Dan Benishek

Veterans are fortunate to have access to a health care system designed to treat their wounds.

I hope that the VA staff here today will listen to the comments of the first panel and incorporate a lot of their ideas going forward.

I was so pleased by the atmosphere there. There were guys that had actually been through the problems helping other veterans.

Well, maybe at the end of March you can update the committee on where you are at.

Is there any reason why you couldn't just do it? I mean, apparently there was somebody at one time, and now they are not there. So why can't we just commit to making that happen?

I just don't like the fact that we are waiting for this to happen and it never happens.

I think the gist of it was, frankly, there doesn't seem to be enough care locally.

It is clear from my visit yesterday and from the testimony we are going to hear this morning that there are some very exciting things going on here in Southern California for our veterans.

I am grateful for Ms. Brownley's hard work and leadership on our subcommittee over the last year.

I am Dr. Dan Benishek, a congressman from Michigan's 1st District, the northern half of Michigan.

We just have one more speaker, and I will close after that. Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

At this time I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Shuster).

At this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Latta).

I have six more speakers, Mr. Chairman. Mr. DeFAZIO. I have no more speakers except myself, so I would suggest the gentleman go ahead. I reserve the balance of my time.

I hope that you all will tell our colleagues on the floor to consider voting for this VA Accountability Act

I have got this VA Accountability Act which would actually make the VA identify somebody within the VA who is responsible.

I have difficulty with the fact that we never seem to identify a person who is responsible for the follow up.

What can we do better to identify, you know, the people who manage this system and to make them accountable for these errors?

What can we do? I guess really the problem to me is accountability.

I cannot believe that a, you know, something must have been wrong.

I would like to thank you all as well for being here and taking the time to sit before us to answer questions.

I am very wary of data--I mean I would do operations in my practice, and I certainly don't change the operation that I do based on somebody's report.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Hastings, I would like to thank you and Ranking Member DeFazio and the committee staff for your commitment to moving H.R. 163, the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore Conservation and Recreation Act…

It's very, very important that we consider national park rules that have local input and not allow folks in Washington to determine how we use our land in the States.

Whenever we cede authority to the Federal Government of our lands without having local input or local people being involved, we risk these arbitrary rules coming forward that affect the people locally.