Political Quotes

“I thank Chairman Roe and Ranking Member Walz. What an honor it is to work with these two gentlemen on veterans' issues. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 467, the VA Scheduling Accountability Act. This commonsense legislation codifies an important measure of oversight and accountability of VA facilities to prevent scheduling manipulation or, in the vernacular, ``cooking the books,'' that has harmed veterans for so long. Hearings held by the House VA Committee and investigations by the VA inspector general and the GAO have, unfortunately, confirmed many of the allegations of cooking books and falsified wait-time data at facilities around the country. The VA has a procedure for scheduling veterans' medical appointments, which includes 19 different items, such as ensuring that a patient's desired appointment date is not altered and that staff are fully trained. Importantly, the directive requires each facility to certify compliance with all of these 19 items every year. However, an August 2014 VA inspector general report uncovered that, in May 2013, a senior VA official waived the certification requirement that year, essentially putting the facility on an honor system, allowing them to self-certify. Without this crucial accountability mechanism, bad actors were given free rein to manipulate wait-time data and ignore the VA's required scheduling practices.…”