Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the Senate recently passed the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act. This legislation is intended to improve the VA by strengthening the process of holding nonperforming VA employees accountable, but it does this by removing certain due process protections that are currently in place to protect VA employees from unlawful discrimination or retaliation. Dr. David Shulkin, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, asked for this authority to reform the personnel system, and the Senate obliged his request. In Hawaii we have a much different and more pressing problem that this legislation does not address, and that is the challenge we face with recruitment and retention of VA leaders and filling vacant positions at the VA. Nowhere is this challenge more evident than in the VA's yearlong search to recruit a new executive director for the Pacific Island Health Care System in Honolulu. During this time, six executive directors from six different VA healthcare systems on the mainland rotated through Hawaii on an interim basis. The VA said that its search dragged on for so long because it faced a shortage of individuals with the right skills to fill these medical director positions, but that is no excuse. The VA should have been doing more to develop a pool of qualified people to fill vacant medical director positions.…”