Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, in 2014, Congress passed legislation with broad bipartisan support to improve access to and the quality of care for veterans in response to the nationwide scandal over manipulated wait times at the VA. The Veterans' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act created a 3-year program to allow veterans to seek care from private providers if they live too far from a VA facility or cannot otherwise get an appointment within 14 days. It also gave the VA Secretary the authority to fire senior executives for poor performance and required a top-to-bottom study of the entire Department to be completed within 1 year of enactment. When government failure is exposed and legislation aimed at restoring accountability is enacted, it makes sense that action would be swift and immediate, people would be fired, and wrongs would begin to be made right. Unfortunately, that has not been the case at the Department of Veterans Affairs. While there are as many as 1,000 employees that could potentially face disciplinary actions, the VA has punished a total of eight for involvement in the scandal. We continue to hear about unacceptable patient wait times, unanswered benefit inquiries, patient safety concerns, medical malpractice, flagrant mismanagement, infighting, corruption, and years of construction delays that total millions of dollars. Frustration, anger, outrage, Mr.…”