Political Quotes

“Mr. President, but we did learn in this legislative hearing that, in fact, there is no plan. The 80,000-worker target for firing is in the absence of any plan. It is the target. It is the goal. It is the intention: Fire now, plan later. No plan, no metrics, no methodology, no strategy for right-sizing the VA. Now, we know a right-sized VA needs every one of those 2,400 workers who have been discharged now. It needs every one of the 80,000 that are targeted in the next few months to be fired. And we learned this morning that there are, in fact, open positions--36,000 of them, including more than 3,000 positions for doctors, thousands others for nurses, thousands for the custodians who maintain the VA healthcare properties. We are talking about real people who will be fired who are on the job doing essential work right now, and we are talking about discharging people when there are open positions, a need for more doctors, nurses, and others. How is that going to work for recruiting? Not so well when the VA is firing exactly the people whose positions it is trying to fill. That is absolutely a disgrace, and it will be seen as a disgrace by anybody wanting to serve in the VA. We also learned today that the VA is focusing on legislative measures that will make it easier to fire people, that will more readily enable it to discharge people without stating a reason, without a performance- related reason for firing them.…”