Steve Buyer: “I thank the chairman for the quality of his work, and I want to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards). We have…”

“I thank the chairman for the quality of his work, and I want to thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards). We have had the opportunity to work over the years in the Committee on Armed Services, and we continue to work with them. I came down here to tell them I am proud of them. They put together a pretty good product. They are operating under new procedures. I am really pleased with regard to the leadership of taking the personnel and housing and coupling it with veterans. I want to work with the gentlemen and the gentlewoman on their committees and their staff because the only way we can get the seamless transition is through working together. And we are going to end this procurement of I will buy my own systems and VA buys their own systems and then they are incompatible and we have got duplicity and multiplicity and, guess what, it is now up to us to end this. And we are going to make this seamless transition work. We are going to give the right platforms with regard to IT. I want to thank them for making that cut in IT. A lot of people are going to say, Why did they do that? We are about to set the correct platform under the right form of leadership. And what I would like to work with the gentlemen on is that we are going to hopefully take the chief information officer within the VA and we are going to give them line and budget authority.…”