Willie Hefner: “it is always good for us to talk about the cuts. Everybody likes to have cuts and to get spending under control. But I…”

“it is always good for us to talk about the cuts. Everybody likes to have cuts and to get spending under control. But I am happy to see that we reinstated some of the real vital programs in education that were so sorely needed. However, there is one area of this budget that very much disturbs me. That is our veterans' facilities, our health care facilities. To me, I think what we are doing in this bill is absolutely, totally disgraceful. We are $400 million under the President's request on medical facilities for our veterans. We are $400 million short on construction. Let me just point out a couple things. My dear friend, the gentleman from Georgia, talked about the emergency in Medicare, that we had to do something. I visited these hospitals when the Government shut down. These people were literally working for nothing. To this day, some of them have not been reimbursed for the money that they had coming from the Government shutdown. Some of the nurses there are working two nurses a shift for 37 people in our VA hospital. It is an absolute disgrace what we are doing in this budget for the care of our American veterans. Mr. Speaker, I think that the American people ought to know from where some of these cuts are coming. Sometimes we need to put a human face on cuts. It is good to stand here and talk about how much we have cut and how much we are cutting back and all these things that we are doing, but we have to put a human face to it.”