Providing for Consideration of H.R. VA Accountability First and Appeals Modernization Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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I thank the gentleman from Georgia. I want to point out that with regard to procedures and regular order and how this body works, there is a difference between these two bills, the one that I discussed previously under the other rule and this one. The deficit bill, the $30 billion increase in the deficit that the Republicans want to do, that came through what we call regular order, meaning it was marked up in the Ways and Means Committee. That is normally how things work around here. A bill goes through committee, then it comes to the Rules Committee, and then it goes to the floor.

This bill, however, sort of magically appeared in Rules Committee. It didn't go through the committee of jurisdiction which, at the very least, would include the Veterans' Affairs Committee. It might include other committees as well. It simply appeared and was referred to the floor. So what that means is Members of Congress and a committee did not have a chance to amend it. We don't even know if it would have had a vote in committee and whether it cleared committee. Instead, it just sort of appeared right now.

So, look, we all deeply care, of course, about veterans. I agree with much of what my colleague from Georgia said about the need for the VA to do better.

In Colorado, I have been very involved with our long-overdue, new veterans hospital in Aurora. We have been working many years on getting this completed. In fact, delays have cost taxpayers over $300 million. It continues to leave many who served in our Armed Forces, including many of my constituents, without the convenient, quality care that they were promised.

So I join my colleagues, Mr. Perlmutter, Mr. Coffman, and many others from our entire Colorado delegation, in, of course, wanting to improve the quality of services at the VA. We had issues as well with fraudulent overbilling and mislabeling of the amount of time that patients waited out of our Fort Collins facility.

There are a number of problems with this bill, but one of them that I want to briefly mention is that it can actually lead to less accountability in the VA because it could lead to the punishment of whistleblowers, of employees who speak up against mismanagement.

When you are looking at passing a thoughtful human resources policy or personnel policy--and I don't dispute that we need to work with the VA to come up with a better way of doing it--you want to make sure that somebody who is a whistleblower is adequately protected. If somebody comes forward and says, you know what, we are doing mislabeling of timesheets, or, you know what, I know why this project is $300 million over budget, and this might be because of X, Y, or Z, it doesn't always rise to the Federal level of whistleblower.

We just want good employees to not feel that they can be fired for coming forward with the truth about misconduct. This bill does not do that. In fact, it will make those who have useful information that can lead to systemic improvements at the VA more hesitant to come forward with that information.

The bill removes a due process protection for VA employees and reduces the amount of time they have to respond to a termination by two-thirds, from 30 days to 10 days. We all want to move expeditiously, but it seems like 30 days is a reasonable timeframe. There is no evidence given as to why that 20-day reduction is needed. I haven't heard any.

It also eliminates a requirement that supervisors provide specific examples of poor performance when an employee is terminated--of course, there should be reasons given--opening the door for unnecessary firings and leaving VA employees with no recourse or rebuttal.

In any organization, employee morale is critical. And to create an environment of paranoia in any enterprise--a company, an agency--is not conducive to furthering the mission. Creating this kind of uncertainty and chaos from a personnel perspective within the VA would likely only make our services to veterans even harder to provide and worse by decreasing employee morale, therefore, making it harder to attract the type of quality caregivers and administrators that we need to facilitate the VA program.

Look, this bill is an attempt to make long-overdue reforms. I wish that it was a thoughtful, bipartisan attempt. I wish it had gone through committee. I wish the committee had worked on it, marked it up, and reported it out with bipartisan support; but that is not what has happened here.

This bill appeared at the last minute, throws away basic rights of employees, reduces morale, endangers whistleblowers, and does very little to improve the quality of services of the VA or, frankly, the accountability of the employees of the VA, both at the management level and at the worker level.

Like a lot of ideas that we debate here, of course, there is a kernel of an idea here. Yes, we want to work together to reform the VA. We agree with that. My colleague from Georgia gave a lot of reasons. I could give my own. I mentioned the price overrides in our hospital in Aurora. I have mentioned the manipulated timesheets in Fort Collins. I have mentioned, like my colleague from Georgia, just the individual cases where I have had constituents that we have had to help navigate an overly complex bureaucracy and they shouldn't have to go to their Member of Congress.

For men and women who have served our country, for men and women who were injured in the line of duty, for men and women who are disabled from a service-related injury, we owe them our very best. They stood up and defended our freedom, and we owe them all the highest quality of care to take care of them through our VA system, or through Veterans Choice, and the other types of programs that serve our veterans' community. Of course, we need to reform and do better in the VA.

Again, rather than this kind of irresponsible, appeared-out-of- nowhere magical bill that would actually penalize the very whistleblowers that we need to tell us about misconduct and would decrease morale even further in an agency where it has already been impacted, let's start fresh. Let's work together. Let's go back to committee. Let's come up with a thoughtful approach to improving the VA. And let's make this happen.

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Mr. POLIS. Will the gentleman yield?

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Mr. POLIS. In those 2 months, why wasn't there a time for this to go through the committee process and regular order?

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