On the recordMay 31, 2012
I want to assure my colleague from California and all the Members, and all the members of the military tonight listening, if you have retired recently, our subcommittee is going to really bore in on this and make sure that the claims backlog is dealt with, that it's done expeditiously. Obviously, we want to make sure that these men and women who, again, have earned everything that this country can possibly give them, to make their life comfortable and secure, to make sure that their health is taken care of, that that claims backlog is dealt with. I also want to reassure my colleagues--and I know that we've got a rapt audience at the Veterans Administration here tonight as well--that we are going to really bore in on this medical records problem. It is utterly unacceptable for Federal bureaucracies to not work together on something as vitally important as medical records. The example that Chairman Rogers gave us of a young man who lost his eyesight because of a bureaucratic inadequacy and just foolishness is just not acceptable. We had another story of a young man who actually lost his life in Bill Young's district, Chairman Young of Florida. So we're going to make sure that those issues are dealt with, and again, to make sure that our men and women in uniform don't ever have to look over their shoulder to worry about what the United States Congress has done to support them. I reserve the balance of my time.
