Mark Begich

I want to acknowledge the new Ranking Member, Senator Rubio, and welcome his shared desire about developing an active schedule for the Subcommittee this year.

Hearing held on March 19, 2013

I did not come to the floor today to speak on the appropriations and CR, but I want to thank the chairwoman and ranking member for working in a bipartisan way. They are working on finding a solution and an ability to ensure that at the end…

You know, we love our veterans in Alaska. We have 77,000 veterans, one of the highest per capita in the Nation, and the VA does exceptional work.

In one of your comments you said, 'left to your own devices.' Is there something we can do to help with other agencies or groups that you are working with?

Do you keep or can you develop--now that we are ending the second war that we have been engaged in the last 10 years, are you able to say over the next period of time, assuming certain growth rates in the Army and the Air Force and other…

I can tell you the increase in calls that I get in my office are not going down.

How are you going to get to that point, I mean, getting the images?

A few years ago IBM did a study of this at the direction of the Committee and determined that an evidence based time motion study was a good idea!

It almost seems like they do all this work and then VA duplicates the work.

I want to hear you say again that at the end of 2013... we will be moving electronically the full records from DOD over to the VA.

I thought I read something that DOD had some issues with their electronic transfer of the records.

The only agency in the Federal Government.

The VA is committed to that single integrated electronic health electronic health record.

There should be clear review of additional reductions in the USF fund, especially in Alaska, based on this data.

It is 46 percent lower to construct in Alaska than the lower 48. That is impossible, based on my experience.

I am a little agitated because it has offended many of my constituents in Alaska.

It is wasteful and inefficient for the Government to operate under this cloud of uncertainty and to divert resources to plan for extraordinarily disruptive contingencies that are within the Congress' authority to avoid.

Sequestration will affect CBP's ability to apprehend illegal aliens and seize illegal contraband.

Congress can help by supporting the Mental Health First Aid Act that has been introduced by Senator Begich with bipartisan support.

I now lay before the Senate a message from the House with respect to H.R. 2838. The PRESIDING OFFICER laid before the Senate the following message from the House of Representatives: Resolved, That the bill from the House of Representatives…

Let me just say thank you very much, and again, I look forward to hopefully both of you being confirmed.

I would ask you to come up there, but on a larger issue, more and more veterans are living in rural parts of our country.

To have a veteran come from a small village in Alaska to have to deal with their case in this body here in Washington, DC, spending, my guess would be, based on my own experience, if you travel from a small village to Washington, DC, that…

I think it was mentioned here, House Resolution 4072, that we try to work forward with the ideas that you may have here.