Marty Walsh: “Mr. Chairman, we have within this bill added funds to hire employees to take care of this backlog. We did it last year…”

“Mr. Chairman, we have within this bill added funds to hire employees to take care of this backlog. We did it last year, we are doing it this year, and I would submit to my colleague that if the Secretary of the Veterans Administration wants to do this, they can do this. To my knowledge, there is no specific authorization that prevents the Veterans Administration from hiring additional people with existing funds and from moving them around within the department, reassigning them to different tasks. This is purely within their discretion. You do not need an act of Congress to do that. What you need is a secretary who sees things the same way that this Member does, eyeball to eyeball, and let him make that decision. But this is not an action that should be undertaken by the Committee on Appropriations. This is an action that should be taken by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs.”