Johnny Isakson

We are going to take great pride in making our agency an agency that is responsive and responsible to our veterans.

The buck stops with him.

They deserve a better VA than we have given them in the past.

It is time that our VA caused its own support and brought its support behind it and supported them.

How could we do that?

We have all got each other's back. We are all going to work hard to make our Veterans Administration of the United States of America better than it has ever been before with a new Secretary, Mr. Wilkie.

Morale at the VA may be the biggest single problem.

Will you work as hard as you can and tell us what you plan to do to see to it that choice is a reality?

A world-class customer service is the key.

Whatever my phone number you have got, I am on duty 24/7 when it comes to the VA.

Failure is not an option. We know what the problems are.

If we have 3.8 percent unemployment, that means virtually everybody who is employable is employed, yet we have a lot of veterans who do not have their jobs.

It's unbelievable. So what we're doing in this Committee, what the Chairman and the Ranking Member are doing, is critically important

They need our support and our love and our assistance and our help, and we can help a lot of people end what is a terrible problem.

We've got to talk about it without fear. We've got to look for the symptoms without any prejudice.

But all that education, all that awareness, all that talking about the subject in public and with your kids and families is critically important, because awareness is the key to catching things early.

Well, that shows you, Mr. Chairman, one of the places we've got to put a face on the opioid epidemic is with our young people, to really know what they're facing and can happen.

It's important to put a face on the problem, because it is a terrible problem in our country.

Lighthizer, you had better focus on this.

He has done a great job and veterans have a champion working for them every day as we work through the problems we run into in swamps from time to time.

I think it is important that we prioritize so we meet the needs of the vets and deliver the services they are expecting from us.

Helping these states to work their way out of and establish the goals and the leadership within their state to work their way out of fragility into prosperity is something all of us could do to help.

But just comparing that to al-Bashir, the people in Sudan appear to me to be a captive of a man whose dream is to keep them captive in the poverty of fragility rather than the opportunity of capitalism.

I think Rwanda is a perfect example of how you can exit fragility and go into prosperity or on your way to prosperity through economic empowerment and through governance and through leadership.

And less than 1 percent of the executives in the Federal Government receive that award, and it is to recognize your achievement in enhancing CBP's enforcement to protect the American consumers.