the continued dedication both to our organization and to veterans. Midwinter would simply not be what it is without all of you in this room, and we could not be a strong organization without your leadership and without your enthusiasm. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you this morning and, of course, for allowing me to work alongside you. No doubt we are facing a busy and challenging year, but I've seen the tremendous strides you've put forth in years past. 2017 has the potential to be one of the most decisive, pivotal years in our history and one of the most important for the future of veterans' healthcare. You're all doing critical work. There's something unique about our community that should remind us of the importance and value of our mission. Nearly everyone in this room has personally faced or intimately been involved in a situation where we or someone we love faced daunting odds for mere survival. Whether it was a comrade on the battlefield or a conversation with a doctor that involved words like malignant or terminal, our community knows the value of time. The most inspiring thing to me about DAV members is the passion that I see throughout our ranks every single day. Volunteering and standing up for your fellow veterans, family members, and survivors is a particularly sincere commitment when you know that time is our most valuable commodity. It's one thing we spend without ever knowing how much of it that we have by making the most of your time here this week, you honor the service and sacrifices made by veterans and their families past and present. This is why ours is a sacred charge and this is why I'm so proud of you, my brothers and sisters, and the DAV family. Before I close, I wanted to share some very sad news. We learned yesterday that army veteran and battalion death march survivor Lester Tenney died Friday at age 96. He was a proud DAV member and his story of survival and eventual renewal reminds us of the very best qualities inherent among members of our unique community, the community of disabled American veterans. I want to leave you with a brief conversation we had with him a couple of years ago to remind us of the tenacity within each of us and the spirit of renewal we represent. He also reminds us of the valuable work we are here to accomplish and the legacy of which we've been entrusted as inheritors and stewards. It was called a death march not because of how many died. Of the 12,000 Americans, only about 1700 lived to come home, but they called it a death march because of the way they died. If you stopped on the road, you were killed. If you had a malaria attack, they killed you. If you had a stop to defecate, they killed you. If you just couldn't take another step, they killed you. And how did they kill you? They'd either bayonet you to death, shoot you, or in some cases decapitate you. They did not give us water. They gave us no food. The temperature was about 108 degrees. The Americans that were captured, a good 80% of them had malaria. Another 50% had dysentery. So we were gunshot wounds, malaria, dysentery, and we had to walk this distance that they wanted us to. Under these conditions, it was unbearable. I think that what kept me going is about the second day. I made the decision that the only way I was gonna survive was if I started to set goals for myself. And I would walk and I would see a herd of caribou in the distance. And I would say to myself, I must get to that herd of caribou. I didn't know where they were, I didn't know how far they were, I didn't know how many days it was gonna take me or how many hours, but I made every effort to get to that herd of caribou. No matter what happened, the Japanese told me to smile, I did, they told me to sit, I sat, they told me to march, I marched. They hit me, it was okay. They broke my nose, they broke my, knocked my teeth out, they split my head open, but I still had to go to reach those herd of caribou. Then when I got to the herd of caribou, then I'd find another goal, and another goal, and another goal, every day was another goal. From that day on, I lived my whole life that way. And those people who hold on to a grudge, I think, have a very different philosophy of life, and that's how they live. By not holding on to a grudge, by being able to roll with the punch, I think it's a lot easier to live. My life is a lot happier, because I've learned how to adjust to adversities and how to deal with it. The Disabled American Veterans, I'm a lifetime member. I believe that they are an organization that spells out clearly what their goals are. You know, Disabled American Veterans doesn't mean that you have to be disabled with the loss of a limb, you could be disabled other ways. And I do believe that every man that came back from baton are disabled in some manner, either mentally, emotionally, through physical attributes. And I think we're all a member of the DAV in one way or the other. If we're not, if we're not, we certainly should be. But the DAV was very kind to me in many ways, and I'm very appreciative of that. May he rest in peace. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you do. May God bless you, God bless America, and may we make the most out of this week. Thank you.