Political Quotes

“Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers. I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Speaker, to be clear, we are very aligned on the goals here. I am not implying that wait times went down if we didn't have Choice. I was on the conference committee that created Choice as part of it. There is community care that has been there. There is also a $12 billion shortfall in facilities rated D and F. We had sewer lines breaking and running feces back into hospitals, those types of things. I am not saying that maybe the money is not already there or they are not using it correctly. The fact of the matter is this was a program that was created out of the crisis of Phoenix. It did not stand up as quickly as it could have; it was plagued with tons of problems that many of us heard about. We kept committed to it. I would argue that they are getting their legs under them and providing care in a timely manner. It grossly overspent where it was at. We have had no audit. And I think we need to keep this in mind, that on this side of the aisle, I will be the first to talk to anyone who grandstands this and makes this as a case that this is a failure at the VA or the administration. I don't know that yet. What I would say is we are all in this together, so we want to get it done.…”