WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, will be featured on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” this Sunday, May 24, 2015, at 10:00 a.m. ET and 6:00 p.m. ET.

In honor of the upcoming Memorial Day holiday, Senator Isakson will discuss the importance of taking care of our veterans after they’ve risked their lives for the sake of our country. He also talks about the importance of veterans’ health care and reforming the culture of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) so that tragedies like last year’s wait time scandal at the VA hospital in Phoenix never happen again.

“We can’t shortchange somebody who risked their life for you and I,” says Isakson in the interview. “We need to make sure [veterans] get the benefits we pass and promise them. We also need to make sure we can deliver the benefits that we promise in the future… There should never be an equivocation over giving a veteran the services they have earned, they fought for and they risked their life for.”

In the interview, Isakson discusses the importance of serving all veterans – World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and everyone in between – while reflecting on his formative years during the Vietnam War Era.

“I’m a product of the Vietnam Era… and I lost some of my best friends in Vietnam. I remember the sacrifice and the tragedy our country went through,” Isakson continues. “We need to make sure in the latter years of their life, they’re getting the care they deserve… We owe those veterans just as equally as we owe the Afghan and Iraqi veterans and the World War II veterans and I’m going to see to it that they get it.”

“We owe our veterans everything. However we’re going to deliver it, we’ve got to deliver it.”

You can watch Senator Isakson’s interview online now, or live on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” on Sunday, May 21, 2015, at 10:00 a.m. ET and 6:00 p.m. ET.

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The Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is chaired by U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., in the 114th Congress.

Isakson is a veteran himself – having served in the Georgia Air National Guard from 1966-1972 – and has been a member of the Senate VA Committee since he joined the Senate in 2005. Isakson’s home state of Georgia is home to more than a dozen military installations representing each branch of the military as well as more than 750,000 veterans.