Joe Manchin

First of all, the national debt is almost $20 trillion now, 100 percent of GDP, and no end in sight.

I want to thank my friend Doug for his willingness to serve our great nation and thank this Committee for allowing me to come before you today.

The only precondition we need is we're not going to repeal it and the other precondition we need is that we're going to go through a regular order.

I've tried to remind the President and the White House, you know, the President got elected with one of which are tremendous margin in West Virginia and those were mostly Democrats.

Well, not a nice thing it does and from my point of view it doesn't from saying, you know, we're going to save $470 billion. That's a lot of money and we need to be as cost effective as we possibly can.

If you can't change your mind, you can't change anything.

The only two things you have uninterruptible in the United States or in the world that I know of, is coal and nuclear.

We still get the living crap kicked out of us every day by Washington. Unbelievable.

We like to do the heavy lifting, and we will continue to do it.

Oh, it is not going down.

You have to be in the real world. And the real world is you better have so much reliable power and coal is going to play a major part, 30 percent or more, for the next 20, 30 years.

Well, if we can get you all--can we get any written statements in support of that because we are working with the Department of Energy.

I am very much concerned about that because I remember the Polar Vortex.

Well, West Virginia is happy to continue to provide the power that keeps the East Coast lit up.

All of the renewables, God bless them, we like it. We like wind, solar, we like it all.

Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank all of you.

I have remained committed to enhancing the job climate in my state so that West Virginians have good paying jobs.

The second argument is that third-party administrators do not take care of our veterans, plus we cannot do oversight over them.

Why would it be voluntary?

I will tell you that when I visit veterans in Beckley or in my Clarksburg VA hospitals, they really do not like the third-party administrators because veterans do not think those docs know them, do not know their concerns, their needs, and…

Are you capable in the VA of qualifying and overseeing these people?

We all talk a good game. We are all out here showing all of our support for the VA during election time. During the non-election time, these people still need the same care.

What guarantees that you are not going to be sending one to one of these pill mills?

There is a fundamental debate around the third-party administrators, and one argument in the VA is--one argument is that the VA cannot handle the task of scheduling and administering a non-VA care program, so the private sector has got to…

I join my colleagues, Senators Capito and Van Hollen, in bipartisan support to maintain the current proven team...