Political Quotes

“My colleagues, next week marks the 1-year anniversary since General Eric Shinseki resigned as the Secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department. At the time, the President promised reform. He said: ``The number one priority is making sure that problems get fixed.'' Instead of a new day at the VA, the American people are still seeing more of the same. Last year, Congress gave the VA Secretary new authority to fire employees. While some 110 VA facilities kept secret lists to hide their wait times, just one person has been fired--one. What the hell happened to the rest of them? Some got to retire with their benefits, some got transfers, some got paid leave, some got a slap on the wrist. All of them went on collecting checks from taxpayers. If only the Veterans Administration did half as good a job of taking care of our veterans as they do the bureaucrats, we would be in a lot better shape. Congress also gave the VA more than $16 billion to improve care and to shorten waiting times, yet the number of patients facing long waits is about the same. The number of patients waiting more than 90 days has doubled. At this point, the VA can't even build a hospital. Just about every project ends up years behind schedule and hundreds of millions, if not billions, over cost. Last week, the public learned that the VA is spending $6 billion a year illegally.…”