I am a veteran. I have got an education benefit. I have chosen my school. I show up at school, tuition had not been paid.

There are very few issues that are more important, in my estimation, than to ensure that the programs and the services for our veterans are adequately funded.

I would like to ask you on the Committee's behalf today, as we go through 2010 and you begin to bring in Priority 8s, will you regularly make us aware of how many Priority 8s have come into the system?

I commend them for their hard work on behalf of our veterans.

I am especially pleased that the budget appears to fund legislation I authored and was signed into law last year to help our veterans who are at risk of becoming homeless.

I want you to know what a special privilege it is to have you in this position.

Many members brought up in their opening statements concerns as it relates to the VA's intent to raise revenue by billing insurance companies and charging them for the VA's care related, I think, to medical services even for…

I believe you on that, and I believe that that is the mission of VA.

I think we may all be shocked at how close the ideas come.

I challenged the VSOs several weeks ago, General, to start with a clean piece of paper and tell us how to design that process so that we would not have a backlog system, and I say to all of them that are here today I am still waiting for…

I do not want to squander the opportunity for change afforded by this budget because of miscalculations or misuse of funds.