Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. SALMON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate the gentlewoman from the Ninth Congressional District of Arizona, which is right adjacent to mine. She is my neighbor, and I am proud to cosponsor this with her to show a strong unity of bipartisanship for our veterans. And if there isn't a better cause here in Washington, D.C., to stand bipartisan with, I don't know what it is.
I want to echo some of the things that Congresswoman Sinema has said. This is unconscionable. And since these allegations have come to light, we have received numerous phone calls in our district from other like-minded people that have said, I had a similar circumstance happen to me.
So when Representative Sinema approached me about cosponsoring this amendment to allocate $1 million from the general fund of the Veterans Administration and appropriate it to the IG so that we can get a thorough investigation, it seems to me that this is the least we can do.
Why is this important? You might remember just a few years ago that a gentleman named--I call him gentleman, I think that is a loose term--Ken Lay, the CEO of Enron, went to prison for cooking the books. Now we have got some serious allegations about those that are entrusted with a sacred trust--our veterans' very livelihood--at stake. And I believe that this group of folks in the Veterans Administration has betrayed that trust. But we have got to get to the bottom of it.
Why is it important? Because it is the integrity of the system. A lot of the folks in my district, the veterans, have said that they don't have the confidence to even be utilizing that system anymore, and so they are right now going out of network. They are paying out of their pocket. I have heard many of them say that, as well.
So we, as a Congress, are required to provide oversight for these kinds of programs and ensure that they are getting the best--not the mediocre, and certainly not the worst, which I believe is happening right now in our own State in Arizona--and we demand justice. We demand some sunshine. Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and we demand some sunshine on this process. That is why we want to investigate it.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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