Political Quotes

“My manager's amendment makes a number of minor technical changes to the reported version of the bill and would significantly reduce discretionary costs while maintaining the overall intent of the bill. The biggest change that would be made in the manager's amendment is the removal of section 11 of the bill, which would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to track a number of hiring effectiveness metrics. That section alone scored at $6 million because the Congressional Budget Office expected that the VA would have to hire an additional employee in each Veterans Integrated Service Network in order to gather that information. I disagree with that assertion and I intend to continue working on that provision to, hopefully, include it in future legislation in some form. In addition, the manager's amendment would authorize but not require the VA to track and match qualified job applicants for vacant positions using the recruiting database that the bill would establish. The CBO estimated that the VA would have to hire up to 40 additional employees with an average compensation of $100,000 per year to accomplish that task, meaning that provision in total would cost $19 million. Again, I disagree with the assertion that such a task could not be accomplished using existing staff.…”