Political Quotes

“Mr. Chair, the VA provides a purely administrative function for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to process medical claims. Moreover, ICE pays for these services, not the VA. There are no funds in this bill to prohibit being spent. ICE pays VA to process their medical claims. This is an amendment that doesn't even apply to funding in our bill. This amendment is misplaced, and it conflates the services that the VA actually provides with the larger issue of immigration because our friends on the other side of the aisle never miss an opportunity to bash immigrants who are simply trying to come to this country and make a better way of life for themselves and their families. It is, once again, injecting unnecessary policy debates into a historically bipartisan bill. It is another poison pill, culture war rider. Whatever your position is on immigration, this amendment does not belong in the MILCON-VA bill and does nothing to move us forward toward better healthcare and services for our veterans. The reality is, if the gentleman's amendment passes, then ICE would have to stand up an entirely separate process that would have to be set up to process these claims because the claims have to get processed if VA didn't manage it for them. That would be incredibly expensive, fiscally irresponsible, and makes no sense, but, again, we shouldn't miss an opportunity to bash immigrants. Mr.…”