Political Quotes

“I come to the floor again to try to move forward on a bill with near unanimous support. In fact, with regard to the actual substance of the bill, within the four corners of the bill, it has unanimous support because it would advance 27 community-based health care clinics for veterans in the VA system immediately, around the country, which would serve hundreds of thousands of veterans in communities that absolutely need this type of expanded community-based clinic. Two are in my State--one in Lafayette, one in Lake Charles, LA. All of these community-based clinics--including the ones in Lafayette and Lake Charles--have been fully authorized by the VA and throughout the process. They have been on the books. We have been planning on them and moving forward with them for some time. But they have hit a series of bureaucratic glitches. For the Lafayette and Lake Charles facilities in particular, first they hit a big VA glitch when the VA just screwed up--and those are their words, not mine--just screwed up in the letting process to put out contracts to locate land and to build or lease these facilities. Because of that bureaucratic mistake, the VA lost a whole year in the process in terms of moving forward with these clinics that are fully approved, fully authorized. During that year of delay, out of the blue CBO decided to score how these clinics are financed differently than it ever did before.…”