Political Quotes

“I thank very much the Senator from Idaho. Let me wrap it up by making the point that Acting Secretary Gibson made this morning which was a very simple but important one. What he said is we must address the immediate crisis of ending these outrageously long waiting periods that veterans are now experiencing in order to get into the VA. Right now--and I am proud of what he is doing--they are moving very aggressively to get veterans all over this country into private health care when necessary and any other form of health care, to make sure those waiting periods go down. I think they are doing a pretty good job. They have to continue to do that, but we should be mindful that this is going to be a very expensive process. The other point he made, which is equally important, is that long term, if the goal is to end these unacceptable waiting periods, we have to give the VA the staffing and the space and the facilities and the infrastructure they need. He came forward with what I recognize is a very big pricetag. His pricetag was $17.6 billion, so we can get the 10,000 more staff we need, the doctors, the psychiatrists, the primary health care physicians, the mental health counselors we need, get the space we need, because in many facilities around the country the staff can't operate because they don't have adequate space. So what I would say to my colleagues, if we are serious about addressing this very important problem, we will go forward in two ways. No.…”