Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I commend Senator Murray, Senator Akaka, and all Members who have worked together with Senator Feinstein and myself on…”

“I commend Senator Murray, Senator Akaka, and all Members who have worked together with Senator Feinstein and myself on this veterans issue. I spent last Thursday with Veterans' Administration Secretary Nicholson. I am very pleased Secretary Nicholson has done so much to address this issue once he determined from an audit of the agency that we were not going to get through 2005 for the Veterans' Administration without taking from maintenance funds and other funds to cover our operating expenditures. The Secretary could have tried to put this Band-Aid on, but he did not. Secretary Nicholson came right out and said we do not have enough for 2005. We have models that show us what the growth rate for service in the Veterans' Administration would be. The models show about 2.3 percent. That has been the norm throughout the last number of years. But in fact the growth rate is 5 percent. So Secretary Nicholson, Josh Bolton, at the Office of Management and Budget, and the President himself said we are not going to put a Band- Aid on the Veterans' Administration. Senator Murray saw this coming early on. She did believe there were more veterans coming into the system from what she was hearing in the field, and the Veterans' Administration at that time did not see the model that was not working. But when they did, they stepped up to the plate.…”