This common sense bill--S. 1082--simply expands the Secretary's authority to swiftly remove poor employees, regardless of their rank in the organization.

The VA Office of Inspector General conduct made it clear that Congress must act.

As soon as I became aware of the problems at Tomah, I directed committee staff to open an investigation into the problems of the facility.

The bill is S. 1082, the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability Act of 2015, introduced by Senator Marco Rubio.

Last year's Phoenix wait time scandal showed us that there is a severe lack of accountability for VA officials.

For a long time, mediocrity and failure has been rewarded at VA, and it, in many ways goes back to Congress, as well.

What happens when VA fails to properly manage its massive and growing budget? It just gets rewarded with more money.

We believe S. 1082 is critical to overhauling a dysfunctional and bureaucratic culture that has infected VA at all levels.

As a matter of fact, VA has a history of rewarding mediocrity and failure.

If we keep rewarding failure--if we keep just spending another $3 billion here and $3 billion there--we can only expect more failure.

This is a clear image of what rewarding mediocrity and failure looks like at the Departmental level--failure that cascades down from the leadership to the frontline employee, and ultimately, to the underserved veteran.

on June 4, I was not present to vote on Senator Jeanne Shaheen's amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2016, amendment No. 1494 to H.R. 1735. I would have voted against this measure. Madam President, as well, had I…