On the recordJune 5, 2014
there is good news for America's veterans this afternoon. Senator McCain and Senator Sanders, the chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, have apparently come to a tentative agreement on what we should do to deal with some of the serious problems at the Veterans' Administration. We know a couple of things. First of all, we know that health care in the veterans hospitals, in the VA system, in the community-based clinics in places such as Akron and Canton and Youngstown and Springfield and Mansfield and the care in the big hospitals, such as Wade Park and Dayton, is superb and there is overwhelming support among veterans for the care they have earned and deserve and are getting. The problem is getting access to that care in a number of cases. Too many veterans have waited too long, been forced to wait too long to get the medical care and the medical treatment they need. That is a product, frankly, of a historically underfunded VA. We know a decade ago, when the President a decade ago--more than a decade ago-- and the Senate and the House took the country to war the Veterans' Administration funding was put pretty flat.…





