Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I rise today to strongly support H.R. 2045, the Veterans' Education, Transition, and Opportunity Prioritization Plan, or the VET OPP Act of 2019, which would create a significant structural change at the Department of Veterans Affairs to better align and specialize economic opportunity for our veterans, our true heroes. As ranking member of the VA Economic Opportunity Subcommittee, I know this committee understands the importance of prioritizing veterans' education, workforce training, transition, and vocational rehabilitation programs. However, the way the VA is structured, under the current system, it puts all benefit programs under one roof at the Veterans Benefits Administration. While I certainly understand that the VBA focuses a significant amount of time on processing disability claims and working to decrease its backlog of appeals, as the doctor stated, my colleagues and I on the committee have concerns that this has led to an imbalanced amount of attention away from other benefit programs, like the GI Bill education benefit and the employment programs, such as the vocational rehabilitation and employment, which is so very important as well. I fear that this lack of attention was fully realized last year, again, as the doctor stated, as VBA failed to properly implement sections 107 and 501 of the Forever GI Bill.…”