I think that this is something we can find some common ground on, and we need to work in the next budget cycle hopefully together.

When you report to the boss and everyone knows you report to the boss, that carries weight

We can be civil. And my experience this weekend was a big improvement. So thank you.

Having stable leadership that exacts standards of performance, rewards good performance but also holds people accountable for bad performance can have a very salutary effect.

But I also think, when you have the kind of turnover in leadership that your facility has had, it's--it has a huge toll on productivity and morale with the work force.

If I'm terminating someone, I got--the paperwork at least is done by HR?

Men and women who put on the uniform to protect our country had every reason to believe they would receive the highest quality healthcare as a statement of our commitment to them.

We should never have to tell this story. Men and women who put on the uniform to protect our country had every reason to believe they would receive the highest quality healthcare as a statement of our commitment to them.

a culture of complacency, but what I, frankly, would have called a culture of indifference, indifference to their patients.

We need to make sure that there is a plan in place, that after all of you are gone, that the next person that comes in, that we're not having another hearing here with a tragedy that has happened because we don't have a system in place.

The level and breadth of neglect detailed in the report is almost inconceivable and certainly callous.

Putting procedures in place is the easy part. Eradicating the culture of indifference or complacency, that's the hard part, and it will take a significant investment on the part of leadership.

Today, I am here to put the leadership on notice. Congress will not stand for continued failures that threaten the health and safety of our veterans at what ought to be the VA's flagship medical center.

For everyone who works at D.C. Veterans Medical Center, from the custodian to the cardiac surgeon, there must be one standard, one standard, and that's one of excellence.

I'm under a lot of pressure. And, frankly, it may be almost an impossible task, given the numbers.

I look forward to continuing to work with you on an issue that affects so many of our constituents.

I thank the gentleman.

So what you've just described are sort of institutional barriers to providing quality service, and they did work-arounds to try to give that quality service the barriers within the system notwithstanding?

what the Inspector General, Michael Missal, politely deemed, and I quote, a culture of complacency, but what I, frankly, would have called a culture of indifference

this issue knows no partisan line, and we will work together as one subcommittee and with one committee to try to nudge and support, where appropriate, to make sure that the issues that we have identified and that the IG has identified are…

I thank the gentlelady. And she makes a really good point.

we need to make sure that there is a plan in place, that after all of you are gone, that the next person that comes in, that we're not having another hearing here with a tragedy that has happened because we don't have a system in place.

We're going to develop a matrix for monitoring progress, and it's got to be a workable matrix to you and for us.

In some cases, however--I mean, for example, we had a case where I think, if I recall, the blood supply had to be destroyed because it had not properly been stored. Is that correct?

When you say inactivated, it just sounds so Nixonian.