Political Quotes

“I am hoping today we will see a rare bipartisan moment here in the House when both sides can come together in support of our veterans. The final amendment I'm offering here today will exempt certain VA facilities from the decommissioning process outlined in the legislation today. It will not kill this bill or even delay its passage. If it's adopted, my amendment will incorporate into the bill and the bill will be immediately voted upon. I agree with my friends across the aisle that we need to address government waste, especially in this fiscal environment. I can understand why it makes sense to target the poor management and underutilization of government properties to reduce government waste, but I don't think our desire to address these issues should come at the expense of our veterans. The underlying bill already includes plenty of exemptions to the CPRA process, namely for bases, camps, or stations under jurisdiction of DOD. It seems to me that if the bill already excludes buildings from the consolidation process because our troops rely on them, we should also exclude the buildings for our veterans because they rely on those buildings also. As ranking member of the VA Health Subcommittee, I've heard testimony after testimony from veterans about the difficulties they face in accessing all the VA health services they need. The VA already provides health care to approximately 7.8 million veterans.…”