Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I want to thank the chairman, but I will reiterate that the Secretary currently does have the authority to fire any Senior Executive Servicemember if he is not performing his job. This bill does not address the problem systemically within the VA. We are dealing with the Veterans Health Administration. This bill only covers 165 SES's who work in the Veterans Health Administration, but there are 400 throughout the VA. The legislation that I would much prefer voting on today deals with not only the SES's, but also with the title 38 employees. The reason it is important to deal with the title 38 employees--and it is important to note--is that one of the executives implicated in manipulating the wait times in Phoenix is a title 38 employee. This bill does not address that employee. The bill also does not address some of the most egregious examples of failure in the system within the Department. As I mentioned earlier, a doctor was provided partial performance pay, even though he had let his license expire, because that was not part of the performance objective. I will be supporting this legislation, so we can move it through the process and so we can go to conference to actually address some of these issues. I hope that we will be able to address these issues. They are very serious issues, and they are issues that are important to our veterans. It is important for us on the committee that we deal with this, and I hope, Mr.…”