The fact is, GEO is not cooperative, and so we have an incident here. There could be other incidents down the road.

It’s in our interest to protect the public health of our community to be able to merely make a statement that requests or demands that (The GEO Group) comply on behalf of our residents.

I was unavoidably detained and missed the vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 474.

You have had very, very positive things and intuitive things that you have done for not only constituents in your district, but across the entire country.

He has been terrific. He certainly has a passion for the people in El Paso and the people he represents.

It has been an honor these first 2 years to represent the veterans--all the veterans in the district.

Thank you for your service all these years on the Committee and the things you have done for the folks in Denver with the Denver VA.

you will never change the culture of bureaucratic incompetence in the VA unless you are willing to look through those 400 positions.

you need to come before the Congress of the United States to have those altered.

This President will fail the country in terms of the commitments that he made to change the VA.

this administration, the Trump administration, promised to clean up the culture of bureaucratic incompetence inside the VA. And based on this testimony today and other hearings we've had, I don't think they've made a lick of difference.

I think the notion that we're still at the point where neither DoD or VA has taken the lead--and I think that one of them has to have ownership for it.

I was able to pass legislation out of this Committee to mandate that the VA provide mental health care to those with other-than-honorable discharges.

It was very hard to get answers from the VA, because they didn't want to admit that they had made a mistake.

I think suicide prevention amongst veterans occurs at the--as I said, I think it occurs at the community level.

I just don't think this is doable. I just--I think that we're going to undergo the same problem unless we change.

I think to have the IPO with the expectation that these two big players--that life is going to be different, I'm not sure life is going to be different.

I think from day 1, we made a terrible mistake, the prior administration and continued by this administration in not saying to both of these major players, the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, one of you is in…

And what I think Mr. Coffman is concerned with in his question, his concern is we're going to have another Denver fiasco if we don't have somebody that the buck stops here.

Some of you guys, like Representative Mike Coffman and Representative Chairman Chris Smith, your names are household names in the in most of the Ethiopian people.

What we have seen in Ethiopia over the past few months has been entirely remarkable.

I give full credit to Dr. Abiy Ahmed, Lemma Megersa, Gedu Andargachew, and Demeke Mekonnen for their extraordinary work in transforming Ethiopia.

We consider United States as a great ally of Ethiopia.

Thank you for testifying before the subcommittee today.