Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND VETERANS AFFAIRS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 15, 2007)

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Mr. BUYER. Mr. Chairman, I was sitting here, and I enjoyed the comments of the Chair of the subcommittee, Mr. Edwards, and the comments of Mr. Wicker, and then I was disturbed by the comments of Mr. Obey.

Mr. Chairman, what I would say is he didn't go back far enough. I came here in 1992, and I heard the horror stories of what was occurring in the Appropriations Committee of how individuals would cut veterans programs to fund WIC and other programs. I was deeply disturbed by that.

Then I would watch as the Clinton years would flatten VA spending. I guess the gentleman forgot about that too.

I want to associate myself with Mr. Edwards' comments and Mr. Wicker's comments because this is a bipartisan issue, and I am deeply disturbed about Mr. Obey's comments to try to rewrite history here. Some of the language, inflammatory language, that he used is deeply disturbing to me.

Now, if the gentleman wants to talk about his issues and how he feels about the war, that's one thing; but don't allow those emotions to bleed into how we care for America's veterans. That bothers me.

We talk about how we got here. I recall the movie ``Born on the 4th of July.'' What did they depict in the movie ``Born on the 4th of July''? They depicted a VA system which bothered many people here in Congress. It was then Ken Keyser who worked for the Clinton administration who then thought that the best way we could improve our VA system is to move more people into the system. They set forth the priorities, but then they opened the system to the nondisabled systems.

When we opened that, we didn't really prepare the system for the number of veterans that came into the system. When I looked back here over the last 6 years, my gosh, we have almost doubled the veterans budget.

We also, as we are coping with dealing with the influx of veterans based on eligibility reform, I almost feel like, on the Veterans' Affairs Committee on a bipartisan basis, we are mechanics looking at different subsets of systems within the VA that need a tremendous amount of work.

It's easy for us to always talk about the health side, but there is such a strong disability backlog too. If it were just money, if we could just throw money on it, and that's what would solve it, Mr. Edwards, if that's what you could put in the budget, it would be solved. The reality is that's not what's going to solve it. What's going to solve it will be management practices and accountability. If we don't have that, it's not going to be solved.

The chairman of the committee is now on the floor. When he held a roundtable discussion, he learned that they were giving exams to those who are the case workers out there. When you get only 23 and 27 percent pass rate by the individuals who are actually working on these disability claims, I would say we've got a problem and we have to work cooperatively on those problems.

I want to thank the new majority. I want thank the new majority because you are different from the old majority.

The old majority, when I came here a freshman, and I was in the minority, because that old majority did things a little differently, and those weren't good budgets on behalf of veterans. But when you came now in the new majority, Mr. Edwards, I congratulate you, because you have done what you said you were going to do. I want to personally thank you for that.

But I just want you to know this, Mr. Edwards, there is much work for all of us, because it's not going to be just money alone.

When Mr. Obey brought up the issue about the funding shortfall, what I did is I went in and I began to examine the finance modeling and found the errors in the inputs in the stale data in the model, and that's how we made the corrections. So even though we put in the $1.5 billion, we only spent a third of that, and the other went for carryover.

So there's going to be a lot of management issues, and there's going to be a lot of oversight that we going to have to continue to do. But as a baseline, let me congratulate you, Mr. Edwards and Mr. Wicker, on a very good bill.

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Mr. BUYER. Picking up off the comment that Mr. Edwards had made in his opening statement about management, I think you're right on point. Good management of the resources and accountability is what's essential.

So when the chairman just spoke in the well and said, well, we don't have the money, that's not entirely correct because the GAO came back in 2005 and 2006 and said, we gave them sufficient resources allocated toward mental health, but they didn't even spend around $60 million that you had already given them in those cycles.

Mr. Edwards, you worked on those budgets. So it's not just giving them the money; that was my point made earlier.

So when Mr. Filner made the comment, they don't have the money; we had given them the money, then they didn't utilize it. And so I agree with Mr. Filner when he gets his angst about how it is that you don't spend money we gave you, yet you've got waiting lines.

It goes back then to the management question about the resources in which we get them, and that's where I'd like to work with you and work with the chairman of the committee.

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Mr. BUYER. Mr. Chairman, the only thing I would note, as I listened to the Speaker speak in the well, is that when the Republicans presented their budget proposal as an alternative, we spent $8 billion more than the majority in the 10-year scope, actually in the 5-year budget plan, $8 billion more. And we did it without increasing taxes.

So what everybody needs to understand here is, yes, we are increasing money here to veterans, but these are also the very same veterans which are about to be taxed.

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Mr. BUYER. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, this amendment is either ill-conceived or politically conceived in that the Deputy Secretary is the gentleman who came to the committee to testify, and that was by agreement at the committee.

So to say that the administration sent someone who was uninformed is not a good way to address this to our colleagues.

That was by agreement of the committee, and it was the Deputy Secretary of the VA who came in and who testified, and as a matter of fact, his testimony, that I will share with all my colleagues, is that he testified just last week during the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on the SEC bonuses, at which the author of this amendment was present and he said, by statute, senior executive presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed appointees are not eligible for performance bonuses.

Did you hear that? They're not eligible for bonuses. So what we have here is, the gentleman's brought an amendment that is either redundant, multiplicitous or unnecessary.

With that, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

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