On the recordSeptember 13, 2016
I thank my friend from Minnesota (Mr. Walz) for yielding to me and for helping me with this amendment. Mr. Chair, this is very simple. It would just remove all of the accountability provisions from the bill and give the House an opportunity to send a clean reform bill to the Senate. While we all agree that accountability for employees at the VA is critical, we should separate these two issues, pass appeals reform, and then work in a bipartisan manner on the accountability issues. Rather than send another accountability bill to the Senate, which is opposed by the administration, we should pass this amendment and send to the President a clean bill that can be signed right away and fix this deeply flawed, old, outdated appeals process. I am proud to have worked with various VSOs and the VA to develop the overhaul of appealing VA benefits claims. As I said earlier, the current system is broken, and every day it gets worse. More appeals are added to the backlog. It has ballooned to 450,000 claims. If we don't act now, veterans will soon have to wait a decade before their appeals can be adjudicated. Passing this amendment will allow us to address this growing problem now instead of subjecting our veterans not to good policy, but to bad politics.
