David Weldon: “I simply rise at this point to speak directly to the issue of what we are doing in this veterans budget under the…”

“I simply rise at this point to speak directly to the issue of what we are doing in this veterans budget under the leadership of the subcommittee chairman. We are increasing veterans health care spending by $1.7 billion. That represents an increase of almost 10 percent. One of the concerns that I actually have with this very generous increase is I do not know if the VA will be able to spend all this money efficiently. I would not be surprised if they have some of the money left over. That is a huge increase for the agency to absorb. By giving them these additional funds, there will not be any hospitals closed. If anything, what will happen is the badly underserved areas like the district that I represent, the whole State of Florida, and what the gentleman from California is saying is that, no, a 20-percent increase is necessary and anything short of a 20-percent increase is underfunding. Frankly, I believe that position is ridiculous and the chairman of the subcommittee has clearly spelled out that the veterans organizations are behind this. I think this is a very clear statement that the Republican Party, the Republicans in Congress, support our veterans and we are giving a very, very generous increase in this budget to veterans affairs. And to hold out a pie-in-the-sky number of, no, $3 billion and anything short of that is underfunding I believe is ludicrous.”