I am urging you to sooner than later because summer is right around the corner.

How can we justify these rules for the agricultural community abandoning this? This is going to be a big deal.

It will not be mandatory, period, full stop. It will not be mandatory.

I think it is a misdirection of priorities to send that much future taxpayer funding, again, to what we consider a manmade crisis at the southern border.

One of my top concerns with the crisis we are seeing at our southern border is that we know that individuals on the terror watch list, sex offenders, some of these transnational gang members, drug traffickers, human traffickers, the list…

I would rather see those resources go toward stopping forced labor materials from coming into our country, interdicting those drugs.

Are you really taking serious measures of what this is going to look like when you have to depopulate large animals?

In fact, in the last Congress, we passed a bill, the Brandon Act, because a veteran in my district went to the VA Center, was denied care, and 5 hours later committed suicide.

Thank you, Chairman Mann, for holding this hearing. You look good in that chairmanship.

One death from substance use disorder is one too many.

I am very concerned about how the VA has interpreted and differentiated between institutional and uninstitutional extended care.

Would you agree that these veterans, frustrated by access to critical care, would be at elevated risk for suicide?

I am extremely concerned about the number of known terrorists and criminals who have come across our southern border as a result of the weakness.

Never should a veteran walk out of that VA in crisis. I think clearly something has to be done here around these access points.

We expect better of the VA medical care system. Our veterans deserve better.

Thank you, Representative Van Orden. I thought about removing your time because I take offense as a former enlisted who became an officer.

Had the VA sent us testimony in a more timely manner, let me emphasize that, had the VA sent us testimony in a more timely manner, I would have liked to have addressed the initiatives they are talking about today.

I think I ought to point out that it's been very public, it's a matter of public record that President Biden himself aggressively took advantage of it to save himself as much as $500,000.