On the recordJuly 31, 2014
this week, the Senate confirmed Bob McDonald as the new Secretary of the VA and today we passed a compromise veterans bill that will help repair the overwhelmed Veterans Health Administration. These are two steps in the right direction to help the men and women who serve in our military receive the care they need when they come home. Bob McDonald is an excellent choice to head the VA. I met with McDonald soon after he was nominated for this position and there is no doubt he is eager to take on the task of seeing that the VA honors its promise to the men and women of our armed services. McDonald ran Proctor and Gamble for several years and knows what it means to put the customer first. At the VA, veterans are the customers and we have to provide them with the best service possible. McDonald is a veteran, a West Point grad, and best of all, he is from Arlington Heights, IL. I am confident he is the right person for this difficult job. After an internal audit, the VA confirmed whistleblower assertions that many VA employees manipulated waitlists to make wait times look better than they really were. The agency found that in some cases, staff intimidated schedulers into falsifying data. This is unacceptable. I visited the Hines VA Hospital near Chicago last Friday where I met with Joan Ricard, director of the facility, and Rob Nabors, President Obama's Deputy Chief of Staff, who is overseeing the investigation into problems at the VA.…
