Why wouldn't the Medical Director who was one of the whistleblowers have been able to convey these concerns up through the chain?

Since then, we have been aggressively pursuing this.

I hope that the President will appoint and the Senate will confirm the Secretary in due course and we will be able to move forward with our oversight role.

We didn't get from the VISN to the central office, again, until this all played out in the Boston Globe.

I would vastly prefer, which is something I emphasize in just about every time I speak, that if people have concerns they speak up and that we can do something about that.

You can't just, in government, wave a magic wand and suddenly have the tools that you need to catch up to the digital age.

I think in order to understand where we are and how to restructure, we need to understand where we have been.

I want to thank the chair for rescheduling the hearing. My new hip is going great and I really appreciate it.

Senior leaders must be held accountable for failing to act and we must take a hard look at the organization from top to bottom to determine what is causing this lack of accountability.

We are seeing a big drop-off in young people starting businesses, in part because of the kind of student debt they have.

These leaders should be held accountable for failing to take action.

We are tired of receiving reports, we are tired of inaction and, as I mentioned before, there were seven reports on the D.C. VA Medical Center.

You have introduced a bill, the ROI Act, to relieve student debt so that more young entrepreneurs and innovators can get started.

Nobody loves red tape but all of us, I think--and you have all agreed in some way--appreciate that regulation helps the quality of life we all enjoy.

The role of supervision and the role of oversight is critically important, and we will continue to work together.

I want to work together in a bipartisan way as our Committee does, but we need leadership from the top.

we need to create an environment where concerns are addressed at the earliest possible date.

I continue to have whistleblowers come. And in the case that I have been talking about today, there was a long period of delay because the whistleblowers were concerned about their anonymity.