Political Quotes

“I want to rise to also support my colleagues on the Veterans Affairs' Committee. It is an honor to serve with the chairman of the committee, the distinguished senior Senator from Georgia, and the ranking member from Connecticut, Senator Blumenthal. One of the great honors about being on that committee is not just serving our veterans but that it is a committee that gets a lot of work done. It is a very bipartisan committee, and that is why so many of us are coming to the Senate floor to talk about this important issue-- accountability for the VA. I was home in Alaska this past weekend, and as I often do, I ran into veterans. Every State in the Union likes to talk about their veterans and brag a little bit. Well, in my State we have more veterans per capita than any State in the Union. We are very proud of that. I was talking to a Vietnam veteran on Friday in Anchorage, a combat veteran corpsman. He saved a lot of marines during his time. He had such deep frustration about this issue of accountability with the VA. As a matter of fact, he used to work at the VA. The one issue he raised with me was this: How can we do more with regard to accountability? He reads about it in the paper. The key here to that conversation and to so many conversations I had with veterans back home is that we must restore the bond of trust between the VA and the veterans that the VA serves because we all know that bond of trust has eroded. Trust is eroded when no one is accountable.…”