BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. COSTELLO of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I thank my good friend from North Carolina for yielding. Mr. Walker has really been a leader in no time on so many issues. It is nice to be his hall mate and also his teammate on the baseball field, and I appreciate him putting together this Special Order to raise a number of issues that we have gotten through the House here and that we are respectfully calling upon the Senate to take up.
I am here to speak about the crying need for change and increased accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs that can be facilitated by the immediate passage of H.R. 1994, the VA Accountability Act of 2015. This is a bill that myself and many others have cosponsored under the leadership of Chairman Jeff Miller, and it is a bill that I am requesting that the Senate take up and pass with bipartisan support here in the House in July.
It gives the Secretary of the VA the additional tools he needs to accelerate the badly-needed culture change at the Department of Veterans Affairs. It gives the Secretary of the VA what he needs to rebuild the trust between the VA and this Congress, taxpayers, and, most importantly, the veterans of this country.
H.R. 1994 includes many provisions to fix the broken personnel system at the Department. But, most importantly, this bill authorizes the Secretary to remove or demote any employee for poor performance or misconduct while also increasing protections for whistleblowers who have been, and continue to be, very important in the oversight role of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
Many of you know the Philadelphia Regional Office has seen scandal after scandal. It has experienced a gross lapse in management, mishandling of claims, the administration of improper payments, and fabricated data. On top of that, the hostile work environment and whistleblower retaliation occurred on a nearly daily basis.
This bill brings accountability to the managers at the Philly VA responsible for these actions, as well as those across the country in the VA, who have acted improperly.
I believe a majority of VA's employees--as we all do here in Congress--this is an important point to make--most people that work at the VA are hard-working public servants who are dedicated to providing quality health care and timely benefits for veterans.
I am sure the majority of these employees are just as frustrated in that most of us see that the VA problem employees continue to be moved to new positions as opposed to being removed from the payroll. We have seen time and again how poor performance can spread like a cancer through a workforce and how the presence of bad employees only leads to poor customer service and is an impediment to the quality of service our veterans have earned.
Our veterans deserve nothing less than the highest quality of care, and it is our job as Members of Congress to do everything in our power to ensure that their care is placed before the interests of entrenched bureaucrats and poor performance. If we want what is best for our veterans, then the status quo at the VA is not acceptable. It is not working. It is failing the mission of the Department, and it is failing the veterans the VA is supposed to serve.
Mr. Speaker, if we do not give the Secretary the tools that he or she needs to hold VA employees accountable, then we are just as culpable for any future VA failures. The antiquated civil service laws that have fostered the VA's cultural mess need to go. That is what the VA Accountability Act does. That is why we are calling on the Senate to take it up.
After the largest scandal in VA's history--and, in my home State, the continued problems at the Philadelphia VA--the VA has only successfully fired three employees for wait time manipulation even though over 100 hospitals have been identified as having gamed the appointment system. That is simply unacceptable. H.R. 1994 would give the Secretary the tools he needs to hold more employees accountable faster than can be done now under existing civil service rules.
As Mr. Walker will continue to do this evening in pointing out a number of bills that have been ushered through the House--reform bills that improve the welfare of this country and that reform various bureaucracies--H.R. 1994 does just that. I urge the Senate to take action and push for accountability just as we have done here in the House on behalf of this country's veterans.
I thank the gentleman for organizing this Special Order tonight.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT