Political Quotes

“I could not agree more with the gentleman from Georgia that the claims backlog is absolutely unacceptable. I think the chairman of the full Appropriations Committee, the ranking member of the full Appropriations Committee, the chairman of our subcommittee, and yours truly as the ranking member of the subcommittee have met with and have criticized and have done everything that we could possibly do to try to bring to the attention of the Veterans Administration and the Secretary of the need to have this backlog addressed, and I do think we address that in this bill; but I must rise in opposition to this amendment. When I talk to veterans, the number one issue that they always have is the claims and claims backlog. The number one issue being worked on by my staff in southwest Georgia is VA claims and the claims backlog. I believe that what we have done in this bill will finally do something about the backlog. Now let me just put a pin right there for a moment. The backlog, while inexcusable, does have some basis. Just a couple of years ago, this Congress, in an effort to support our Vietnam era veterans, made it possible for the Agent Orange claims to be covered by the VA even though that had been an ongoing issue for the two decades that I've been a Member of Congress. As a result of that, there was a great surge of VA claims by Vietnam veterans, which added to the backlog.…”