Political Quotes

“I wish to call to the attention of my colleagues S. 290. S. 290 is a piece of legislation passed unanimously by the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs. It is a bipartisan bill that was crafted by the ranking member, the Senator from Connecticut, Mr. Blumenthal, and me, and it deals with accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs. This legislation has a number of components, but the one I wish to focus on this evening is one that has a consequence to those in senior executive positions at the Department of Veterans Affairs who commit felonies in the scope of their employment at the Department of Veterans Affairs. This legislation, S. 290, would eliminate their pension if convicted of a felony in a court of law and only that portion of their pension that was accrued after the conduct that resulted in the felony conviction. That is the circumstance that was approved by the Veterans' Affairs Committee a year ago this month. That bill has yet to come to the Senate floor. During that time in which we have been waiting for consideration of this legislation, certain terribly unfortunate events occurred at the VA hospital at Leavenworth, KS. I have been on the Senate floor speaking to this issue previously, but the basic facts are that a physician's assistant committed sexual acts with his patients--veterans who came to the VA hospital at Leavenworth, KS, for care and treatment, and we learned of this reprehensible conduct from newspaper reports in 2015.…”