I don't want it to also take away from our initial mission at the VHA, providing and improving the care we are providing there.

I led a bipartisan letter with my colleagues in North Texas to ask the VA to work with us in facilitating the acquisition of a donated hospital in Garland to help us meet the growing demand.

Texas is proud to be home to the most women veterans of any state, and yet wait times for women's health care services can be longer than wait times for other services.

I hope you understand that this Committee wants to work with you on it. We want this to be a success.

I think that we are going to have to continue to change and grow our VHA services to deal with our new community of veterans and especially here in Texas with us having the most women veterans, it is a big issue for us.

Wait times for veterans in North Texas are too long.

Thank you for that commitment and for coming to north Texas.

As my colleagues have noted we are of course experiencing a crisis of military sexual assault with claims likely to increase on VBA and VHA going forward.

I have the honor of representing the Great State of Texas. We are home to the most women veterans of any state, and I am very proud of our 181,000 women veterans who have served us.

I want to first express my deepest condolences to the families of those lost in these two crashes.

Going forward, we would like to see our subject matter experts, our 737 pilots in our safety and training program at the Allied Pilots Association invited to future certification proceedings on all future designs.

I think it is critical that we not ignore Africa and that we counter Chinese and Russian influence in Africa.