Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, as chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee of the U.S. Senate, I am proud to be joined by other members of the committee for a colloquy and a report to the American people on the progress we are making to hold the VA accountable for our veterans and our taxpayers.

As all will remember, there was a terrible tragedy at the VA hospital in Phoenix last year. Because of missed appointments, erased records, consults that were removed, veterans waiting for services never got them, and in three cases they died. That was malfeasance in office and brought a great scandal to the VA.

In January, when our committee took hold, we decided to go to the Justice Department and the inspector general and say: Go into the VA, investigate these incidents that took place, and if we find criminal wrongdoing or civil wrongdoing, we should prosecute these people to make sure it doesn't happen again.

I am never happy when anybody is indicted, but I was satisfied that last Friday the first indictment came down from the Justice Department against a VA hospital employee--unfortunately, in my State of Georgia at the VA hospital in Augusta--for 50 counts of falsifying medical records, the results of which ended up benefiting the employees and hurting veterans.

I promise the American people and Members of the Senate that this is not going to be the last indictment. We are going to see to it that people are held accountable for their actions and that they do what is right morally and what is right legally. We owe nothing less and we owe nothing more to our veterans than that type of treatment.

Yesterday the VA committee met, and we approved two great bills in our effort to bring about greater accountability. One of those bills was the Rubio-Johnson bill, which allows the firing and holding of accountability of VA employees for malfeasance and misconduct in office for cause.

As many people know, the VA oftentimes in disciplining people just moved them to another job at the same pay because they can't move them out of the system. So the accountability never takes place, there is no sense of accountability, and veterans are not well served. Thanks to the Rubio-Johnson bill, people who for cause are terminated will have a brief hearing and a chance to justify their case, and if their case is not justified, they will be removed from the Veterans' Administration health services agency and they will be fired. That is the type of accountability every American who is employed at their job has, and we think that is the same accountability every employee ought to have at the VA.

After that, we then passed the Cassidy-Ayotte bill, a bill that I was very proud of because Senator Cassidy and Senator Ayotte said the following: It is just not right for somebody who is not doing their job to get a bonus.

As many people know, bonuses were paid in the VA last year to employees who were being reprimanded for misconduct and bad behavior. You cannot take a benefit away retroactively, and this bill does not do that, but it says to the VA prospectively that rewards and bonuses cannot be earned by those who are not conducting their job in the way they should.

These are the types of accountability measures that people in the United States expect.

As chairman of the committee, I always want to brag about the good things VA employees do, and they do a lot of good things. For every one scandal you hear about, there are hundreds of thousands of benefits veterans are receiving because of good, loyal employees. But the best employees in the world are brought down a notch when those who are not good are allowed to continue to stay on the job even if they are not performing or get bonuses when they are not performing.

I am so proud of the Cassidy-Ayotte bill and Johnson-Rubio bill, which say to the American people that we are going to have accountability; we are going to pay bonuses for good behavior, not bad behavior; and if somebody doesn't do their job, they will lose that job if that cause is justified. That is what the American people expect of the Senate, that is what they expect of our committee, and I am proud to report to the Senate today that started.

I am also proud to yield to the Senator from Louisiana, Mr. Cassidy, a physician, a doctor who understands health services and who brought one of these accountability issues to the committee yesterday.

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