Tim Huelskamp: “I thank the chairman, and appreciate his strong, effective leadership in the Veterans' Affairs Committee. At a committee…”

“I thank the chairman, and appreciate his strong, effective leadership in the Veterans' Affairs Committee. At a committee hearing last year, the VA publicly admitted to me it was too difficult to fire bad employees. The situation is so dire that dozens of blatantly negligent employees and convicted criminals continue to work at the VA with zero consequences for their behavior. I was a quick cosponsor of this bill when introduced by the chairman because it provides necessary solutions to a problem that has persisted far too long. This bill will expand the VA Secretary's removal authority to include all VA employees and speed up the process. It will put in place additional whistleblower protections and give the Secretary the authority and responsibility to rescind bonuses and expense payments for corrupt employees. And it reforms the current broken claims process by providing veterans more choices when it comes to appealing VA claims. It might not be talked about much around here, but inside Washington everyone knows there is almost no accountability in the Federal civil service. In fact, a recent nonpartisan GAO study found, on average, it takes 6 months to a year, and often longer, to remove a bad bureaucrat. In the VA, we have seen example after example of Federal employees more concerned with defending a couple of bad apples than caring for our veterans.…”