Steve Buyer: “this amendment is either ill-conceived or politically conceived in that the Deputy Secretary is the gentleman who came…”

“this amendment is either ill-conceived or politically conceived in that the Deputy Secretary is the gentleman who came to the committee to testify, and that was by agreement at the committee. So to say that the administration sent someone who was uninformed is not a good way to address this to our colleagues. That was by agreement of the committee, and it was the Deputy Secretary of the VA who came in and who testified, and as a matter of fact, his testimony, that I will share with all my colleagues, is that he testified just last week during the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on the SEC bonuses, at which the author of this amendment was present and he said, by statute, senior executive presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed appointees are not eligible for performance bonuses. Did you hear that? They're not eligible for bonuses. So what we have here is, the gentleman's brought an amendment that is either redundant, multiplicitous or unnecessary.”