Engine commends you for holding today's hearing entitled 'Veterans in Tech: Innovative Careers for All Generations of Veterans.'

I am proud to say that a technology platform has never economically empowered this community in such a manner before.

Negativity over and over again is not helping in this situation.

This is more than that.

Dr. Tim Murphy, who is a Navy veteran, psychologist, Member of Congress, has a very good bill, I believe.

It is not uncommon for us to hear from veterans who were blocked by HR officials or managers for consideration.

It is not uncommon for VA hiring managers to complain that they always try to use a special hiring authority.

Some form of veterans preference has been a fixture in Federal hiring since the Civil War.

So those points are in at the beginning.

One of the things I am taking away from this is that we don't really have a definitive system that we are working with on this.

In reality, veterans preference is often thwarted by an overly complicated competitive or excepted service system.