Political Quotes

“I rise to try to advance important legislation to fully authorize 27 Veterans Affairs clinics around the country in 18 different States, in communities that desperately need these facilities for our veterans, including two in Louisiana, Lafayette and Lake Charles. These clinics have been on the books, planned for, approved for quite a while. Unfortunately, they ran into several bureaucratic glitches and hurdles. In the case of our two clinics in Louisiana, the first thing was a flatout mistake, a screwup at the VA, which they fully admit to. They made some errors in the contract letting process. Because of that, they had to stop that entire bidding process and back up and start all over. That basically cost us 1 year in terms of those vital community-based clinics in Lafayette and Lake Charles. Then, as they were into that year of delay, out of the blue the Congressional Budget Office decided to score these sorts of clinics in a different way than they ever did before. That created a scoring issue with regard to all 27 of these clinics in 18 States. On a bipartisan basis, a number of us went to work on that issue to clear that up. We have solved that issue, and the House has put a bill together with strong bipartisan support--virtually unanimous support-- and has passed the bill that resolved that issue. It came to the Senate. I reached out to all of my colleagues.…”