HERO Transition from Battlespace to Workplace Act of 2014

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill, H.R. 4681.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I might consume.

The Intelligence Authorization Act is the annual blueprint for the work of the intelligence community and America's military intelligence efforts. The bill sets the priorities for our critical intelligence efforts and the legal framework of guidance and oversight for those efforts.

Since the ranking member and I have assumed the leadership of this committee, we passed three intelligence authorization bills in a bipartisan fashion and hope to continue the tradition and trend with H.R. 4681. Passing a yearly intelligence authorization bill is the primary method by which Congress exerts its budgetary and oversight authority over the intelligence community.

As most of the intelligence budget involves highly classified programs, the bulk of this committee's recommendations each year are found in the classified annex to the bill which have been available for Members to review. Among other initiatives, the bill increases funding to address insider threats and improve personnel security programs.

At an unclassified level, I can report that the annex for fiscal year 2014 authorizes funding that is slightly below the President's budget request level. Its funding levels are in line with the levels appropriated by the enacted appropriations act for the National Intelligence Program and with the National Defense Authorization Act for the Military Intelligence Program.

For fiscal year 2015, the bill increases the President's budget request by less than 1 percent and stays within the Bipartisan Budget Act funding caps. The modest increase reflects the committee's concern that the President's request does not properly fund a number of important initiatives and leaves several unacceptable shortfalls.

The legislative provisions that the committee and Congress consider each year are comprised of changes to statute that better enable the community to conduct its important mission and strengthen oversight mechanisms where needed.

Mr. Chairman, we find ourselves in a very interesting time in history. Al Qaeda has metastasized into dangerous affiliates, safe havens have emerged in Syria, parts of Libya, Yemen, Somalia, and the tribal areas of Pakistan. Al Qaeda is also regaining a foothold in northeast Afghanistan just as the President announced a complete withdrawal of U.S. military forces and the counterterrorism capability that comes with it by the end of 2016.

Uneven leadership in recent years has emboldened adversaries like Russia and China, who are increasing their military and intelligence spending and working to change the international order, as we speak, to the detriment of U.S. interests. Russia occupies 20 percent of the nation of Georgia, invaded and occupied Crimea, threatens invasion of eastern Ukraine. China is bullying its neighbors and expanding claims in the South and East China Seas through which 40 percent of world trade travels.

At the same time, North Korea continues its belligerent behavior, and Iran is maneuvering to preserve its capability to develop a nuclear weapon. A nuclear Iran would threaten Israel with annihilation and send the Middle East into a dangerous nuclear arms race.

We rightly demand that our intelligence agencies provide policymakers with the best and most timely information possible on all these and other threats. We ask them to track terrorists wherever they train, plan, fundraise. We ask them to stop devastating cyber attacks that are stealing American prosperity and American jobs. We ask them to track nuclear and missile threats. And we demand that they get it right every time. Now we are asking them do it with fewer resources and with what can be described as confusing direction from our Commander in Chief.

The dedication of men and women of the intelligence community who volunteer to serve in some of the most difficult places on Earth are some of the finest patriots I have ever had the privilege to meet. And within budget constraints and unclear policy guidance from the White House, this bill ensures that they have resources and authorities necessary to keep our Nation and our people safe and accomplish their mission.

As this is the last authorization act I will advance as chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I want to publicly thank my ranking member, my friend, Dutch Ruppersberger. I can't tell what you a privilege it has been to have a partner like Dutch in working through some very difficult issues at a very difficult time in our Nation's history.

National security policy should not be partisan, and we have done everything in our power to ensure that this committee at least takes as nonpartisan a view of national security as is humanly possible. It is an honor to work with someone who is also interested in governing and in making progress on an issue so important to our Nation's future.

I would like to thank the Chair and urge Member support of H.R. 4681, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Pittenger).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank the gentlelady from Illinois for her strong and passionate position that she takes on some of the counterterrorism strategy issues that are very well debated and certainly well discussed and well overseen in the spaces where appropriate and under the appropriate form and function to do that because they are significant. There is no aspect of that counterterrorism strategy that isn't reviewed both in policy leading up to the daily and monthly counterstrategy meetings that happen in the appropriate agencies and departments and as a part of regular oversight of these particular programs.

But I do think it is important to understand something: that all of the focus seems to be on the type of a weapon system that we have used or decided to use or may be using to fight what is a large and growing threat to the United States of America.

I think it was interesting that in the Boko Haram case of the 300 girls, it caught the world's attention, that you could have a group that would be so diabolical that they would kidnap 300 girls and sell them into slavery or force them into marriage and do other unspeakable things. Yes, that is right, that is who these groups are. This is the same group that has threatened the United States of America with terrorist attacks. It is an al Qaeda affiliate. We have watched them cut off the heads of other human beings for the purposes of intimidation, we have watched them cut off hands, we have watched them shoot little girls who get on buses to try to go and get an education.

We need to understand what threat faces the United States of America. Because our intelligence services have been so good and so aggressive, we haven't had an attack here in the same 9/11 fashion--and some of that, by the way, was just sheer luck preparing for the opportunity to catch them.

We need to step back and make sure we are understanding what we are trying to accomplish here and how we try to accomplish it. I think disparaging the very men and women who I know

spent hours and months and years in preparation for any counterterrorism strategy that we engage in, and do it in a way that is so responsible--I think Americans would be so proud if they had the opportunity to sit down and talk with these people about how they get to where they are.

But I will tell you, aspects of that counterterrorism strategy--some have been referenced--are the most impactful, disruptive activity we have been able to do to stop attacks against the United States and our allies overseas.

So I just again caution in this vacuum of safety and relative security that so many have given us, we should be cautious about what we are asking changes to do--and what that would mean for exposure of, say, U.S. pilots or U.S. Special Forces--that we have not had to do for some length of time and still accomplish the mission. By the way, I can clearly say that any reference to some mass civilian casualties or collateral damage is absolutely false, it is false, it is a false narrative for those who seek to stop an effort that we know, in fact, is degrading the ability for attacks against the United States.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time for the purpose of closing.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I thank the ranking member for his work.

Let the American public understand what happens. There are so many aspersions thrown at the members who serve on the Intelligence and on other committees who must do their work in secret, and certainly, the staff fights through and works through all of these difficult issues.

There is plenty of oversight happening. It might not be on the front page of the newspaper. We call that ``disaster day'' in the business of trying to protect American secrets.

When the ranking member and I first took over the committee, we reinstituted all of the regular oversight patterns: counterintelligence matters, covert action matters, regular counterterrorism strategy updates, and reviews.

Again, every piece of that strategy that is implemented is reviewed by the committee, and it is certainly read and reviewed by me, personally, and, I know, by others on the committee as well.

There is a tremendous amount of effort and energy applied to trying to get this right, to making sure that two things happen--one, that they are comporting with the law. They want to do that despite what you might read in the newspaper. They want to do that.

They, too, have taken an oath to the Constitution of the United States of America, and they believe that following the law is the right way to do it. They want Congress' support for what they are doing, and they want the American people's support for what they are doing-- because it is so difficult and so hard to come to the right conclusions in a very murky and dangerous world--so that oversight does happen. It happens regularly.

I want to thank all of the members of both parties for rigorous debate behind those closed doors. There is no lovefest when those doors close and a ``let's just do what we have to do to get to tomorrow.''

The debates are real and vigorous, and we have different philosophies on how we move forward on some of these intelligence matters and collection matters and on how we balance privacy and civil liberties and security. All of that happens.

Sometimes, we find members who just don't agree, but what we do in that space is understand and try to get and make sure that we have all of the resources and all of the policies and all of the authorities our intelligence services need to be impactful to save the

United States and to, yes, maybe even save 300 girls or to, yes, maybe even allow for girls in a place like Afghanistan to get an education. That part needs to be right, too.

Nuclear proliferation--we have a cyber world that is the single largest national security threat to this country that we are not prepared to handle, and there are a lot of sidebar discussions that have nothing to do with the fact that nation-states are stealing our intellectual property--nation-states like China.

You have, according to public reports, countries like Iran that are probing financial institutions right here in the United States and are trying to do destructive attacks.

According to public reports, North Korea even attacked a bank in South Korea some months ago. You see China rising up in its influence in the South and East China Seas. You see potential conflict between Vietnam, Japan, and China.

These are serious, serious matters. Because they are so far away, I think sometimes we forget, and we come to talk about things that are important--in how we move forward in the intelligence business and how we empower them to do the work of the United States.

At the same time, this recent year of, I think, aspersion to the men and women who serve in these capacities is disheartening. This isn't a new thing. George Washington used the intelligence business to try to win the war against the British.

Ben Franklin is credited with the first covert action programs by trying to influence British and Tory opinion during the first years of the war. John Jay created the first counterintelligence unit to try to fight back against what the British were doing in spying against the Americans.

Jefferson and Madison had secret funds that they took, by the way, which we would no longer approve or support today--secret funds--in order to do covert action-type activities in the earliest days of the founding of our Nation.

We need to stop for a minute and think about what is at stake. I think the future and safety and security of the United States is at stake, and we have somehow, over the last year, decided that our intelligence services are the problem.

No. I have bad news. Actually, I have good news: they are part of the solution. If you don't want troops engaged in many countries, then you want to support your intelligence services, and you want them to be the best in the world.

If you don't want to have to engage in the withdrawal of certain diplomatic and economic and trade arrangements around the world, then you want the best intelligence services that you can possibly get. Here is the good news: we have them. We just need to stand behind them.

When they come home from doing hard things, when they lose their colleagues--and they do--they are not looking for a ticker tape parade in New York City. They know that is not going to happen.

What they do want to understand is that, when they turn around, the American population and the American citizens are standing with them. Even though Americans can't give them the ``attaboy,'' we can. Those of us who do this work, we can.

So I will tell them, on this floor today, on behalf of a grateful Nation, thank you for your service. Stop reading the newspaper. Keep doing your job. It will mean the difference of lives saved around the world.

We have so many challenges, and I only say this--and I wasn't planning to say this, Mr. Chairman--that someone came on this floor and said: I don't mind the intelligence people, but I don't like their culture.

These are people who are willing to risk their lives for that flag that stands in the well of this House. They were willing to give their lives for the Constitution they stuck up their hand to support.

Is that the culture we don't like and appreciate anymore in America?

There have been some bumps in the road, but we ought to applaud these people. We ought to sing their praises. We ought to thank them every single day that they are away from their families, in dangerous places, and risking their lives to collect that one piece of information that maybe saves the girls of Boko Haram or maybe saves the girls who get on their bus today in the United States of America.

I hope we shake ourselves out of this notion that we can just continue to beat them and disparage them and call them everything but great patriots and expect them to get up every day and do the job that they need to do to protect this country.

This bill, I think, actually does that. We give them clear guidance. We invest in technology that we need to make sure that we keep up with our adversaries around the world who, by the way, are trying to beat us and take advantage of us--places like space, places like cyber, places like HUMINT intelligence, and what they believe is a perceived weakness to deal with a rising tide of terrorists who want to kill Americans here at home.

This is an important bill because it is bipartisan. A lot of these issues that are talked about have been fought in the bowels of this House, basically. And we worked through it and we have come to an agreement that this is the right direction, in a bipartisan way, that will serve to protect the United States.

So, Mr. Chair, I urge all Members to strongly support this bill. Give them the tools, give Congress the oversight, and give America the ability to sleep well at night, knowing that very brave men and women will do the work that so many would not be interested in doing.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, pursuant to House Resolution 604, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, I urge the committee to adopt the amendments en bloc, all of which have been examined by both the majority and the minority. I believe these amendments to be noncontroversial, and intended to enhance the underlying bill.

The manager's amendment is intended to make minor technical modifications to clarify two provisions that were added in markup.

I have an amendment that would require employees at senior level in the intelligence community to endure a ``cooling off'' period before being employed by a company that is owned or controlled by a foreign government that poses a high counterintelligence threat. It would also make them subject to reporting procedures.

This amendment stems from my concern that some senior level employees in the intelligence community retire or otherwise separate from the U.S. Government and take employment with foreign companies or foreign- controlled companies after holding positions where they likely learned very sensitive information that would be of value to those particular companies or governments.

It is not intended to be punitive prohibition on post-intelligence community employment but rather to establish a procedure to establish that sufficient time has lapsed to avoid conflicts of interest or the appearance of impropriety.

Mr. Carney has an amendment that would provide the Congress with a useful report on ways to improve the declassification process across the intelligence community. The intelligence community has declassified a massive amount of documents. Increased transparency through an improved declassification process will help rebuild the confidence of the American people in their intelligence agencies.

Mr. Connolly has an amendment that will add several best practices to the assessment our bill requires for intelligence community software licenses. This amendment is all the more important in light of current efforts to improve intelligence community information technology systems. Wise management of software licenses can help save the taxpayers' dollars while making sure our intelligence officers have the tools they need to do their job.

Ms. Jackson Lee has an amendment that will help us identify ways to improve the support contractors offer to the intelligence community. It may help us find ways to make the most of scarce resources, all the while ensuring that contractors do not perform inherently governmental functions.

Mr. Keating has an amendment concerning intelligence sharing between

Federal, State, and local entities, which has been a critical tool to prevent terrorist attacks on American soil. Joint terrorism task forces pool talent, skills, and knowledge from across the law enforcement and intelligence communities into a single entity that can respond with the flexibility and speed to stop impending threats.

Even so, we must always look for ways to improve intelligence-sharing relationships. This amendment requires a study of the efficacy of the memoranda of understanding signed between Federal, State, local, tribal, and territorial agencies. The study will help identify any obstacles to intelligence sharing between agencies and find improvements to existing intelligence-sharing relationships.

Ms. Kelly has an amendment to expand a grant program by the Director of National Intelligence to include predominantly black institutions. To succeed in their mission, the intelligence agencies need our Nation's top talent, and that means they must make full use of our Nation's diverse population.

These grants will help provide study programs in foreign languages such as Farsi, Pashto, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African dialects. Foreign language skills are critical for intelligence officers, as we all know.

Mr. Kilmer has an amendment that will require the intelligence community Chief Information Officer to make recommendations to the Director of National Intelligence based on the software licensing assessment required by section 307 of the bill. It will also require the DNI to issue guidelines to implement those recommendations. These recommendations and guidelines will help the IC implement the results of the important assessment that this bill will require regarding software licensing.

I will, therefore, support the amendment.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I ask Members to support the en bloc amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, while I do not oppose the amendment, I ask unanimous consent to control the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Our Nation owes a debt of gratitude to its veterans and to the retired members of the intelligence community. We should look for as many ways as possible to help them succeed in the job market. And I want to thank the gentleman for offering the amendment for promoting this. The amendment does, again, highlight the sheer level of threat we face from cyber crime, cyber terrorists, cyber espionage. We are being overwhelmed.

When you look at China, Russia, Iran, and now organized crime groups who are approaching nation-state capability, it is as bad as I have ever seen it. And, again, 85 percent of the networks across America are not protected by the government because they are private sector networks. The government, itself, is about 15 percent of those networks.

We need to find a pathway, A, to attract the talent that the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gallego) is talking about; and, B, we need to allow these private sector folks to protect themselves by gaining information, sharing information the government has that could protect those networks from cyber catastrophe.

It is happening each and every day. The next generation of cyber warriors are there. And I think this amendment will go a long way to recruit the right talent in the right place to help us meet this growing threat of the future prosperity, safety, and the security of the United States.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his interest. This is exciting news.

The bill is not crafted correctly, and it opens us up to exposing classified information to corporations that may be foreign-owned and operated by the very counterintelligence threat we seek to push back on. But thank you for this effort.

We should reject this. We should include resounding support for the CISPA bill that carefully drafted language to make sure that there is a cyber-sharing relationship, both between the government when it comes to malicious code and the private sector who, remember, is all by itself out there getting attacked by nation-states and large organized criminal groups trying to steal their information.

If you think about even the last month or so that General Alexander was the Director of the National Security Agency, just in that last bit of time he was there, the military sites, the government sites were hit 41 million times by people trying to cause destruction or break in and steal something. Again, this is as serious a problem as you can imagine, Mr. Speaker, that we are not prepared to handle.

So that CISPA bill that I think you tried to get here--I mean, part of this bill is the redundancy department of redundancy. The second part is just not drafted correctly, and we would love to help you get to the right place.

This bill, I think, causes a little more harm than I think you realized without carefully considering how you construct a cyber- sharing malicious code relationship between the government and the private sector. It needs to happen. This way, it just exposes, again, the information to counterintelligence groups that we don't want to have it.

So I would strongly urge the rejection of the motion to recommit. But I want to thank the gentleman. I look forward to working in the next few months with the gentleman to make sure that we put in place a fighting chance, a fighting chance for the 85 percent of those private sector networks that are getting absolutely ravaged every single day by cyber attackers, by people who are trying to disrupt activities.

There are public reports that Iran is probing our financial institutions. Think about the idea if they were able or successful to go in and take down a financial institution that has trillions

of dollars every single day in global transactions, destroy data, manipulate data, and you don't know who owes whom what. Imagine the economic catastrophe that happens.

Well, guess what? This is not Orwellian. It is not next year, it is not 6 months from now, and it is not 10 years from now. It is happening today, and every nation on the face of the Earth is trying to get this capability--including al Qaeda. They are advertising to try to find the right people to develop a capability for a cyberattack to disrupt, to destroy, and to cause chaos.

This is as important an issue as I can think of, Mr. Speaker, that I hope we find some resolution on. Again, I have to strongly oppose this motion to recommit for the drafting errors I find in the bill. But I look forward to working with the gentleman on the CISPA bill that is in the Senate and passed by this House in a huge bipartisan way so that we can bring relief and security to the future prosperity of the United States of America.

With that, I yield back the balance my time.

Let me thank the ranking member for yielding and, as well, the chairperson, and let me collectively add my appreciation for the two leaders of this committee. They have committed themselves, without question, to the security of this Nation. I thank them for their collaboration.

Mr. Rogers, I thank you for the work that you have done for the Nation and, certainly, for the commitment that you have made to the very important business of this committee.

Mr. Ruppersberger, let me thank you for your friendship as well and for the continued collaboration on an issue of great concern to me, but I will speak generally about this legislation and will, again, acknowledge some of the issues that you have looked at and considered and have even included in this legislation as it comes forward.

Mr. Chairman, I agree that detecting and disrupting and preventing a national security crisis is of paramount responsibility for this committee and many others, including the committee that I serve on, the Committee on Homeland Security. For that reason, I have interfaced with this committee on a number of issues.

I am very glad to note, in particular, that the issue of dealing with the expansive use that has been used, which I will talk about in the en bloc amendment, is clearly something that we should have considered, and in this bill, it did.

It got its hand around the enormous use of outside contractors in the intelligence business, and it emphasized recruitment and training. That is positive. There are young, bright persons who I know are willing to serve their country, and this legislation has committed itself to doing that.

Now, particularly with this legislation, I also want to appreciate the collaboration between the Judiciary Committee and this committee on the USA FREEDOM Act, and I want to say to America that we have corralled the megadata collection. We have done it in a bipartisan manner, and we will do more and do better.

So it is with appreciation for this legislation and in thanking the committee for working with my staff on

my amendment that I ask my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. Chair, I rise to speak on H.R. 4681, the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2014.

I want to thank the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for including my amendment in an en bloc.

My amendment to H.R. 4681 is simple and will be an important addition to the legislation, which I believe can be supported by every member of this Committee.

My amendment seeks greater transparency to Congress on the people who the Nation relies upon to perform certain types of work required of the Intelligence Community.

The Jackson Lee amendment requires the Director of the Office of National Intelligence to conduct an assessment of the reliance of intelligence activities on contractors to support Government objectives, including an assessment of contractors performing intelligence activities, which would include intelligence analysis.

The amendment would seek information on the skills necessary to perform intelligence related work and whether Federal employees had these skills. The amendment would also seek statistics on contractors preforming intelligence related work for agencies under the purview of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Something is very wrong when the process for screening and vetting government contractors does not identify someone who would have access to--as well as the ability to collect and remove sensitive information from government computers and publicly disclose that information.

If each person working in an intelligence role within the government decided to act on their own thoughts for their own purposes on whether they would or would not keep their oath to defend and protect our Nation's secrets then there would be chaos.

Our Nation suffers harm in ways we can see, as well as ways that we cannot see when unauthorized disclosures regarding intelligence resources occur.

It harms our ability to work with other nations who rely on our ability to keep secret the information they share with our Nation's intelligence agencies.

If our global assets and allies cease to trust our ability to keep their work with our intelligence, national defense or diplomatic agencies secret then they will not cooperate with us in our efforts to defend our Nation and our interest around the world.

Reckless disclosures make us vulnerable to our Nation's enemies who could make changes to how they hide information because the disclosure of national secrets reveals means and methods.

The world is a dangerous place--we have seen within the last 18 months--a bombing during the Boston Marathon, the rise in sectarian violence in Syria that included incidents involving the use of nerve gas; and Boko Haram which kidnapped nearly 300 girls from their school in northern Nigeria.

According to the United States Department of State Country Report on Terrorism 2013, published in April of this year indicates that there are 53 Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).

Designation of FTOs is important to our Nation's fight against terrorism and is effective in cutting off support for those groups so designated.

In 2013, Ansar al-Dine, Boko Haram, and Jama'atu Ansarul Muslimina Bi Biladis-Sudan were added to the list of FTOs.

FTOs are legally defined under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which states the group must be: a foreign organization; engage in terrorist activity or retain the capacity and intent to engage in terrorist activity or terrorism; and participating in terrorist activity or terrorism that threatens the security of the United States or its citizens.

United States' National security encompasses national defense, foreign relations, or economic interest.

The unauthorized intelligence disclosures last year impacted U.S. national security.

The intelligence breach came as a result of a government contractor making public sensitive information is still resonating both internationally and within the United States, where an important debate on privacy and civil liberties is still ongoing.

But also around the world the consequences of the unauthorized release of international activity by intelligence agencies is still playing out.

The timing of the release of information on the non-U.S. activity of our intelligence agencies caused tremendous tension in our relations with allies at a time when the United States was working to form a global response to the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Syria.

In addition to frustrating our efforts to form a strong global response to the use of chemical weapons in Syria it also caused economic harm to U.S. companies internationally.

Congress is not able to fully investigate the circumstances that resulted in last year's intelligence breach because the person with many of the answers to questions many of us have is now living in Russia.

However, we can look prospectively on how the work of the Intelligence Community under the direction of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence should fill positions that require security clearances.

The intelligence work by contractors and Federal employees is critical to the protection of the United States and our interest both domestically and around the world. We should approach the work of the intelligence community as we do when considering the work of the Department of Defense.

The work that our Intelligence professionals perform is critical, and a defense in depth approach is necessary to assure that no matter the challenge or the circumstances there will be well trained professionals in place to do what must be done to defend and protect the nation.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence 2013 Report on Security Clearance Determinations provides information on the number of persons with security clearance levels of Confidential, Secret, or Top Secret and had access to classified information as well as those who were favorably adjudicated but did not have access to classified information.

I would like to acknowledge the work of the Special Security Directorate (SSD) of the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive for compiling and processing the data for this report.

The 2013 Report on Security Clearance Determinations states that by October 1, 2013 the Nation had 3,738,026 Federal agency employees working for the: Office of the Director of National Intelligence Scattered Castles; Department of Defense; Joint Personnel Adjudication System; Office of Personnel Management; and Central Verification System (CVS).

In addition to surveying these agencies a special data call was made to the seven intelligence community agencies with delegated authority to conduct investigations or adjudications to fulfill specific reporting requirements directed by the fiscal year 2010 Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. These agencies were the: Central Intelligence Agency; Defense Intelligence Agency; Federal Bureau of Investigation; National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; National Reconnaissance Office; National Security Agency; and Department of State.

In 2013, the total number of persons with a Confidential, Secret or Top Secret security clearance totaled 5,150,379 individuals--of this number 3,738,026 were government agency personnel, 1,056,309 were contractors and 356,044 were categorized as other.

Between January and October 1, 2013 there were 777,168 security clearances approved--152,490 were government agency employees and 131,209 were contractors with an additional 12,785 designated as other.

Congress must have the ability to make decisions regarding how intelligence agencies fill positions that require security clearances because it has implications for the appropriations process.

The Information Security Oversight Office of the National Archives 2012 Report to the President focuses on the classification practices of intelligence agencies.

The report addresses the power of ``original classification authorities'' also called ``original classifiers,'' which are individuals designated with Top Secret original classification authority to classify information.

Only original classifiers are authorized to determine what information, if disclosed without authorization, would be expected to cause damage to national security.

The original classification authority process comes before all other aspects of the security classification system. In 2004, the total number of original classifications was 351,150 and in 2012 the number was 74,477.

The cost of government security classification in 2005 was $7.66 billion and in 2011 the total was $11.36 billion.

The amount expended in 2011 included: 5.65 billion for protection maintenance; 1.53 billion for security management oversight and planning; 502.51 million for professional education, training and awareness; 352.4 million for classification management; and 52.76 million for declassification.

These costs cited are not all encompassing, but were generated by 41 executive branch agencies including the Department of Defense.

The funds expended do not include activity by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, Office of the Director for National Intelligence, the National Geospatial- Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Security Agency.

The focus on training is critical in the work of the Intelligence Community and it is important that this is a high priority for the agencies represented in the National Archive report.

The work by the Intelligence Community to address classification in an evenhanded way can help create and maintain a firm basis for classification of information that is sustainable can go a long way in addressing questions regarding what secrets are critical to our nation's national security and what the public has a right to know.

I thank my colleagues on the Intelligence Committee for their hard work in bringing this bill before the full House for consideration. I ask that members of the Congress vote in favor of this bipartisan en bloc amendment to H.R. 4681.

Mr. Chair, let me again thank the ranking member and the chairman. Let me also acknowledge the very fine men and women that work in our intelligence community in the United States and around the world.

I would like to thank the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for their efforts to include the Jackson Lee amendment in the en bloc amendments and thank them for working with my staff in a very cooperative manner.

The Jackson Lee amendment seeks greater transparency to Congress on the people the Nation relies upon to perform certain types of work for the intelligence community.

The Jackson Lee amendment requires the Director of the Office of National Intelligence to conduct an assessment of the reliance of intelligence activities on contractors to support government objectives, including an assessment of contractors performing intelligence activities, which would include intelligence analysis.

This complements the underlying bill, because the underlying bill has determined to assess the utilization and reduce the number of private contractors.

In a Time article dated Monday, July 19, 2010, a comment says:

Explosion of contractors in the intelligence community.

And that has been the case.

It is important that we recognize that contractors can be useful. But like the President stated publicly on August 26, 2013:

It is important that we have so many extraordinarily

capable folks in our military and our government who can do

this--and probably do it cheaper.

Well, I agree with the President and this committee.

I also take note of an article that cites NSA contractors using LinkedIn profiles to cash in on national security.

I believe that with the work that we are doing here in this legislation, along with my amendment, we will get our hands around the idea of outsourcing our intelligence work and develop a pathway of excellence, as we have in the past.

We will utilize our veterans, we will utilize military personnel, we will utilize young persons who are interested in this as a career, and we will have the finest intelligence staffing that we have ever had, as we have had in the past.

I ask my colleagues to support this amendment. I again thank the chairman and ranking member for including this in the en bloc amendments. I think we are on a pathway of greater success in securing this Nation.

Mr. Chair, I support H.R. 4681, the ``Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2014,'' a bill Authorizing appropriations for our nation's intelligence agencies for Fiscal Year 2014 through Fiscal Year 2015. The bill provides funds for the conduct of intelligence and intelligence-related activities.

My thanks to the House Rules Committee for making my amendment in order under the rule for H.R. 4681.

I appreciate the work of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence efforts to include the Jackson Lee Amendment in the En Bloc.

My amendment is simple and makes an important contribution to the bill.

The Jackson Lee Amendment seeks greater transparency to Congress on the people the nation relies upon to perform certain types of work for the Intelligence Community.

The Jackson Lee Amendment requires the Director of the Office of National Intelligence to conduct an assessment of the reliance of intelligence activities on contractors to support Government objectives, including an assessment of contractors performing intelligence activities, which would include intelligence analysis.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) 2013 Report on Security Clearance Determinations said that on October 1, 2013, the total number of persons with a Confidential, Secret or Top Secrete security clearance totaled 5,150,379 individual.

According to the ODNI 3,738,026 were government agency personnel, 1,056,309 were contractors and 356,044 were categorized as other.

Between January and October 1, 2013 there were 777,168 security clearances approved--152,490 were government agency employees and 131,209 were contractors with an additional 12,785 designated as other.

The cost of government security classification in 2oo5 was $7.66 billion and in 2011 the total was $11.36 billion.

The amount expended included: 5.65 billion for protection maintenance; 1.53 billion for security management oversight and planning; 502.51 million for professional education, training and awareness; 352.4 million for classification management; 52.76 million for declassification.

The assessment provided for through the Jackson Lee amendment would shed light on the work that our federal agency Intelligence professionals and the role contractors play in protecting our nation.

President Obama stated publicly on August 6, 2013 that it is important that we have so many 'extraordinarily capable folks in our military and our government who can do this, and probably do it cheaper.'

I agree.

That is why I introduced H.R. 4110, the HERO Transition from Battlespace to Workplace Act of 2014.

This legislation addresses the problem of underemployed veterans in obtaining positions that take maximum advantage of their skills and experience.

For some time I have worked to make sure that transparency, accountability and oversight were firmly established to guide the work of intelligence agencies, including introducing legislation such as

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Chairman Rogers, I thank you for your comments. I also have the same comments for you.

When we took the leadership of this committee, we knew that the stakes were so high and that we had to work together on behalf of the people of the United States of America. We came together with Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, moderates, all realizing that we had to come together. Because of your leadership, because of your focus, we have been able to pass FISA, and hopefully we will be able to pass these bills today.

We are going to miss you, but you will always be there as my friend, and I will always respect you as a great American who cares about the United States. Thank you.

Now, we need to pass this Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2014 and 2015 to ensure rigorous oversight and accountability over all U.S. intelligence agencies and all U.S. intelligence activities. This is so important.

We cannot go back to the days when we give the intelligence agencies a blank check to spend as they see fit. We must have oversight. Remember, Congress specifically amended the National Security Act of 1947 to replace blanket intelligence appropriations with specific authorization.

Why did we do this? To ensure that our intelligence agencies spend money only on programs of which Congress is informed and approves. So today we need to make sure we maintain this means of critical oversight by passing the bill.

The Intelligence Authorization Act for 2014 and 2015 is in four parts: the unclassified legislative text; the unclassified report; the classified annex, which explains our intent for the classified aspects of the bill; and the classified schedule of authorizations for both fiscal years. We have been encouraging all Members to review all parts of the bill, and I am pleased to say that they have come to the Intelligence Committee's SCIF, classified spaces, to do so.

The budget for fiscal year 2014 is slightly below the President's budget request, while the budget for fiscal year 2015 is less than 1 percent above the President's budget request.

We both, we made cuts to certain areas and added money in other areas in a responsible, well thought-out way, and a fiscally prudent way.

Since Chairman Rogers and I assumed leadership of the committee, we reduced the Intelligence Committee's budget by 20 percent, but this year's bill acknowledges the need to right the ship after the storm of sequestration.

The bill sets the priorities of our intelligence professionals and their agencies, and it allocates resources to critical national security programs, including those that detect, prevent, and disrupt potential terrorist attacks.

Let me also mention some specifics. The bill continues to emphasize the value of our satellites; scales back the intelligence community's use of contractors; pushes for further improvements in the continuous evaluation of insider threats; provides critical forward-looking funding for Navy airborne intelligence surveillance reconnaissance to maintain military intelligence capabilities during the transition to newer, more capable aircraft; and invests in both the recruitment and retention of the best and the brightest for our cyber workforce, particularly within the FBI. Our younger generation, we must educate them and have them work in this area.

We have spent months poring over this bill and its specific authorizations in great detail--in our committee spaces, at the agencies, and in the remotest corners of the Earth where our intelligence professionals operate--and then I can say this is a very good bill, and I am proud to support it.

Many of the amendments on the floor today also promise to make a great bill even better.

For the sake of keeping the country and its allies safe, and for the sake of rigorously overseeing even the most classified intelligence programs, I urge my colleagues to pass this bill today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois, Jan Schakowsky, my good friend and a member of our committee, who has been very thoughtful and has allowed us to do the things that we needed to do.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California, Mr. Adam Schiff, a valued member of our Intelligence Committee, who has worked closely with me and our committee on very important issues.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Kelly), a great Member of Congress.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from Texas, Sheila Jackson Lee, a great Member of Congress.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont, Mr. Peter Welch, my good friend and a great Member of Congress.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I thank the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch) for his diligent work in the area of transparency on behalf of the American people.

As we have seen in this last year, trust in the intelligence community by the citizens it serves is incredibly important.

As the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, we take seriously the responsibility to provide to the public as much information as possible while protecting sensitive sources and methods.

When classification permits, the budget of the intelligence community has been released. In other cases, the American people rely on our committee and on all of their Representatives, like Representative Welch, to review the budget of the intelligence community on their behalf.

I look forward to working with Representative Welch to continue to find ways to increase the trust of the American people in the intelligence community as it relates to transparency.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

For the sake of rigorous oversight and accountability over all U.S. intelligence agencies and all U.S. intelligence activities, I urge my colleagues to vote for this important, bipartisan bill. I also urge my colleagues to support this bill for the sake of our brave intelligence professionals, who, like our military, work day and night, often in the most austere of places, to keep us safe and our allies safe; and for the sake of all of us--not just in America, but around the world--who benefit from the work of our intelligence agencies, I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill. It is a solid bill that we should be proud to support.

Finally, once again, Mr. Chairman, let me thank you for your leadership, our relationship, and your commitment to the people of the United States of America. You served in the military, and you served in the FBI. We are going to miss you.

Thank you also to every member on the Intelligence Committee. We have had many debates, many hard negotiations, and many tough struggles, but at all times, whether or not one member or another agreed or disagreed, we respected the fact that another member had another point of view, and then we resolved those issues.

Each of us has worked even harder to find common ground on behalf of the American people to protect us from terrorist attacks and other issues that are out there that relate to national security.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I support all these amendments.

I agree with Chairman Rogers that it is very troubling when senior U.S. officials who know our most sensitive secrets leave the Federal Government and immediately go to work for a company that is owned by a foreign country that poses a significant counterintelligence threat to us.

I do have some concerns that this restriction might be seen as singling out our intelligence professionals, since it does not apply to every senior official in the government with a top secret clearance. I would be in favor of a waiver procedure for when the risks are low. For example, for someone who wants to teach English at a State-funded university in his or her retirement. But on the whole, I agree with Mr. Rogers and support this provision.

I also agree with Mr. Connolly and Mr. Kilmer that we need to find efficiencies in the intelligence community's use of software. In fact, we just don't need to find them, we need to fix them. Finding and fixing inefficiencies translates into saving taxpayer dollars, which is something we must always strive to do.

I agree with Ms. Robin Kelly that we need to increase the diversity of our intelligence workforce by adding predominantly black institutions to ongoing intelligence community programs currently designed for Historically Black Colleges. Diversity is a good thing in its own right, and it will create even greater opportunities for intelligence collection.

I agree with Mr. Carney that we must reduce our declassification backlog. As The New York Times reported just this week, even material that should be automatically declassified isn't. So we need the Director of National Intelligence to look across the intelligence community and figure out how to improve the declassification process so that more national security information can be made available to the American people now.

I also agree with Ms. Sheila Jackson Lee that we need to get a handle on how we are employing our contractors. We need to know whether they are doing the type of work that should be done by U.S. Government employees.

Let me be clear, however, that contractors perform a very valuable service, and our companies are among the very best in the world. But there needs to be a clear line between what we expect from our employees, who owe 100 percent of their loyalty to the government, and what we expect from our contractors, whose patriotism is without question, but whose loyalty is also to the company that employs them.

Finally, I agree with Mr. Keating, Mr. Rooney, and Mr. Hanna that we need to take a close look at the memoranda of agreement between the Federal Government and the State, local, tribal, and territorial governments to make sure they are written clearly enough and well enough to ensure the free flow of intelligence, while still making sure to protect sources and methods.

Intelligence is critical, particularly in the midst of a domestic crisis. And for it to be useful, it must get to those who need it.

In addition to the manager's amendment, which makes technical and clarifying changes to the bill, I support all these amendments.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, although I do not oppose the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Franks, a leader in the bipartisan House Electromagnetic Pulse Caucus, has brought attention to the serious threats posed by electromagnetic pulses, whether from a solar storm or a nuclear-armed enemy that could harm our critical infrastructure.

Given what we know about our Nation's critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, I support this amendment's purpose, to gain even more information that can better protect our utilities, financial systems, medical facilities, networks, and other infrastructure.

Therefore, I support this amendment, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), one of the key members of our committee and one of the experts in the area of cybersecurity.

(Mr. LANGEVIN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

I support this amendment because the time is right to step back and take stock of where we are and how we are doing in our fight against terrorism. The threat is not going away, but it is rapidly changing.

The Director of the FBI, Jim Comey, recently said that the terrorism threat is very much alive and growing in new and more dangerous places around the world. It even surprised him, when he started, just how virulent and dispersed the terrorist threat had become.

From Pakistan to Yemen, Afghanistan to Syria, north Africa to Iraq, the threat from al Qaeda is waning in some areas, but growing in others. Unless we approach this dangerous problem holistically and precisely, we risk just squeezing the balloon, suppressing terrorism in one area, only to see it grow in another.

So I think it is a good idea to sit down and take a comprehensive look at the problem today, to make sure that we are confronting it in the precisely right way, to make sure that we are measuring our effectiveness correctly, and to make sure that we have the right and most current legal authorities.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.

As I said in the opening hearing on worldwide threats, ``education is the keystone of security and prosperity in the 21st century.''

The cyber threats we face are grave, and we need to train the best, the brightest, and the most dedicated--like our veterans and our retired intelligence professionals--to be our next generation of cyber defenders. We call them cyber warriors.

Every day, we hear about cyber attacks in the news. Early last year, for example, our financial sector suffered a wide-scale network denial of service attack that proved difficult and very costly to mitigate. The retail giant, Target, is another recent example of our vulnerability to cyber attacks. And today, The Washington Post stated that Iranian hackers are targeting U.S.A. officials through social networks.

We need to pass cybersecurity legislation like CISPA, and we need to do far more to expand our bench of cyber professionals and innovators. We need to invest in early education in science, technology, engineering, and math. And we equally need to leverage the experience and wisdom of our veterans and former intelligence professionals. Our adversaries are making heavy investments in cyber education. We must do the same. For this reason, I support this amendment.

I thank my colleague from Texas (Mr. Gallego) for his amendment. He represents the area of Texas that is close to the border. He understands the threat and why we need intelligence to deal with national security.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the conference report on the bill (H.R. 3230) making continuing appropriations during a government shutdown to provide pay and allowances to members of the reserve components of the Armed Forces who perform inactive-duty training during such period.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I rise today in support of the conference report to accompany H.R. 3230, the Veterans' Access to Care through Choice, Accountability, and Transparency Act of 2014.

General Omar Bradley, the former administrator of what is now the Department of Veterans Affairs, once said of our work, ``We are dealing with veterans, not procedures--with their problems, not ours.''

We have come face-to-face with the problems our veterans routinely encounter, and they are considerable to say the least. As every American now knows, congressional oversight and whistleblower revelations have exposed widespread corruption and systemic delays in access and failures of accountability across our Nation's second largest bureaucracy.

Thousands of veterans across this country have been left to wait-- some for years; some in pain; and, most disturbingly, some in caskets that are draped with American flags; some while chronic or fatal conditions worsened until little hope was left--for the health care they earned through their honorable service to our Nation. Meanwhile, poor-performing VA leaders and employees continued to receive large bonuses, subject to little accountability for their many inadequacies.

There is no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that the Department of Veterans Affairs, as we know it today, is in crisis, and as a result, our veterans are suffering. The conference report we are considering this afternoon is the first step to alleviating their pain and for paving the

way for the failing VA health care system to experience much-needed structural and cultural reform.

To immediately improve access to care for veteran patients, the conference report would require the VA to authorize non-VA care to any eligible veteran who is unable to secure a timely appointment at a VA facility or who resides more than 40 miles from the nearest VA medical facility, with certain exceptions.

Eligible veterans would include those who are enrolled in the VA health care system as of August 1 of 2014 or who are newly-discharged combat veterans.

It would further require the VA to issue a veterans choice card to eligible veterans to facilitate care provided by non-VA providers and provide $10 billion for the newly-established veterans choice fund to cover the costs of access to non-VA care under this bill.

To lead the way for true reform in the long term, the conference report would require a comprehensive assessment of VA care by an expert independent entity or entities and would establish a congressional commission on care, which would be charged with setting the future course for access to and quality care throughout the entire VA health care system.

To improve the VA's internal capacity to provide timely and high- quality care to our veterans, this report would also provide the Department with $5 billion to hire physicians and other clinical staff and would provide for certain critical physical infrastructure improvements.

The conference report would also extend the VA's rural health care- focused project, ARCH--a pilot program--for an additional 2 years. It would extend the pilot program for an additional 3 years to provide rehabilitation, quality of life, and community integration services to veterans with traumatic brain injury.

It would authorize 27 medical facility leases across 18 States and Puerto Rico and make certain improvements to care provided to veterans who have experienced military sexual trauma and others.

To advance genuine accountability for incompetent or corrupt senior managers, the conference report would reduce funding for bonuses available to VA employees by $40 million each year through fiscal year 2024, and it would authorize the Secretary to fire or demote Senior Executive Service employees and title 38 SES equivalent employees for poor performance or misconduct. Poor-performing employees who are disciplined under this authority would be provided an expedited and limited appeal process, but would be prohibited from receiving their pay, bonuses, or benefits during the appeal process.

This provision will give the Secretary the tools he needs to expeditiously hold senior managers accountable for the types of willful misconduct and possibly criminal negligence we have seen during our investigations.

The conference report would also require public colleges to provide instate tuition to veterans and eligible dependents for the school to remain eligible to receive GI Bill education payments.

This provision closely mirrors the bill that I offered, H.R. 357, the GI Bill Tuition Fairness Act, which passed the House earlier this year. The men and women who served this Nation did not just defend the citizens of their home States; they defended the entire United States of America.

The conference report would also include approximately $5 billion in offsets with additional incidental offsets expected to accrue over time as a result of increased third-party collections for nonservice- connected conditions and reductions in Medicare payments as a result of the increased utilization of the newly-created choice program.

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us is one that I am proud of, but more importantly, it is one that I believe our Nation's veterans can be proud of. It is not a blank check for a broken system, but it is an important first step down a long road toward true transformation.

However, our work is far from over. We all know that congressional oversight was crucial to bringing the failures at the VA to light, and it will increase in the days and weeks and months ahead after the passage of this bill.

The passage of this conference report will increase access to care and improve accountability within a desperately broken bureaucracy. However, the reform that is necessary to reforming the agency will require dedication for years to come, and I would ask all of my colleagues to join me in beginning that effort today.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn), a member of the conference committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Roe), a veteran, a physician, and also a member of the conference committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr.

Benishek), a former physician within the VA system.

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute and 35 seconds to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Coffman), a United States veteran and another member of the conference committee.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Indiana (Mrs. Walorski), another member of our conference committee and an outstanding member of the full committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), the vice chairman of the full committee and a member of the conference committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Huelskamp).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry), someone who always has veterans first in his mind.

Mr. Speaker, I, too, would like to say thank you to the ranking member of the full House committee, Mr. Michaud, for his tenacity in what he has done to move this conference report along.

I also want to say thank you to the ranking member, Mr. Burr, in the Senate and to Senator Sanders because, as we continue to negotiate through, there never was a willingness to quit by either side.

I am grateful to the 24 other conference committee members who worked with us, with their input, their ideas, and their willingness to embrace this compromise. It was brought forth by diligent, focused effort and a willingness on all sides to put aside differences of opinion and ideology and focus not on our disagreements, but how best we can all help our veterans.

While not perfect, this is an example of all the good work we can accomplish when we work together, and remember, it is the veteran who is sacred, not the VA.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the conference report to H.R. 3230, the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014.

I would like to thank Chairman Miller, Senator Sanders, Senator Burr, and the other members of the conference committee for working so diligently on this legislation.

Even when it looked like an agreement would not be possible to achieve a compromise and bring it to the House floor today, at the end of the day, we all worked together to make sure our national commitment to veterans is there. This compromise agreement can serve as a model on how Congress should look at serious problems facing our country and how to address them.

It has been a long road getting here. The House Veterans' Affairs Committee, under Chairman Miller's leadership, has held over a dozen oversight hearings in the past couple of months alone. We have heard from veterans, their families, VA employees, and veterans service organizations about what is and what isn't working within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The measure before us today isn't a long-term solution to all of the VA's problems, but it is an appropriate and well-crafted response to the immediate problems of veterans not being able to access quality health care in a timely fashion.

This bill also takes important steps to begin to address the systemic problems within the Department of Veterans Affairs that have led to this crisis: too few doctors, inadequate infrastructure, and a management culture that is asleep at the wheel. It holds those whom the Nation has entrusted with our veterans' lives and well-being responsible for the outcomes.

For the 12 years that I have been on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, I have fought to ensure that our veterans, especially those who are living in rural areas, have access to quality health care. I fought for the needs of veterans returning from the current conflicts, while not forgetting the sacrifices and the needs of veterans from previous conflicts.

One of the successes that you heard from Chairman Miller earlier I am most proud of is the Project ARCH. The Access Received Closer to Home project expands the opportunity for rural veterans to receive health care without long drives to a VA facility many miles away. I am pleased to see that the conference report extends and expands this important program. It is critical for the thousands of veterans who live in districts like mine. Many veterans in my district would be forced to make a nearly 600-mile round trip drive to the nearest VA facility if it weren't for ARCH.

Another important aspect of this bill not only deals with Senior Executive Service, but also the title 38 employees, which covers about 80,000 within the VA. It sets metrics and outcomes and accountability for those employees.

This bill also will address the immediate problem of long waiting times for health care, while beginning to strengthen the VA, so we are not facing the same crisis next year or the year after.

But I would also like to remind my colleagues that this bill is only the first step. After 12 years on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, I am more convinced than ever that we must begin to talk about the innovative solutions that will truly modernize the Department and better meet the needs of current and future veterans.

Far too often, the good intentions underlying the laws that we passed are stymied by an organizational structure that has originated back in the seventies and eighties. Far too often, the good intentions of the Department of Veterans' Affairs employees meet the wall of bureaucratic indifference. Far too often, our veterans ask for help and there is no one there at the other end to answer for that help.

This is totally unacceptable, and it is why I believe we must begin the work of radically restructuring the Department of Veterans' Affairs. We must restructure it to better assist our veterans, to better live up to the promises we have made to them. We need to look at the fundamental business model, the processes, the organization, the technology, the data and information and the workforce capabilities.

Our work today is to pass this conference report and get it to the President's desk as quickly as possible so that we can fix the current crisis. The work for tomorrow is the work that I ask each and every one of my colleagues to continue working on: to make sure that the Department of Veterans Affairs evolves to a new, more veteran-centered Department of Veterans Affairs.

It is going to take a lot of work and a lot of oversight, as you heard the chairman mention earlier. Once again, I would encourage my colleagues to pass this bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Titus).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Arizona (Mrs. Kirkpatrick).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes and 35 seconds to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown).

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Barber).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gallego).

Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining?

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Peters).

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am ready to close.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge my colleagues to support the conference report to H.R. 3230. This is a very important bill. It is a bill that we have worked long and hard over the last several months. It is one that took into consideration a lot of the concerns that Members from both sides and both bodies had, and we came together with this bill.

I do want to thank Chairman Miller for his hard work and dedication to our veterans and their families. We would not be here today if it wasn't his determination in having strong oversight hearings over the last couple of months within our committee.

I also want to thank staffs on both sides, the majority and minority staff. I know they have put in thousands of hours for oversight hearings to work on this conference report to get us where we are today. We could not have done it without our dedicated staffs on both sides of the aisle going through this document and making sure that every Member's concerns were addressed in this document.

With that, I want to once again thank the chairman for your hard work on this effort and look forward to the vote on this. I encourage all my colleagues to support this bill.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.