Political Quotes

“I thank the Chair, and I thank my colleague for his comments on the Affordable Care Act. I am actually excited to be here having a debate about veterans and about the promises we have made to those who are reliant on not only the VA but on this institution to actually look at the programs and the services provided, and when we, as a body, see deficiencies, reforming them, fixing them, so our customer--who is that person who made that ultimate sacrifice, who put on that uniform and, in many cases, now has a lifetime disability because of it--can count on that health care system to be there. I would have expected we would be on the floor debating in a bipartisan way those fixes that were needed to make sure that veterans with disability claims didn't have to wait hundreds of days to determine whether they were going to have a disability that was signed off on and, if so, what the percentage was and that percentage then provided them income. I thought we would focus on the challenges the Senate has to reform how the appeals process works. Because when a veteran is denied a disability claim or he gets less than he thinks he should have been awarded, then he has the opportunity to appeal that to the court of appeals. The time now for the appeals decision has grown to years. It shouldn't be like this. It is absurd that the Congress of the United States, much less the Veterans' Administration, is content with the deficiencies we have in this broken system.…”