Motion to Instruct Conferences on H.R. 3230, Pay Our Guard and Reserve Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. FLORES. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to instruct and yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the motion to instruct would instruct the House conferees to recede from disagreement with the Senate with respect to section 203 of the Senate amendment to H.R. 3230, which would require the Department of Veterans Affairs to use unobligated balances to hire additional health providers.

It would also instruct the House conferees to recede to the Senate position on all other matters.

This is the fifth such motion that has been introduced in the last 10 days. None of them have brought us any closer to reaching the compromise our veterans deserve in the fiscally responsible manner that respects the rights of our taxpayers.

In addition, none of them have brought us any closer to correcting the systemic bureaucratic deficiencies that have led to thousands of veterans waiting for weeks, months, or even years to get the care that they need.

Today, our attention is best spent devoted on working in tandem with our Senate counterparts to find a true compromise. Instead, here we are, yet again, debating an unnecessary, unhelpful, and unbinding motion to instruct.

Mr. Speaker, just yesterday afternoon, Chairman Miller offered a formal proposal to the conference committee that would do the following:

First, it would accept title I through title VII of the original Senate bill, along with additional amended language to include the Oklahoma lease authorization that was included in the House-passed bill, H.R. 3521, but that was left out of the Senate language.

Second, it would provide the VA with $102 million for fiscal year 2014 to address the Department's internal funding shortfalls.

Third, it would provide $10 billion of no-year, mandatory emergency funding to cover the cost of the Senate's choice provision, with the remaining Senate provisions subject to appropriations on an annual basis.

I am supportive of Chairman Miller's proposal, and I, like him, continue to remain optimistic that the House and Senate conferees will be able to successfully accomplish our mission and come to an agreement in advance of the August district work period which is scheduled to begin next week.

There are many important aspects of the bill where the House and the Senate do agree. Recently, however, Senator Sanders, who is the chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and the cochair of the conference committee, has indicated his desire to expand the scope of the conference to include the VA's recent request for as much as an additional $17.6 billion.

The VA health care system has not yet proven itself able to make effective use of the resources that it has been provided. Increasing those resources significantly at this time would be irresponsible, particularly in light of the insufficient details that the VA has provided about how it arrived at this request and how, specifically, this money would be used to increase access for our Nation's veterans and increase accountability for VA bureaucrats.

This summer, the House Veterans' Affairs Committee has received hours of testimony from VA leaders and key, outside stakeholders in an effort to thoroughly understand and evaluate the access and accountability failures of the VA and, by extension, our Nation's veterans, the problems that they have been experiencing.

Those hearings have confirmed that the problems the VA is facing today require long-term and large-scale reform that more money, more people, and more buildings will not bring, by themselves.

Mr. Speaker, we are continually trying to work out a deal with the Senate, and I would argue that these motions to instruct have become not just tiresome but, in fact, they have become very counterproductive.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the motion to instruct, and to allow the conference committee the time and the latitude to work and reach the best possible compromise for the benefit of America's veterans. Our veterans deserve nothing less.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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