Beto O'Rourke

I realize the sequester forces some short-term decisions that are very painful. No one likes sequester.

And as I have said before in previous hearings, we look forward to working with you collaboratively to make sure that we can do a better job out of Waco.

Mr. Secretary, I would also like to thank you for your service and what you describe as a very ambitious set of goals and agenda that is matched with the muscle necessary to implement it.

I think this decision was made in the context of some misinformation at the time about the availability of water in El Paso.

I appreciate that, and I appreciate your answer on the number of zeroscaped or cemeteries that are saving water.

I appreciate the ambition of getting to all claims under 125 days by 2015, but it really seems that there is a crisis in that Waco Regional Office.

I want to commend the Chairwoman for her focus on this question of how we define border security...

El Paso, a border community, is among the safest in the Nation.

Let me ask, Acting Commissioner McAleenan, there is this a very legitimate concern that we not supplant Federal resources that should be obligated to border communities like ours, and instead, if we are going to contribute, it is a…

Because we know in El Paso, and I think those of us who are interested in trade in this country understand that the more we get through our ports of entry, the more jobs we create here.

I wanted to follow up on some of the questions asked and comments made about return on investment.

I am glad that the Ranking Member mentioned SBInet and some of the boondoggles that DHS has been involved in, in the past.

What are the protections to the taxpayer with these evolving goals and definitions?

How do you see your job in terms of managing that balance that you talked about, between civil rights... and balance that against these security concerns?

We will be able to measure progress against those goals. Measure the effectiveness of the dollar spent.

Can we justify spending ongoing tax payer dollars to support these expensive systems while an entirely different system is being developed?

Our goal is to continue to improve health outcomes and take advantage of advances in the commercial marketplace as quickly as possible.

Why should we ask our service member and families to wait for a newly-developed system when there are commercially available systems running our nation's top ranked hospitals and clinics?

If DoD and VA used commercial systems, they would be able to exchange information with the commercial healthcare neighbors.

Couldn't the DoD use these methods to share patient information with the VA if they adopted a commercial system?

Former Army Surgeon General Schoomaker and several other military leaders testified in 2009 that the DoD needs to replace their current clinical system, AHLTA, in order to improve quality of care, patient engagement, provider satisfaction…

The obligations that we owe to these veterans.

Do you have any specific recommendations to correct those longstanding deficiencies?

Thank you. Ms. Melvin, you talked about longstanding institutional deficiencies and I think in your last statement you helped to define what those are.

You helped to put a human face on an issue that for many people can be reduced to processes or numbers or abstractions.