Cold War Veterans Blog

Obama Gives a Response Regarding the Cold War Medal Act S.1097

Dear Stan:

Thank you for taking the time to share your support for the authorization of a Cold War Victory Medal for veterans of the military during the Cold War period. I appreciate hearing from you and apologize for the delay in my response.

As you may know, in April of last year Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced the Cold War Medal Act of 2007 (S. 1097). This legislation would have mandated that the Department of Defense issue a medal to all veterans who served honorably during the Cold War period of our history, approximately between 1945 and 1991. A provision similar to S. 1097 was included in the House version of the fiscal year 2008 Defense Authorization bill. Unfortunately, the Senate sponsors of this legislation were unable to maintain this provision during the Senate consideration of the Defense Authorization bill. As a result, this proposal was not included in the final version of the bill signed by the President.

You may be interested to know that the Senate is expected to take up consideration of the fiscal year 2009 Defense Authorization sometime in July. While the contents of the bill are still unclear, please be assured I will keep your comments in mind should this issue be considered by the full Senate.

Finally, I would like to apologize for the delay in my response. Each week I receive on average 10,000 pieces of correspondence from inviduals like yourself from across Illinois. While I value the insight and opinions of each person I do not always get a chance to respond as quickly as I would like. That being said, please feel free to keep in touch on any matter of importance to you.


Sincerely,

Barack Obama
United States Senator