Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Miller, a fellow Floridian, for his support of this measure. Without his help and the help of his team--Maria and Cecilia in particular--we would not be here today. This is a monumental bill for our veterans. This comes down to customer service for our veterans. I feel we are in the customer service business. They are not constituents. These are people who have paid the price to defend this country, and it is time that we give them the service that they need. What this does is it gives us read-only access to a veteran's claim. We have already got a privacy form. We are on a secure system, and this just moves the claim through the process that much quicker so that we can find out why it is hung up. So many times, as the chairman said, the average time it takes for an office to receive the records they request from the VA is 6 months, and at times even over a year. What this will do is, we can look into there, we can read only that particular case, and we can say, You forgot to sign it, you forgot to date it, you forgot to check this box; and we can report immediately back to the veteran. It should free up the VA system. No single man or woman who has served and protected our freedoms should have to wait to receive the care and benefits that they have more than earned. Unfortunately, they have become statistics, nothing more than numbers on the page, so many times with the VA system. This ends with the passage of the WINGMAN bill.…”