Dan Sullivan

The Federal Government is about 5,000 miles away from my State, and they often don't understand us.

I am just hopeful that you guys can bring back call centers to have better service.

The number one issue I am hearing from our veterans right now is this issue, call centers.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and appreciate the witnesses here today. I have kind of a really important issue and have kind of been here before, but we really need your help on it, and it is with regard to call centers.

You know, I come from a State with more vets per capita than any State in the country, and our very rural State, Alaska, we do not even have one full-service VA hospital in the State.

It should not matter on your ZIP code how good your VA or private care provider is.

I want to commend Senator Manchin. He has done a lot in this area, on this topic.

We do not want anyone from that system or any system, or any of our veterans, dying of a drug overdose that is induced by too many pills. That is outrageous.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate the witnesses being here. It is an important topic.

But they do add certain costs, like the example you just gave.

Look, my view is they have a whole host of other areas where they can really fight inflation, right.

Is this really like more of a transparency issue, or do you think that kind of trying to bring this into fighting inflation is a stretch?

One of the issues that I think--that we are all struggling, not struggling with, but trying to nail down better is how you define junk fees.

We should just tell them no.

Can I get your commitment, though, to just be really skeptical about doing that?

I am for all of the above, wind turbines, solar, hydro, oil, gas, we need it all.

We are not going to say, hey, we will do wind turbines, but you guys who are producing natural gas, forget it.

It really hurts the average citizen, the average American, average Alaskan.

Respectfully, that is just, you are using that excuse in Alaska all the time.

As the Chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, this is a dereliction of duty on your part, right now.

The trial lawyers are going to win, and sick Marines and their families are going to lose.

I appreciated it. I appreciate you getting out all over the State.

You guys made sure there were no caps. That is what happened.

You are rope-a-doping sick Marines and their families.

It kind of sickens me that we cannot get progress on this.