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>> ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states. [ playing "hail to the chief" ] ♪ >> unfortunately, his face blocked by one of the teleprompters right now, but right there you can see the introduction of president obama standing right next to the v.a. secretary, robert mcdonald. spider, your thoughts on what barbara was stalki intalking ab quickly. >> the homelessness problem is one we need to get our arms around and the v.a. is doing quite a good job. 600 service members a day become veterans. they depart the service, and all the services are getting smaller, so that is going t...

Care. the service member who signs up today, the 18-year-old who comes in today, is going to be this veteran 80 years from now. hopefully 80 years from now. yet there's this great divide. d.o.d. is in virginia. v.a. is in washington. there has never been a larger divide across the potomac than you can imagine. that database. young spider marks at 18. is that completely continuous over the v.a. so i seamlessly transition to somebody else who owns me. right now that disappears. this is a very, very tough technical leadership requirement. >> you really lay out well just a perfect example of just ...

Our tributes today will ring hollow if we do not ensure that our veterans receive the care that you have earned and that you deserve. the good news is is that in recent years, we've made historic investments to boost the v.a. budget, expand benefits, offer more mental health care and improved care for our wounded warriors, especially those with posttraumatic stress and traumatic brain injury. we've now slashed the disability claims backlog by nearly 90%. we're reducing the outrage of veterans' homelessness and have helped tens of thousands of our veterans get off the streets. still, the unacce...

In los angeles and especially for veterans, young veterans in particular, is extremely significant. and a lot of work being done by private organizations and partnering with the v.a. indeed to try and find solutions to that. but this gets back to what we're talking about. america's veterans population is a very dynamic always-moving population. people constantly get out of the military. they constantly, over the last 14 years, have come home from america's wars, and many of them do face a number of challenges that grow over time. they don't always get better. sometimes they do, thankfully. so ...

And i loved the line when he said about the veterans, an unbroken chain of set rans even pointing out the oldest known world war ii veteran female 108 at the ceremony. she was there. i wish we had a camera there and we could have seen her when he pointed her out. what do you think that the m message should be? what is the message going forward? >> well, clear ly the chain is unbroken and individual links within the chain periodically snap and break, and can the v.a. and the brothers and sisters and veterans put it out there together? the answer is yes. he gave a great example of jen madden, th...