Veterans Corner
VA Firings Decrease Amid Scandal
Last Sunday, Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press" and claimed he had fired 900 people since he became secretary more than six months ago. While any efforts to rid the department of bad employees are a step in the right direction, I'm puzzled that in the wake of the biggest scandal in VA history, McDonald is on pace to fire even less employees than his predecessor Eric Shinseki, who terminated 2,247 VA employees in fiscal year 2013. Although I believe Secretary McDonald is sincere in his efforts to change VA's culture, the department's transformation won't be complete until employees at all levels understand there are tangible consequences for mismanagement and negligence that harms veterans. Though VA leaders have begun to stress the importance of accountability -- something department officials almost never did in the past -- instilling a climate of accountability at VA will only be achieved through actions, not words. The fact that VA firings have actually decreased amid the biggest scandal in the department's history is a troubling development VA leaders must explain and remedy.
Washington Update
Six Week Recap
Following last November's midterms--where voters elected the largest Republican House majority in nearly a century and flipped the Senate to a new Republican majority--the American people expected Congress to immediately get to work to provide solutions and support economic growth and job creation.
Leading both Houses of Congress is an incredible responsibility and one that should not be taken lightly. That is why we started this new 114th Congress with six weeks in session, during which the House passed a total of 42 bills, all but one of which received bipartisan support. These bills have run the gambit, and are an example of what the Republican-led Congress intends to do: work to make life better for the American people.
From legislation aimed at ensuring that our Nation fulfills its solemn promise to support our veterans--like H.R. 22, the Hire More Heroes Act and H.R. 203, the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans (SAV) Act--to a range of bills that would support small businesses to help them grow and hire new workers--including H.R. 37, the Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act, H.R. 527, the Small Business Regulatory Flexibility Improvements Act and H.R. 636, the America's Small Business Tax Relief Act--the House has advanced commonsense conservative solutions.
The House has also acted in accordance with our constitutional directive to maintain oversight of the executive branch and ensure that the carefully devised system of checks-and-balances continues to function as intended. The House has passed an appropriations bill that would fund the Department of Homeland Security and that would also stop the President's executive amnesty by prohibiting the use of any federal funds from being used by any agency to implement, administer, enforce, or carry out any of the provisions or policies of the President's executive amnesty. Meanwhile, the various House Committees have already held over 75 hearings, including nearly a dozen hearings in the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, which I am humbled to chair, to help hold VA accountable and ensure that veterans are receiving timely access to the full range of care and benefits that they have earned.
We are also looking to make life easier on hard-working American families by protecting them from the onerous impact of Obamacare both through a full and complete repeal, H.R. 596, and through targeted measures such as the Save the American Workers Act, which would restore the traditional 40-hour work week definition to protect the more than 2 million workers who are under threat of losing their jobs or seeing their hours reduced as a result of Obamacare's 30-hour work week redefinition.
While the House has been busy doing the people's work, the President has been busy issuing a seemingly endless series of veto threats. In fact, since the beginning of the year, the President has threatened to veto roughly six times as many bills as he has actually signed into law. The President, it seems, is more interested in playing politics and pandering to special interests than he is working with Congress on behalf of the American people. There is perhaps no clearer example of this than on Keystone XL. As we said we would, both the House and Senate have passed a bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. This commonsense pro-growth project would create more than 40,000 jobs and help support North American energy independence by transporting up to 830,000 barrels a day of oil from Canada to the U.S. Why--when the overwhelming majority of Americans support Keystone XL, when dozens of members of his own party voted to approve the project, and when his own State Department has said that the project will have a minimal environmental impact--would the President choose to put the wishes of a few radical environmental groups over the will of the American people? With Keystone XL approval now on his desk, the President will have to decide very shortly whose side he is on.
In the coming weeks, we will tackle one of the most pressing issues of all: the budget, which the House will release and vote on to restore fiscal responsibility in Washington. As a fiscal conservative, I believe we have a moral duty to future generations to ensure that the economic prosperity and freedom of this country is not imperiled by debt. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues to craft and pass conservative legislation, based on our Nation's constitutional principles, to increase opportunity and make life better for hard-working American families and businesses.
As always, I welcome your comments. To share your thoughts on legislation, votes or issues, please visit http://jeffmiller.house.gov/ to send an e-mail or call any of my offices.
Thanks,
Jeff