Matt Salmon: “I would like to congratulate the gentlewoman from the Ninth Congressional District of Arizona, which is right adjacent…”

“I would like to congratulate the gentlewoman from the Ninth Congressional District of Arizona, which is right adjacent to mine. She is my neighbor, and I am proud to cosponsor this with her to show a strong unity of bipartisanship for our veterans. And if there isn't a better cause here in Washington, D.C., to stand bipartisan with, I don't know what it is. I want to echo some of the things that Congresswoman Sinema has said. This is unconscionable. And since these allegations have come to light, we have received numerous phone calls in our district from other like- minded people that have said, I had a similar circumstance happen to me. So when Representative Sinema approached me about cosponsoring this amendment to allocate $1 million from the general fund of the Veterans Administration and appropriate it to the IG so that we can get a thorough investigation, it seems to me that this is the least we can do. Why is this important? You might remember just a few years ago that a gentleman named--I call him gentleman, I think that is a loose term-- Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron, went to prison for cooking the books. Now we have got some serious allegations about those that are entrusted with a sacred trust--our veterans' very livelihood--at stake. And I believe that this group of folks in the Veterans Administration has betrayed that trust. But we have got to get to the bottom of it. Why is it important? Because it is the integrity of the system.…”