VA Accountability First Act of 2017

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

I rise in opposition to H.R. 1259. Let me be clear that I rise in opposition not after serving this Nation in uniform for 24 years; not after serving on this committee longer than anyone else on the committee; and not with serving honorably with my friend, the chairman, who--I want to be clear, first of all, where the commonality lies around this issue, about 95 percent of it, you are not going to find daylight between us.

The idea that anyone would put a special interest ahead of the care of a veteran is not only distasteful, it is wrong to assume that. There are legitimate differences on how to get accountability in the VA, and we have come to some conclusions that get us pretty close. This piece of legislation--and I do not condemn the committee because this is truly a bipartisan committee, but, for whatever reason, for the first time in the decade-plus that I have served on this committee, we have brought a bill to the floor without a hearing.

We held a markup and brought it to the floor. The majority has the right to do as they please. What that deprives us of is the ability to build consensus around issues we know we share. I know the chairman's heart is providing absolute best care to every single veteran. I also know the chairman's heart is to make sure that every employee who is doing their job is respected the way they are supposed to be. There is not disagreement on that.

This piece of legislation, and framing it as a false choice between veterans and the employees, the majority of whom are veterans, in many cases, serving other veterans, is a false choice. The chart that was put up, I belong to half those organizations. There is also an organization that is on there that differs from the others because it is a 501(c)(4) with the sole purpose of political attack ads on Members of the opposing party. Leave them off the sheet. The other ones I agree with. The others are 501(c)(3)s advocating for veterans, but for us to pretend this isn't a

proxy fight for outside groups on something bigger is disingenuous and moves us away from the place we should have gotten.

To show you the comity, my friend from Tennessee gave an impassioned, logical, and, in my opinion, correct assessment on the Veterans 2nd Amendment, H.R. 1181. I agree with the chairman on this. I believe we could have built consensus by bringing that through the committee, but it doesn't change the fact that I think the chairman eloquently got to the heart of that. I know what the heart of that was because the majority side used the term over two dozen times, ``due process.'' It matters. These are veterans working in the VA who should have due process to their Second Amendment rights and to their employment rights. It ensures that the working environment attracts and retains the best and brightest.

So let's go through a little bit of what is here. One of the things is, we talk about going back and breaking a sacred pledge. You can disagree what is in the collective bargaining that was done between the administrations, Republican and Democrat, and those employees who work there, but to go in and arbitrarily change that from Congress, how is that due process? How about in the next bargaining agreement you make the case that those things need to be there. I will stand there with you and tell you this: The public sector unions need to give more, because you know what happens if they don't? They get painted with those examples.

I hear some people say there are 350,000 employees in the VA, and they gave five examples of five bad people. You should give those examples. That is unacceptable, horrid, and should never be agreed to. This is a zero sum proposition. If one bad employee gives substandard care, Mr. Chairman, to one veteran, that is a failure, and the majority and the minority are in absolute agreement on that.

But here is what I fear. We have had legislation--and I will offer up an amendment to do this--that has bipartisan support, that has Senate support. We will see if I am right or wrong on this, but I am almost certain--and it is our responsibility in this House not to message things for those outside groups to run attack ads, it is to get things that actually get through.

I am saying today--and I will be the first to come back and tell you I was wrong on this--the process of getting legislation into law to be enacted by the agencies means compromise must be there. I think we come back here in October, this isn't done yet. Why don't we give on the 5 percent that is not agreed upon and get the 95 percent right so we can act to enact it? This is going to be the perfect getting in the way of the good, and I would argue the zeal to get it done in the way of due process.

I do not question the heart of any of my colleagues to get this right. I do not question--I hope it would not come back to me--the outrage I feel when I hear the story--and I know when the chairman tells me it, it is true--of someone showing up intoxicated trying to provide care to a veteran. How in goodness name is that person not done, not removed, and not moved forward? I will have to tell you this: I have been there on this. I am a public schoolteacher. Do you know who hates a bad public schoolteacher the most? A good public schoolteacher. What really angers me is when management doesn't do their dang job, follow the law and remove those people, and give the due process to them.

The same thing happens in the VA. Management needs to do their job. We have issued subpoenas for Phoenix, we have issued subpoenas for Philadelphia, we have issued subpoenas for St. Paul of people doing egregious things, not caring for veterans. They should come here, and they should lose their jobs. In some cases, they did. Do you know what they all did have in common? None of them were part of a collective bargaining agreement. They were the management. My fear on this is you have bad managers making bad decisions, and if someone speaks up, Mr. Chairman, who is a lower ranking member, their only protection to improve the system is by collectively bargained grievance processes to make sure their due process is heard. That is all we are asking for.

I do not deny there are going to be proxy fights on this. I will not deny that I believe the public sector unions need to be in a partnership with this. I believe we should have had them in a hearing and set those union members down there and asked them: How in God's name can you justify this? Ask them and say: What would help so that we can do this?

I have witnessed this as a public schoolteacher. Beating up on public schoolteachers all the time is not the best way to entice good people to go into public school teaching. I ask people, whether it be teachers or the veterans--go ask your veterans, how many have received quality care at the VA? How many really appreciate that floor nurse who did what he or she was supposed to do? How many are grateful that their cardiac surgeon is one of the best in the world and is choosing to make less money to serve there?

But I won't deny this. We have managers who are unaccountable. This piece of legislation does not get at the heart of it because the teeth are saved for the rank-and-file members. I agree. I think the gentleman is exactly right.

I want to read something. You tell me if this is okay. We had a VA employee who was written up and subsequently fired because they were practicing medicine without a license. That is outrageous. Outrageous that you would go there and you don't have the license, and you are practicing medicine. That person was fired. If we pass this piece of legislation, they are done and they are not coming back.

But there is a little bit different story to this. This was a Navy veteran in Arkansas, and you know what they got it for? Not picking up a scalpel and doing something that a doctor should do, not writing a prescription for an opioid and trying to steal medicine, which does happen. What they did was, they entered the wrong code on a chart, and that got them for practicing medicine without a license.

When they went through the approved negotiated grievance process, not only did they find out that this was wrong to this combat Navy veteran trying to serve other veterans who was discharged by a manager, it turns up the lack of management oversight. It was the entire system was flawed and the chart was wrong. So the grievance process not only returned the employee back to their rightful job, it fixed the system guaranteeing better care for veterans going forward.

So I don't disagree. When we try and make it, the big scary thing is, oh, we have unions that don't care about veterans, don't care about what the care is, and what we need to do is fire those people immediately. Well, you know what? Some of them do need to be fired. But if there is not a process in place--this Navy veteran caring for other veterans was released without due process--we don't find out about a broken system putting veterans' care at risk. That is what is at stake here.

My point is not to disagree. The chairman has insights into veterans that I think are second to none. The committee works together on this. Once again, when you gain the most votes, you get the majority, and I respect that. But I would also say that if we want to build consensus around this, I am going to offer up a piece of legislation that was written by a Republican Senator that has the ability to pass, be signed into law, and will get at the heart of this by going after the managers.

Mr. Chairman, it is important to me, and I know it is important to my chairman, a Vietnam veteran himself, it is important to the staff sitting behind, veterans ourselves, that we not allow what has happened in this country to get into the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, to divide us over talking points when our goals are exactly the same.

When we have legitimate differences, again, I don't think it is fair to me, as a veteran and a union member, to put something up that says you are choosing sides. I am not choosing sides. We are all in this together. What I disagree with is it is my opinion--and I wish I would have had experts testify to this, employment law people, bring the union folks in there, have us have this debate so that we can say: you know what, these changes are good, these won't make a difference.

I respectfully oppose the way this legislation is written. I respectfully totally associate myself with the chairman on why he wants to do it and why he believes that this is best. I only ask,

take a look at some of the improving amendments that can get us all to the same point, and give us the benefit of the doubt that we are not assuming the worst. And I don't--as some have said, this is an attempt to bust unions or bust the civil service system. That is the farthest thing from the chairman's mind. I know that because never, in my experience, has he done anything to disprove that veterans' care comes first, quality of care at the VA comes first, and accountability must go with that. My concern is, this doesn't get us there nor does it have a chance to become into law. With those things, let's come back at it, let's approach it a little differently, and let's find the common ground that is there.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), my good friend, the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano), my good friend, the vice ranking member of the full Committee on Veterans Affairs.

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

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

Mr. Chair, you are hearing it here, and these are folks, we work together. This idea of accountability matters deeply to all of us. We know when you are in any business, this business--we have had colleagues of ours in here be arrested for buying cocaine from undercover police officers in Washington, D.C.

Well, that brings great discredit to every single one of us, but I certainly don't think it requires all of us, then, to go through the same thing that person is going through or deprive us our rights of where we are at. This idea of due process, and what we are asking about, is not something meant to protect a bad employee. In fact, it is just the opposite. It is meant to improve the workforce.

My plea on this is--much of this bill, there is agreement on, Mr. Takano was right--it went a step further. Having been a rank-and-file person in a collectively bargained unit, my goal was to provide the best quality education so our students could learn--an environment, quality teachers, and all of those things.

I am at a loss for the desire to come here and decide that, and again, we say it in passing: Well, I don't want to deride all of those really good employees who are there. I just want to take away their collectively bargained right that was there.

Even though we can give example after example, like Robert. He was a

service-connected disabled Navy veteran with over a decade of experience at the Veterans Benefits Administration. He was demoted after consistently, every single year, receiving highly satisfactory or top-rated performance reviews. Robert volunteered to be part of a quality review team to get rid of the backlog, and he had the audacity to tell his manager that there were better ways we could do this. Perhaps all of this overtime pay and consolidating all of these claims to one place was not in the best interest of that. That manager, on the way out the door, demoted and tried to remove Robert from that position.

Now, keep in mind, that same manager, all of those years before, had rated him well. Well, maybe something happened. Maybe Robert started doing something wrong. Maybe Robert wasn't that good an employee.

But again, under this piece of legislation, Robert's collectively bargained right--which he used and grieved it and got back his job, and subsequently, the manager had problems on their performance reviews, where it came from.

So again, don't set this up as if everything is wrong.

And I would make note of this: We are doing our best to attract the best and brightest to the VA. Nobody is defending the bad. But when I hear folks come to the floor and it is nothing but what a horrific place this is, I leave this for you, Mr. Chairman.

I also have the privilege of representing America's premier medical institution in the Mayo Clinic, and I look at what they do. Folks at Mayo Clinic will tell me some of the finest cardiac surgeons in the world are at the Minneapolis VA.

I will also tell you this. If you, in America, go to any hospital-- Dr. Roe can attest to this--the thing that you should probably be most worried about and the thing that kills most people--over 90,000 a year--is hospital-acquired infections.

Do you know who does it better and has the lowest rate, better than Mayo Clinic, better than Johns Hopkins? The VA. So somebody among those rank-and-file members who is cleaning the operating rooms and cleaning the equipment is doing so in a manner that is better than any other.

What message are we sending them today? If a manager doesn't do their job and decides they want to fire you, we are going to lump everybody together. I just ask, once again, to my colleagues, to this body, these are things that should have been debated in a hearing. We should have brought in the experts.

Here is what I think. I think you would build a broader coalition-- because I have to be very honest with you. I think our public sector unions could help us and step up and say: What was the real situation here? How do you respond to this egregious breach of trust? And what do you think would be a better way?

I am not saying they would give us a suggestion. I want to be very honest and not disingenuous. They may not answer us. We should have at least asked them: What would you do to make this better? What could speed it up, and what could protect them?

We didn't do that because we didn't have a hearing, and I think that stops building the consensus. I think it makes it harder to get this.

I will tell you this. The bill I keep referencing that was over in the Senate had 45 Senate cosponsors. Good luck getting 45 of them to agree today. It is Thursday, and we did it on an accountability plea that also had the support of every single one of those groups on there, except one, to support that piece of legislation.

So we went a step further. We didn't have a hearing. We tried to let outside groups frame this as a veterans versus public sector union folks, who were also veterans. That is not what it is. We just need to get it right.

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

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

Again, we are not going to find a lot of disagreement.

I will tell you what a good first step would be: hire some surgeons. There are openings there. This is our first salvo at trying to fix the VA. We have an appeals bill that every single veterans service organization agrees: appeals modernization. We have worked that thing through. We have had the language. It is not here.

We have a Choice bill that is expiring August 7. We have had a hearing with the VA Secretary, and that is the way it should have been. It is not here today.

What we have is a bill that did not go through regular order, a bill that obviously didn't build a consensus, and this is very unusual to have a bill from the VA Committee. I bet you 90 to 95 percent of the time when one hits this floor, it gets 300 to 400 votes up on that board, but this one is not.

So, again, if the contention is that Members of this House don't care if there is a bad employee working there, that is disingenuous and wrong. But if we do believe, putting it in place--and again, the example I gave, the chairman is right. It took Robert 6 weeks to get all of the information gathered together because the manager who left was holding on to it and had to get the union to force the release of that information. His 14 days would have come and gone, and that is it.

This is why, sometimes, I am not going to defend 400 days. That is ridiculous. I am not going to spend--if they are dragging their feet. But this guy got fired by a manager, got demoted down, wanted to get the information. The outgoing manager said, ``It isn't my problem.'' The union had to go--and had to go, in this case, almost to court--to get the information back to them so he could present a case that said exactly what was ruled upon: You got fired illegally by a bad manager.

I am telling people, if you are angry when things go wrong at the VA, you have got 330 million Americans who are with you. We have subpoenaed them. None of them were collectively bargained. The problem is in management and middle management not doing their job.

Do your work.

You know what would be great is if the management actually did what they are supposed to do and improved bad performance before it gets to a point where it causes problems and you actually improve that employee, which saves us money from having to go out and hire someone else and you have the system working better. But to watch something go wrong, not do your due diligence, not follow the law, then fire someone and then complain that it takes too long to fix it, how about we figure out what really gets, keeps, retains, and makes the VA better?

There are other places that we could work on. Ninety percent of it, you have got my agreement. I think you are going to see that 10 percent is going to ensure this does not get into law; and that, in itself, is simply wrong because

no one disagrees. We could make this system work better.

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

Mr. Chair, after the gentleman finishes with his speakers, I will close.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I would say that I am pleased that the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz) is going to use the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to provide oversight of this administration. I welcome it. I have some suggestions for some other oversight of the administration, and I would be glad to share them.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chair, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. Chair, I am glad we got an opportunity to debate this, which is what we should do. There is no disagreement that we need to hold folks accountable. We need to get the best people at the VA. We need to commit to improving the VA the best we can.

My respect and admiration for the chairman is as it has always been, the highest it can be. I know his heart and his intellect is aimed at that. We have some legitimate differences on this. I don't believe they are so big they can't be overcome. I do believe we should try and keep this away from the partisanship that so often engulfs this House.

My commitment to Chairman Roe of Tennessee is to do the best I can to continue to try and improve upon these. We have a lot more work to do that will be happening together to improve the care of our veterans.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is just a simple technical correction. It does not change my concerns with the underlying bill on H.R. 1259, but I am not opposed to the technical corrections.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I thank Chairman Roe of Tennessee and Chairman Sessions of the Rules Committee for making this amendment in order. I have voiced my concern with the regular order. I think it is important to note that we are given the opportunity here to offer amendments in good faith, and I am grateful for that.

This amendment to H.R. 1259 would replace sections 3 and 9 of the underlying bill with bipartisan legislation from the Veterans First Act that was first introduced by Senator Isakson last Congress. This is a piece of legislation I have been talking about.

It is supported from both sides of the aisle, as well as those veterans service organizations, with the exception of one, that was shown earlier.

If we hope to reach any compromise with the Senate on accountability, I believe this amendment could be made in order, be voted on, debated, and passed into it.

The amendment specifically targets senior executives. It has been the senior executives, not the frontline employees, who we have subpoenaed before our committee, and who the VA has failed to hold accountable.

Like H.R. 1259, it provides an expedited process for the VA Secretary to hold senior executives and VA employees accountable.

For a senior executive employee, the employee would get 10 business days' notice. The employee subject to an adverse action would be able to grieve the action through an internal grievance process that would take no longer than 21 days. The employee would also be permitted to appeal an adverse action to court. It would also require the VA Secretary to develop a performance management system for SES employees. Do your job. Have the management do their job.

For VA employees, the employee would be removed from misconduct or poor performance that took place within the previous 2 years before the proposed removal. The employee would get 10 business days' notice. The employee would get 10 business days to respond to the charges. The VA Secretary would be required to provide the employee a decision in a reasonable period of time, and the employee would have 10 days to appeal the decision to the Merit Systems Protection Board. This takes a little time.

The Merit Systems Protection Board would have 90 days to issue a decision. During that time, the employee would receive no pay and no benefits.

My amendment would also leave in place sections 4 through 8 of H.R. 1259 because I agree employees convicted of felonies connected to their jobs should not receive pensions, and poor-performing employees should not receive bonuses. No disagreement.

Most importantly, my amendment provides a fair process that protects whistleblowers. By allowing our frontline employees to use arbitration and grievance procedures under collective bargaining agreements, these frontline employees remain protected from bad managers who want to retaliate against them for speaking out when something is wrong.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the choice is not as easy as that. Do you want to stand with Robert, the good employee who was fired by a bad manager who used the process to get their job back, or do we want to just hurry it?

It is better to get it right than get it done. And I will point out, AFGE, the union you keep hearing about, Mr. Chairman, does not endorse my amendment. They do not endorse my amendment, nor do I care about that.

What I do believe is that this amendment has the opportunity to improve upon on a bill that we 90 percent agree upon, taking out the piece that is going to make it difficult and not improve care for our veterans. And I guess the thing that I would hope matters, I believe-- and we will come back here and see. We will see. That is the good part about this place. If this piece of legislation is passed by October, by Halloween, we should have this bill through and it should be done, and we should be seeing changes.

If we don't, perhaps we do this exercise again, through regular order, taking some of these suggestions that make it possible to get it done.

I encourage my colleagues to support this change that makes sure we can get accountability. Let's agree where we know we agree. It is not picking one over the other. It is deciding how you give due process, encouraging good employees to have the rights that they have earned to improve that care and workplace while at the same time removing those that don't.

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

Will the gentleman yield?

This is not the Veterans First Act. It is pieces from the Veterans First Act, but changes.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment and, in fact, I am enthusiastically supportive of the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for bringing this forward. This amendment addresses an issue that we dealt with in our committee last Congress, where senior executives are transferred to different positions around the country, receive pay increases and relocation incentives.

We subpoenaed two senior executives. In fact, the first subpoenas ever issued out of the VA Committee, I asked for them to get there; and they were backed by Mr. Roe, backed by our chairman and ranking member. And to refresh people's minds, these were folks that took positions of lesser power, used their positions to negotiate to get there, and then, in some cases, took $129,000 moving expenses.

You cannot find anyone more outraged than me. And I will tell you, because it was not done correctly, and we didn't focus on this, I still work with some of those very same people. They have their jobs back.

Now, the debate that the gentleman may have heard earlier is we don't disagree at all that we should get rid of these people. This amendment will focus on the right things, that is what we have been making the case of.

So I applaud the gentleman. I am glad he is here. His military service is greatly appreciated. The statistics he gave on veterans shows that he will be there. I support this amendment, and I certainly believe that my colleagues should all support it.

It is this type of work that improves upon a bill, as I say, once again, 90 percent of what is in this bill is in absolute agreement. This just makes the bill better.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, once again, I am not only not opposed, I am enthusiastically supportive of the gentlewoman's commonsense, absolutely important piece of legislation. It improves upon the bill. I am glad we had a rule that brought it here, something we have worked on in our committee. I will make note of this.

The gentlewoman is absolutely right. The people we just talked about in the last amendment received bonuses also, but the bulk of this bill also deals with kitchen staff, janitorial staff, and rank-and-file members on the floor that we are working to go after their agreed-upon grievance process to keep their jobs. So this amendment is absolutely something that will get total approval from certainly, I believe, all Members of the House. This should be in the bill and will be in the bill.

This is how bills get better, address real issues, and take on the issue of accountability in a bipartisan manner. Mr. Chairman, I would encourage all my colleagues to support the gentlewoman. We have more work, as the gentlewoman said in this, but this is how it is done to get it right.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and to insert extraneous material in the Record on H.R. 1259.

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

Mr. Chair, I rise today in support of my bill, H.R. 1259, the VA Accountability First Act of 2017.

Mr. Chair, you and many other Members of this body are well aware that providing true accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs has been a goal of mine and many of my colleagues for years. The House has remained committed to this goal and has already passed several iterations of the legislation before us today, yet the challenges remain, which is why we are here once again trying in this Congress to effect real change and reform.

To bring real reform, we need to provide Secretary Shulkin with the tools he needs to swiftly and effectively discipline employees who don't meet the standards our veterans deserve or who fail in their sacred mission to provide world-class health care and benefits to the men and women who have served.

My bill would provide a singular expedited procedure for all VA employees to respond and appeal to proposed removals, demotions, and suspensions for performance or misconduct or, in the case of title 38 employees, who are healthcare providers, for a question involving direct patient care or clinical competence.

The prenotification and response process would be required to be completed within 15 business days, and the employee would be entitled to an expedited appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, where the first step at the administrative judge would be limited to 45 days. Additionally, either party would be able to appeal the administrative judge's decision to the full MSPB and would be provided the opportunity for limited judicial review.

H.R. 1259 would also ensure that the disciplinary procedures and avenues to appeal set up by this bill are the only avenues in place for title 5 and hybrid title 38 employees to dispute proposed removals, demotions, and suspensions for longer than 14 days. Pure title 38 employees, mainly VA's physicians and registered nurses, would retain their current internal process, but the timelines for disciplinary action and the appeals process would also be aligned to the timelines for all other VA employees as set up by this bill.

This bill would also provide improved protections for whistleblowers; would allow the Secretary to reduce an employee's Federal pension if they are convicted of a felony that influenced their job at VA; would provide the Secretary with the authority to recoup a bonus provided to an employee who engaged in misconduct or poor performance prior to receiving the bonus; and would allow the Secretary to recoup any relocation expenses that were authorized for a VA employee only through the employee's ill-gotten means, such as waste, fraud, and malfeasance.

Lastly, it would also provide the Secretary with the direct hiring authority that he desperately needs and has been asking for so that we can hire medical center directors and VISN directors in a more expedited manner and fill leadership vacancies across VA.

Mr. Chair, as I have said, I agree with all of my colleagues that the vast majority of VA employees are hardworking public servants who are dedicated to providing quality health care and benefits for veterans. But it is beyond comprehension that, with as much outright malfeasance that Congress, the American public, the media, and our courageous whistleblowers have uncovered at the VA, which has led to the increased scrutiny of the Department over the past few years, that we still see far too many instances of VA employees not living up to the standards America expects and not living up to the standards that our men and women who have served this country deserve.

Knowing many of the instances that have happened at the VA are a slap in the face to our veterans, it is unbelievable to me that anyone would oppose the bill before us here today.

The committee has discovered an instance of an employee showing up drunk to work to scrub in for a surgery on a veteran; a VA employee taking a recovering addict to a crack house and buying him drugs and a prostitute; a VA employee participating in an armed robbery; and senior managers retaliating against whistleblowers, at which point VA then has to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to the whistleblower in restitution.

Not only are all of these acts egregious and not only are all of these instances factual, they are just the tip of the iceberg; but what causes me to stand before you today is that, in none of these instances, did the VA hold these employees accountable in any reasonable timeframe, if at all.

I blame many factors for this, but mainly I blame an antiquated civil service system and a grievance process set up by the union-negotiated collective bargaining agreements that have left VA unwilling to jump through the many hoops to do what is right.

Mr. Chair, it is well past time that we not allow the current system to continue, and it is certainly our duty to finally take action and enact meaningful changes at VA that put veterans and their families first and foremost. Everything else should come second. That includes the power of the public sector unions.

Everyone in government knows that the civil service laws that were once meant to promote the efficiency of government are now obsolete and make it almost impossible to remove a poor-performing employee. Last year, VA's then-Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson, under President Obama, sat before the Veterans Affairs' Committee and admitted it was too difficult to fire a substandard VA employee.

The Government Accountability Office studies the government's ability to hold low-performing employees accountable and found that it took 6 months to a year, on average, and sometimes significantly longer, to fire poor-performing government employees.

I have heard the concerns that this bill will hurt the Department's ability to recruit and retain good employees. I don't buy this argument, as every VA employee I speak to tells me exactly the opposite. Good employees want to work in an environment where they know everyone can be held accountable for their actions.

I believe the current status quo of allowing bad employees to continue at

their jobs while receiving a paycheck actually hurts the moral of other employees who are doing the right thing 24 hours a day.

This is the same for employees of the Department who are veterans. I know that some have said that this would hurt veterans who are employed at a VA, since they make up a large percentage of VA employees, as it should be. As a veteran myself, and as my fellow veterans here today would agree--we don't sign up to serve, whether in uniform or civilian clothes, because we put our individual employee protections ahead of the mission--the mission always comes first, Mr. Chair; and at the VA, the mission is our veterans. Veterans want to work alongside colleagues they know are working hard for their fellow men and women they served alongside.

I also want to note that, from day one, I have worked with Secretary Shulkin and his team in the drafting of this bill that is before us today. He has endorsed this legislation not because he wants to punish employees or make it harder to recruit quality employees, but because he sees this type of change as desperately needed if he is going to truly reform the Department, as both sides of the aisle want.

Secretary Shulkin is someone who garnered the trust and respect of two Presidents of two different parties to serve our veterans, and he was confirmed by a vote in the Senate of 100-0. Mr. Chair, I hope that my colleagues would understand that his support and assistance in crafting this bill before us today is because real accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs is a veteran issue, not a political issue.

It is time that we align ourselves with our Nation's veterans and the organizations that represent them. Fifteen veterans service organizations support the bill before us today: the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the Military Order of the Purple Heart, Concerned Veterans for America, Student Veterans for America, Reserve Officers Association, Fleet Reserve Association, Association of the United States Navy, the Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States, VetsFirst, AMVETS, the Military Officers Association of America, and the United States Army Warrant Officers Association. These are 15 groups that represent millions of veterans and their families.

While I am in no way trying to make this a political argument or say that my colleagues on the other side of the aisle do not care about veterans--they do--but when it comes to this particular issue, accountability at the VA, I do not believe we can avoid the facts:

The facts are, when we talk about accountability at VA during our VSO hearings with the Senate, Members get an ovation.

The facts are that veterans, not just from the headquarters in D.C., but across this country, come up and thank Members for putting veterans' rights before all else.

The facts are the only groups that have staunchly come out and opposed the reform we are trying to make in this bill are the public sector unions.

As I said, this should not be a political discussion and this should not be one side of the aisle trying to out-veteran the other side of the aisle. We don't want to do that. But when you look at the facts, it is clear what our veterans and what the American public want us to do here in this Congress.

We have a package that makes meaningful changes to VA's civil service system while maintaining due process rights, as we should. Today we have the opportunity to make real and lasting changes to a broken system. Today we can decide to stand with our veterans or we can stand with the status quo and the unions that perpetuate the status quo, which I believe has failed them and the American public for far too long.

I hope you all will join me and the 15 veteran organizations that support this legislation and do what is right for veterans and pass H.R. 1259. Let's put accountability first so that transformative reforms can succeed.

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

House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and

Government Reform,

Washington, DC, March 10, 2017.

Hon. David P. Roe,

Chairman, Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman: I write concerning H.R. 1259, ``VA

Accountability First Act of 2017.'' As you know, the

Committee on Veterans' Affairs received an original referral

and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform a

secondary referral when the bill was introduced on February

28, 2017. I recognize and appreciate your desire to bring

this legislation before the House of Representatives in an

expeditious manner, and accordingly, the Committee on

Oversight and Government Reform will forego action on the

bill.

The Committee takes this action with our mutual

understanding that by foregoing consideration of H.R. 1259 at

this time we do not waive any jurisdiction over the subject

matter contained in this or similar legislation. Further, I

request your support for the appointment of conferees from

the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform during any

House-Senate conference convened on this or related

legislation.

Finally, I would ask that a copy of our exchange of letters

on this matter be included in the bill report filed by the

Committee on Veterans' Affairs, as well as in the

Congressional Record during floor consideration, to

memorialize our understanding.

Sincerely,

Jason Chaffetz,

Chairman.

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

With that impassioned plea, I was asked yesterday on a Facebook page who I might, from the other side of the aisle, like to ride across the country with, and it was my friend Tim Walz who I would like to ride with. He very passionately represents veterans very well, and it has been an absolute pleasure to work on the committee with him for the last 8 years.

Mr. Chair, just a couple things. The bill subjects all career employees to this new formal removal authority, and this would include frontline employees, middle management, even Senior Executive Service employees. Just a couple more things. It provides a unified process, not a bunch of different ones, for employees to appeal major adverse actions and other actions for title 38 when it pertains to a question involving direct patient care or clinical competence.

The current grievance procedures can allow an appeal to drag on for almost 350 days, and the House is the only legislative body that has passed a true accountability bill. I know, having spoken with Secretary Shulkin yesterday, he very much wants this piece of legislation in his toolbox to help reform the VA, which is desperately needed.

Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Mrs. McMorris Rodgers), our Conference chair.

Mr. Chairman, also during that live Facebook page, I mentioned another person I wouldn't mind riding across the country with, and it was Mr. Hoyer, just to clarify the Record.

Mr. Chairman, just a couple of clarification things.

All we have done with this bill is--we haven't removed due process rights--we have just shortened the time. And to show the concern that I had, I was afraid that if we used 14 or 15 calendar days--let's say, President's Day would be on a Monday, which would be a holiday--that would take a day away. So I said let's make this first part of this 15 business days. So that is 3 weeks. And then the accelerated review can go on 45 business days, which is 9 weeks. So this is 3 months of time, not a full year. But it simply compresses that time into a 3-month timeframe that this could last. So I think that people have their due process rights protected.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), my good friend, vice chair of our committee.

Mr. Chairman, I thank my friend, Mr. Takano.

``If you engage in an unethical practice, if you cover up a serious problem, you should be fired. Period. It shouldn't be that difficult.'' President Barack Obama, at the Choice Act's signing in 2014.

Dr. Shulkin is not a hard-line person. He received 100 votes, Mr. Chairman, in the Senate. I don't know that anybody else in this confirmation process has come close to that, but he has had unanimous support. He has asked for this. We worked with his office. He has personally asked that this be passed. That is why we are bringing this bill down here in this form.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Coffman), one of my great friends here in Congress, a fellow classmate. We came in together. We, too, have traveled to Afghanistan together to visit our Active Duty military in combat. He, too, is a combat veteran.

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

Mr. Chair, I think my good friend, Mr. Walz, helps make the point that this person who was aggrieved, it doesn't have to last so long. You can actually compress this time. As I mentioned, it is not short; 3 months to get this resolved. But this process we are putting together actually helps that person that has been aggrieved by the supervisor, I would argue.

Mr. Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Dunn), a new member of our committee, a veteran and physician from Florida.

Mr. Chair, I will just point out that I don't think the VA has a reputation of firing too many people.

Mr. Chair, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Rutherford), a new Member, and a very active member of our committee.

Mr. Chair, I would like to inquire as to the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz), the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, a fellow classmate.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Banks), a new member of our committee who is also in the Reserves serving our Nation in the military.

Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Lamborn), a good friend and long-term member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Mr. Chairman, to go along with what Sergeant Major Walz said, it is truly a privilege to work with him on these issues. His heart is in the right place. He truly cares about veterans.

I believe this bill, though, does do what needs to be done. Secretary Shulkin--approved 100-0 in the Senate--believes that he needs this tool to be able to reform the VA. I think it is imperative that we, as legislators, provide him the tools when we say we demand accountability at the VA.

Once again, I encourage all Members to support H.R. 1259.

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

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this manager's amendment would provide technical changes to the bill, while not changing the overall substance of the bill. The amendment is noncontroversial and no cost. It does not change any underlying policy in the bill.

I urge adoption of the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I urge approval of the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

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

I appreciate the spirit in which this amendment is proposed by the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Walz), but I must oppose it at this time.

The amendment would dramatically weaken the current accountability language for non-SES employees to the point that it would not be a meaningful improvement to or departure from current law. Just as a point of clarification, the Senate never did move the Veterans First Act.

The amendment includes many of the archaic and unnecessary civil service rules that currently hamper true reform and accountability at the Department. And unlike H.R. 1259, which would require the entire internal and first level of external appeals process to be completed within 67 days, the Walz amendment would allow for the process to take at least 120 days, and this period could expand indefinitely.

Additionally, the standard used in this agreement for removing or demoting employees for performance is not a meaningful departure from current law, and I fear it won't make any true changes that are desperately needed at VA.

On the collective bargaining piece, I understand the ranking member's concern, but the last thing I want to do is create a giant loophole that makes it harder to discipline bad employees. Just looking at one of VA's master contracts with employee unions, AFGE, which is the largest union at VA, one can see that the grievance procedures that he wishes to keep in place to dispute discipline can extend to almost 350 days, and this timeline can be easily extended.

With the Walz amendment, we would be creating a giant loophole where the Secretary would have one expedited process in place, while the long and administratively burdensome grievance process remains in place for nearly 285,000 employees at the Department, or 76 percent of the VA's workforce.

Clearly, covering only 24 percent of the VA workforce under an expedited authority is not what I want to do, nor do I expect veterans and taxpayers or the Secretary want to do.

Additionally, when the committee first began working on accountability issues at VA, they were told by the largest Federal Government union, AFGE general counsel, that the union would never support any legislation that changes the status quo.

Based on AFGE's strong support for language identical to the Walz amendment last Congress, I think the message is clear. If Congress adopts this language, we would not be protecting taxpayers or veterans, and we would be supporting the corrupt status quo that fails VA employees and veterans daily.

In the end, the question is very clear: Do we want to stand with veterans and taxpayers to provide the Secretary with the appropriate tools he has asked for to hold these employees accountable? Or do we want to give in to special interests groups to support the status quo?

Once again, I urge all Members to oppose the Walz amendment and support the underlying bill.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am just looking at the AFGE website, and it does have support for the Veterans First Act here on the website; so that is true.

I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time.

Basically, the accountability provisions are the same. I, once again, urge all Members to oppose the Walz amendment and support the underlying bill.

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

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to rise in opposition, although I am not opposed.

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

Mr. Chairman, the amendment would allow a whistleblower who is alleging prohibited personnel practices, as defined in title 38, from being disciplined under the bill until the whistleblower complaint is resolved.

The committee has always favored strengthening protections for whistleblowers. My bill already protects whistleblowers, but I am not opposed to Ms. Kuster's amendment and suggested changes, and I appreciate her offering it. The bill has my full support.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank Mr. Taylor for his service to our country and to our Nation. I am appreciative of him and his staff for working with us on the amendment. The amendment has, as chair, my full support.

Mr. Chairman, this would require the Secretary to report to Congress each year any performance awards or bonuses provided to Senior Executive Service employees at the VA. This is an excellent amendment from the gentlewoman from New York and will provide additional needed transparency at the Department where taxpayer money is being spent, especially when being spent on bonuses for the most senior individuals at VA. This amendment has my full support.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed.

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

Mr. Chairman, Ms. Kuster's amendment would require VA supervisors to develop performance plans for employees which would, as a part of the plan, measure steps taken to address poor performance but also improve training for VA supervisors--an excellent suggestion.

I agree that all VA employees, especially our managers, should be held to high standards and should have as much training provided them as is available. Ms. Kuster's amendment has my full support.

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

Mr. Chairman, this is an excellent amendment, and I urge support.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I appreciate Mr. Takano's--who is a very hardworking member of the committee--attempt to insert what he thinks is an appropriate balance of due process and accountability, but the substitute language misses the bar of what we are trying to accomplish.

It would strike the entire bill and insert new language only allowing the Secretary to remove someone if they present a threat to health or safety. This is a nearly unobtainable, if not an immeasurable, bar to reach. This undefined standard makes it almost impossible for the Secretary to remove any employee. It would create a confusing process that only allows someone to be removed after they are suspended first and the Secretary conducts an investigation into the individual.

It would allow for employees to be on indefinite suspension for months, if not years, awaiting the Secretary's final decision, which is not fair to veterans and the employee or good-performing employees and taxpayers. The employee deserves a quick opportunity to present their case, and, if exonerated, get back to doing their job.

Unlike my bill, this would only provide backpay to someone if their removal is overturned on appeal if they are a whistleblower. My bill would require any individual whose disciplinary action is overturned on appeal to receive any backpay for that period.

This amendment does nothing to provide the Secretary with the authority to recoup bonuses or relocation expenses from individuals who receive taxpayer-funded money through ill-gotten means such as fraud, waste, or abuse, nor does it allow the Secretary to recoup a portion of a Federal pension of someone convicted of a felony that influenced their VA job.

It would ensure that the current ineffective civil service rules would continue to hamper any change to the corrosive and unaccountable culture at the VA, and would also, more than likely, not apply to some of the employees associated with the VA's egregious scandals, including the bloated Denver, Colorado, construction project; data management at the Philadelphia regional office; FY 2015 $2.5 billion shortfall cost overruns at the Orlando VA Medical Center; allegations of inappropriate use of government purchase cards to the tune of $6 billion; and many others.

These are the types of employees that our constituents and veterans expect to be held accountable, but this amendment would not cover.

In the end, the facts are clear: our veterans and the American taxpayer support the reform in H.R. 1259, and not the status quo, which is supported by public sector unions.

I encourage all Members to oppose the Takano amendment and support the underlying bill.

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

Mr. Chair, I agree with my friend on the other side of the aisle that you cannot fire your way to excellence, nor can you grieve your way to excellence. You have to perform your way to excellence.

I certainly appreciate his passion for the committee and the hard work that he has done on numerous bills, but, in this particular case, I will urge all Members to oppose the Takano amendment and support the underlying bill in which the Secretary has asked for the authority.

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

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

Mr. Speaker: ``If you engage in an unethical practice, if you cover up a serious problem, you should be fired. Period. It shouldn't be that difficult''--Barack Obama at the Veterans Choice Act signing in August of 2014. That is who said that.

Yesterday, I had breakfast with the Secretary of the VA. We know that accountability and the VA needs reform. The first thing he said to me when he was there was he needs this accountability act to better manage the VA.

What does this bill do, in a nutshell, very quickly? It simply shortens the process instead of taking as much as a year or longer to terminate someone. And we have had people in egregious things they have done. The Phoenix VA issue was mentioned. It took 2 years to get rid of anybody out there.

The Secretary says he needs these authorities. It maintains the due process rights of the employees, which is important. It simply shortens the length of time for as much as a year for some people. The VA said it would take 6 months to a year to fire a government employee--or longer.

It also has accentuated whistleblower protections, allows the Secretary to recoup bonuses from people who have gotten them illegally.

It allows the Secretary to hire people. We have many VA facilities out there that do not have CEOs at this time.

Mr. Speaker, I would recommend that we oppose the MTR, and I would strongly encourage my colleagues from both sides of the aisle, in a bipartisan way, to support the underlying bill.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the gentleman from Colorado, for yielding me the necessary and customary 30 minutes for debate.

Mr. Speaker, I am here today to debate the rule for consideration of two separate pieces of legislation: S. 1094, the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act; and H.R. 2581, the Verify First Act.

I begin with S. 1094, legislation aimed at bringing enhanced accountability at the Department of Veterans Affairs and improving the care we provide to our Nation's veterans. Among other things, this bill codifies in law the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection at the VA and streamlines the process to demote, remove, or suspend VA employees if evidence proves they engaged in misconduct or poor performance.

Mr. Speaker, last night at the Rules Committee, we had the opportunity to hear from the chairman and ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee about this legislation, Dr. Roe and Mr. Walz. They discussed the bipartisan nature in which they have worked on this issue, along with the bipartisan work done in the Senate, to craft legislation that they hope can achieve strong bipartisan support in this body.

It is because of this display of bipartisanship and cooperation and a semblance of regular order that I am dismayed that I must now address the process and substance by which we are considering the second bill encompassed in this rule, H.R. 2581, the Verify First Act.

Let me connect the dots for you on how we got to this point, and bear with me. The Republican majority's path to take healthcare from 23 million Americans has been as convoluted as it has been chaotic.

Mr. Speaker, as I am sure you and my colleagues should remember, first, the Republican mantra was repeal. Then it was repeal and replace. Then it was repeal and delay, followed by access to coverage, and then, patient centered.

Finally, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle settled on a three-bucket strategy. The first bucket of this strategy was the Republicans'

American Health Care Act. The majority brought their first iteration of this bill to the floor after working on it for 17 days, and, with no hearings, only to have it go down in flames in the most public and spectacular fashion.

So they went back to the drawing board--not to improve the bill, or improve healthcare for the American people, mind you, but to garner enough Republican votes for a bill that ultimately had 17 percent approval ratings. And they added a manager's amendment to get support, then they added another manager's amendment, then another, and another.

Then with a bill patched together with the wants and wishes of powerful healthcare lobbyists and tax breaks for the superwealthy, with no CBO score, and with no way for the American people, let alone their own Members, to actually know what was in the bill, the majority pushed the bill through the House of Representatives.

What did my Republican friends do after passing this inexplicably bad bill? They got on a couple of buses from here at the Capitol and went to a rose garden ceremony hosted by President Donald John Trump to celebrate upending one-sixth of the American economy and taking away healthcare from 23 million people.

That was certainly the Republicans' most recent mission-accomplished moment, and it must have been some celebration because it will be another 2 weeks before the majority would actually get around to sending their healthcare bill to the Senate, due to the fact that they were not sure if it complied with the Senate rules or, more specifically, the Byrd rule in the U.S. Senate.

Then there is the second bucket of this plan, which involves the Trump administration rolling back regulations. Should the work associated with the second bucket proceed as it has with the other two, then I am sure it, too, will be a disaster, benefitting the wealthy at the expense of hardworking Americans.

Mr. Speaker, this brings me to the Republicans' third bucket. According to Senator Ted Cruz, this bucket is ``a sucker's bucket.'' Indeed, some like Senator Tom Cotton have referred to all of this bucket talk as simply a bunch of political spin. Whatever it is, it is an empty bucket.

The most recent bill the Republican majority has decided to dump in this sucker's bucket is H.R. 2581, the Verify First Act. Under current law, premium assistance tax credits are available for eligible individuals and families to subsidize the cost of health insurance. Individuals are not eligible for these credits unless they are U.S. citizens or are living in the country legally.

Currently, applicants have 90 days to provide documentation or otherwise address any issues with citizenship and immigration status, and are presumed eligible to enroll in marketplace coverage. If an individual is unable to provide the necessary documentation, coverage and financial assistance are terminated.

This provision ensures that individuals are not left in a position of having to wait potentially months to be verified before they can afford coverage, and it provides the proper guardrails to terminate assistance if an individual is deemed ineligible. There is no evidence to support the majority's claim that this process is not working.

H.R. 2581 would repeal this 90-day verification period, setting up an unnecessary barrier for eligible individuals to receive the credits they need to afford lifesaving healthcare. Republicans themselves acknowledge that the verification process could take months, but, nevertheless, they are bringing forth today's bill knowing full well that it will make it harder for vulnerable people to access healthcare when they need it most.

It would disproportionately hurt low-income Americans, especially naturalized Americans from immigrant families since they can have a harder time producing documentation needed to verify their citizenship. But don't just take my word for it.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter signed by dozens and dozens of national, State, and local civil rights and advocacy groups strongly opposing this legislation, such groups as the NAACP, the Children's Defense Fund, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, the American Friends Service Committee, the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations, the League of United Latin American Citizens, the Institute of the Sisters of Mercy, and I could go on, and on, and on, but in the interest of time, I thank the Speaker for allowing it to be made a part of the Record.

June 12, 2017.

Dear Member of Congress: As national, state, and local

organizations concerned about immigrant rights or access to

affordable health care, we are writing to strongly urge you

to VOTE NO on H.R. 2581, the ``Verify First'' Act. This bill

is an attack on people's ability to see a doctor and on

immigrants and people of color. It is not the ``common

sense'' taxpayer protection bill that its supporters would

have you believe.

H.R. 2581 is a dangerous bill that puts up roadblocks for

both citizens and immigrants to obtain timely, affordable

health insurance. It would strip away provisions that provide

for a person to obtain subsidies for enrollment in an

Affordable Care Act (or the contemplated American Health Care

Act) plan while they work with Department of Health and Human

Services to verify their U.S. citizenship or immigration

status. The people most impacted are U.S. citizens who were

born abroad or naturalized. The bill also affects many

immigrants, especially those newly arrived or certain victims

of domestic violence and trafficking survivors.

The fact is that when individuals are not able to

immediately verify their citizenship or immigration status on

an Affordable Care Act Marketplace, it begins an often months

long, strenuous process of sending in documents that must be

physically inspected. Health care assisters routinely say

these clients are the hardest cases they work on because the

process for verifying citizenship and immigration status is a

time-consuming exercise in dealing with inefficient

government processes.

Rather than protect American taxpayers, H.R. 2581 would

strip from American taxpayers important protections that are

needed to overcome deficiencies in federal government

databases. Immigrants who are not lawfully present are

categorically barred from enrollment in health insurance on

the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, and for the subsidies

that make that insurance affordable. Moreover, safeguards

protecting taxpayers are already built into the ACA;

individuals whose citizenship or immigration status cannot be

verified already are required to pay back all of their

subsidies when they file their taxes and ``reconcile'' their

premium tax credits.

Supporters of this bill cite a sloppy Senate Homeland

Security and Governmental Affairs Committee report that

arrived at a made-up number of supposed ``fraud.'' It's just

not true. The committee assumed that every person who lost

coverage for failure to verify their citizenship and

immigration status was undocumented. In the experience of our

organizations and organizations we work with, this is false.

These reports describe the first year of the marketplaces,

and it is well documented that system outages and

understaffing, among other technical problems, contributed to

the federal Marketplace's failure to verify consumers' status

promptly. The Department of Health and Human Services

Inspector General reported in 2014 that a cause of the delay

in verification was the agency's lack of prioritization of

this issue.

Despite huge gains since then, problems still persist. The

Social Security database holding many citizens' information

may not reflect common changes, such as when a person marries

and changes their last name, or when someone naturalizes and

gains U.S. citizenship. People lose their coverage because

they receive notices in languages they cannot read.

Immigrants are required to submit documents multiple times,

or wait while the Department of Homeland Security finds paper

files, a result of deficiencies in their databases affecting

groups like asylum applicants and some survivors of domestic

violence. These are among the many issues consumers face.

Congress has already deprived undocumented immigrants from

the ability to buy coverage, even at full price, so they can

see a doctor when they are sick, but this bill would go a

step further to delay or put out of reach affordable health

insurance for many citizens and lawfully present immigrants.

Our organizations firmly believe that this would be

detrimental to the people we represent and to all of our

communities as a whole. We have seen that when health

insurance is unaffordable, people are effectively prevented

from obtaining access to the care they need to be healthy.

This bill is not just an attack on our health care system,

it is also an attack on immigrants and people of color, which

our organizations stand firmly against. In his statements

when introducing this bill, Rep. Lou Barletta focused the

bill as part of his effort to ``stop illegal immigration.''

Rep. Barletta has a long history of anti-immigrant rhetoric,

from trying to prevent immigrants from leasing a residence to

stating that they should be denied life-saving services in

hospital emergency rooms. This bill is simply a vehicle for

scapegoating immigrants and people of color and will keep

eligible people from accessing health care.

We the undersigned organizations urge you to vote NO on

H.R. 2581 and the continued assault on immigrants and the

health of our communities.

Sincerely,

National

Advocates for Youth; African American Ministers in Action;

American Federation of Teachers (AFT); American Friends

Service Committee; American Intercession; American Society on

Aging; Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum; Asian

Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC; Asian Pacific Institute

on Gender-Based Violence; Asian Pacific Partners for

Empowerment, Advocacy & Leadership (APPEAL); Association of

Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations (AAPCHO);

Autistic Self Advocacy Network; Black Alliance for Just

Immigration; Breast Cancer Action; Center for Law and Social

Policy (CLASP); Center for Medicare Advocacy, Inc.; Child

Welfare League of America; Children's Advocacy Institute;

Children's Defense Fund; Church World Service (CWS).

Coalition on Human Needs; Columbian Center for Advocacy and

Outreach; Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good

Shepherd, US Provinces; Conscious Talk Radio; Detention Watch

Network; Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund;

Dominican Sisters; Dominicans of Sinsinawa; Family Equality

Council; Farmworker Justice; First Focus Campaign for

Children; Food Research & Action Center; Franciscan Sisters

of the Poor IJPC; Friends Committee on National Legislation;

Generations Inc.; GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT

Equality; Immigrant Legal Resource Center; Indivisible;

Institute of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas; Interfaith

Worker Justice.

Irish Apostolate USA; Jobs With Justice; Justice in Aging;

Justice, Peace and Reconciliation Commission, Priests of the

Sacred Heart, US Province; Lambda Legal; Leadership Team of

the Felician Sisters of North America; League of United Latin

American Citizens (LULAC); Medical Mission Sisters; Mi

Familia Vota; MomsRising; NAACP; NAPAFASA; National Advocacy

Center of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd; National Asian

Pacific American Women's Forum; National Association of

County and City Health Officials; National Association of

Social Workers; National Black Justice Coalition; National

Center for Transgender Equality; National Council of Asian

Pacific Americans (NCAPA); National Council of Churches.

National Council of La Raza (NCLR); National Education

Association; National Employment Law Project; National Health

Law Program; National Hispanic Medical Association; National

Immigrant Justice Center; National Immigration Law Center;

National Justice for Our Neighbors; National Latina Institute

for Reproductive Health; National Network of Abortion Funds;

National Organization for Women; National Women's Health

Network; Network for Environmental & Economic Responsibility

of United Church of Christ; NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social

Justice; NMAC; OCA--Asian Pacific American Advocates; Our

Revolution; Peace and Justice Office of the Congregation of

Notre Dame; Physicians for Reproductive Health; PICO

National.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America; Poor People's

Economic Human Rights Campaign; Prevention Institute; Project

Inform; Racine Dominicans; Raising Women's Voices for the

Health Care We Need; Refuge Ministries; Sargent Shriver

National Center on Poverty Law; Service Employees

International Union; Sisters of Charity; Sisters of Charity

of Nazareth; Sisters of Mercy of the Americas--Institute

Justice Team; Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC);

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; United

Sikhs; United We Dream; Ursuline Sisters of Tildonk, U.S.

Province; We Belong Together; API Wellness.

State and Local

Academy of Medical & Public Health Services; Advocates for

Children and Youth; AgeOptions; Almost Home, Inc.; Anti-

Hunger & Nutrition Coalition; Arkansas Advocates for Children

and Families; Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing;

Asian Americans Advancing Justice--Los Angeles; Asian

Community Alliance--Cincinnati OH; Asian Law Alliance; Asian

Services In Action, Inc.; Baltimore Jewish Council;

California Health Professional Student Alliance; California

Immigrant Policy Center; California Latinas for Reproductive

Justice (CLRJ); California OneCare; California Pan-Ethnic

Health Network; California Partnership; California Physicians

Alliance; CASA.

Center for Southeast Asians; Chicago Hispanic Health

Coalition; Child Care Resources of Rockland; Children Now;

Children's Defense Fund--CA; Chinatown Service Center;

Chinese-American Planning Council; Coalition for Humane

Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA); Collaborative Center for Justice;

Colorado Center on Law and Policy; Colorado Center on Law and

Policy; Columbia Legal Services; Community Health Councils;

D.C. Hunger Solutions; DuPage Federation on Human Services

Reform; Empower Missouri; Ensuring Opportunity Campaign to

End Poverty in Contra Costa; Erie Benedictines for Peace;

Esperanza Health Centers; EverThrive Illinois; Farmworker

Association of Florida.

Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC); Give for a Smile;

Greater Kansas City Coalition to End Homelessness; Having Our

Say Coalition; Health Access California; Health Care for

All--WA; Health Law Advocates; Healthy House Within A MATCH

Coalition; Hmong Ohio of Tomorrow; Hunger Action Los Angeles;

IHM Sisters, Immaculata, PA; IL Hunger Coalition; Illinois

Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights; Indivisible

Mountain Home, Idaho; Interfaith Movement for Human

Integrity; IRIS--Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services;

Islamic Civic Engagement Project; Jewish Family & Children's

Service; Kansas Appleseed; Kentucky Equal Justice Center;

Korean Community Services of Metropolitan NY; La Fe Policy

Research and Education Center.

La Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program; Legal Council for

Health Justice; Legal Services of Southern Piedmont; Maine

Consumers for Affordable Health Care; Make the Road New York;

Maryland CASH Campaign; Maryland Hunger Solutions;

Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition

(MIRA); Massachusetts Law Reform Institute; Maternal and

Child Health Access; Maternity Care Coalition; National

Association of Social Workers, CT Chapter; National Tongan

American Society; Nationalities Service Center; NC Child; New

Mexico Center on Law and Poverty; New York Immigration

Coalition; New York Legal Assistance Group; NICOS Chinese

Health Coalition; NJ State Industrial Union Council; NOELA

Community Health Center; Northern NJ Chapter, National

Organization for Women.

Northwest Health Law Advocates; Northwest Immigrant Rights

Project; Office of the Health Care Advocate at Vermont Legal

Aid; OneAmerica; Pacific Islander Health Partnership; Pitkin

County Human Services; Public Justice Center; Puget Sound

Advocates for Retirement Action (PSARA); Rainbow Center;

Reformed Church of Highland Park; RESULTS--Santa Fe (NM);

Salaam Cleveland; Services, Immigrant Rights, and Education

Network (SIREN); Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word,

Houston; Sisters of St. Dominic of Blauvelt, NY; Sisters of

the Most Precious Blood; Social Justice Committee St. Patrick

Church; South Asian Network; Southwest Women's Law Center;

St. Francis St Vincent de Paul Society; Tennessee Justice

Center; Thai Health And Information Service.

The Children's Partnership; The Latino Health Insurance

Program, Inc.; Turning Points; United Way Bay Area; URI

Feinstein Center for a Hunger Free America; Vermont

Affordable Housing Coalition; Virginia Poverty Law Center;

Voices for Vermont's Children; Voz Hispana Cambia

Comunitario; Washington Community Action Network; Washington

Healthcare Access Alliance; Washington State Labor Council,

AFL-CIO; West Chester Food Cupboard; West Side Campaign

Against Hunger; Westlake Chinese Culture Association;

Wisconsin Council of Churches; Wisconsin Faith Voices for

Justice; Women's Action Movement Washtenaw County, MI;

Worksite Wellness LA; Xaverian Brothers; Young Women United.

Mr. Speaker, ``This bill,'' that letter says, ``is an attack on people's ability to see a doctor and on immigrants and people of color.''

``H.R. 2581 is a dangerous bill that puts up roadblocks for both citizens and immigrants to obtain timely, affordable health insurance.''

If this is what we are in store for with the Republican's third bucket, then it is even worse than a sucker's bucket. It is callous, and it is cruel, and someone described the Vice Presidency once many years ago as a warm bucket of spit.

As my colleague, Congressman Richard Neal, said last night at the Rules Committee, bad process leads to bad product. I agree with Mr. Neal, and this bill is a perfect example of his salient insight. The provisions in this legislation are contingent upon enactment of the American Health Care Act.

If the American Health Care Act is enacted, this bill would not go into effect. That means we are now considering legislation amending a bill that we have already sent to the Senate, and that the Senate has made clear it has no intention of taking up.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin).

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

Mr. Speaker, earlier this year, Donald John Trump issued an executive order placing a hiring freeze on Federal civilian employees across the executive branch. This executive order, like many of the executive orders this President has issued, failed to take into account the effects it could have on our most vulnerable communities.

Veterans make up one-third of all Federal workers. I am very pleased that one is in my office. She is probably smiling because sometimes Charity probably doesn't think I even know that she is in the office. But she is there and does incredible work.

The Department of Veterans Affairs--a severely understaffed agency serving those veterans--cannot afford a hiring freeze.

This week, Republicans are bringing to the floor bills they claim would improve veterans' lives. If the President and my Republican colleagues are truly committed to our veterans, then they should ensure that reckless hiring freezes do not harm them in the future.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I am going to offer an amendment to the rule to bring up Representative Schrader's bill, H.R. 696, which would prohibit any hiring freeze from affecting the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert in the Record the text of my amendment, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, what we have here today is a rule with one bill that really was worked on in a bipartisan manner--sort of like regular order like we were promised by the Speaker at the outset of this session of Congress--and another bill, which is just more of the same from this majority: creating problems where none existed before.

The fact remains that the Republicans' healthcare bill and overall bucket strategy is a disaster for the American people, and no amount of Rose Garden backslapping is going to change that fact.

Under the Republican plan, 23 million Americans will be kicked off of their health insurance and $800 billion will be cut from Medicaid. Footnote right there, we hear that the Senate is taking up something. We don't know where and who is doing the taking up, but what I read today is that they are considering a glide path of some kind to cut Medicaid.

Mr. Speaker, cutting Medicaid hurts poor people. Whether you glide it or run it over them, either way you look at it, it hurts them, and we need to pay attention to that, particularly if we are doing it to provide for those of us that are better off in our society.

Seventy-five billion dollars will be cut from Medicare, insurance premiums would increase for people ages 60 to 64 by more than $3,000 a year, and protections for those with preexisting conditions will be eliminated.

I read about a 63-year-old lady who said that all of her conditions are preexisting and she can't afford insurance. H.R. 2581 only adds to this pain by setting up an unnecessary barrier for eligible individuals to get access to healthcare.

But not to worry, under the Republican plan, the 400 highest income families would ultimately get tax cuts averaging around $7 million a year, and that information comes from the Ways and Means Committee's fact sheet.

Mr. Speaker, I and others here very frequently have pointed out that what the Republicans want to do is to cut benefits for poor people--the most vulnerable in our society--and to provide for the better-off tax cuts--those people in our society who least need them.

It occurs to me that if we were to have an opportunity to ask the 400 wealthiest families in this country whether or not they really need a tax cut, my belief, based on the four billionaires that I have known personally--two are deceased now--but in my conversations with all of them, their position was that they didn't need a cut. To the man, each one of them said that, if they were to receive tax cuts, they would prefer that they go to education, particularly education for kindergartners and prekindergartners.

If my Republican colleagues can move past throwing red meat to their base--a group of people, mind you, who are most certainly disadvantaged--one day they are going to wake up and recognize that much of what we are doing here, even though they support it, many of the persons who are doing it, they, too, are caught up in this downward spiral that is involving healthcare in this country, the game that we are playing.

If we are willing to work in a serious manner to address the issues in our healthcare system, then I know that Democrats are ready to work with Republicans. But whatever is going on in the other body, I assure you, no Democrats in the other body are involved in.

Last night I asked the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee whether or not he knew what this bill looked like, and his answer was that he did not.

I also said what I repeat here, that people are hurting in this country. Whether it is ObamaCare that the Republicans, I believe, are going to find that it is going to be hard to fix, or whether it is the Affordable Care Act that is in some phantom hole over in the other body, somehow or another, my friends on the other side are going to be held accountable for all of what is necessary to be done. The only way that is sensible--and I believe that every American is imploring us to undertake--is to sit down together.

I cannot believe that the 435 people plus 6 here in the House of Representatives and the 100 United States Senators do not have the ability to do all of the things that are necessary in order for Americans to receive adequate healthcare and to lead with protecting the most vulnerable in our society.

It is ridiculous to talk about cutting Medicaid when more than 60 percent of the people on Medicaid are seniors that are in nursing homes.

What are we going to say to those families? How are we going to address them when it comes to the reality that they are confronted with while we are up here jaw jacking back and forth about whether or not it is ObamaCare or whether or not it is the Affordable Care Act that we can't seem to find.

Somewhere along the lines, we need to sit down and work together. Failure to do so is to our own peril and to the peril of the citizens of this great country of ours.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

I thank the gentleman, my friend from Colorado, for yielding me the customary 30 minutes for debate, and I rise to debate the rule providing for consideration of the three bills related to the Department of Veterans Affairs--interestingly, all under one rule. We have been doing two bills under one rule. We are now headed to three. I recommend we just put all of our bills under a rule and save us a lot of time.

The first bill under today's rule, to improve the authority of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to hire and retain physicians and other employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs, the bipartisanship reflected in this bill is certainly a rarity in this body and, frankly, could have easily come before us under the suspension of the rules.

There are nearly 47,000 job vacancies for doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals throughout the Veterans Administration's healthcare system. The VA is consistently rated as one of the worst Federal agencies in terms of pay and leadership, and since 2009, the number of VA employees resigning or retiring has risen every year.

As of the new year, 547,000 patients were waiting more than 30 days for care at a VA hospital. It is clear that we must act to improve the VA on a holistic level, and this bill is a good start.

This legislation establishes staffing, recruitment, and retention programs to enable the VA to build a stronger workforce.

However, I am disappointed that the Rules Committee majority did not make in order an amendment that I offered to this measure, which would have allowed the Secretary of the VA to fill any existing vacant positions within the Veterans Administration, regardless of whether the position was vacated before or after the reckless hiring freeze imposed by Donald John Trump.

I would also note that Representatives Schrader and Moulton offered an amendment that would fully lift the hiring freeze, but the Rules Committee blocked this amendment as well from receiving a vote on the House floor. I remain disheartened at the way the majority continues to operate the business of the House of Representatives.

The bipartisanship this bill enjoys dissipates when we move to another bill wrapped in today's three-rule measure, and that is H.R. 1181, the Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act. Before I launch into all of my remarks regarding this, I want to make it very clear that I and most Members of the House of Representatives will do everything we can to protect the Second Amendment rights of U.S. citizens and veterans especially.

This legislation, however, if enacted, would immediately enable approximately 174,000 veterans currently deemed mentally unfit by the VA to purchase firearms. At its core, this bill assumes that all veterans with mental illness should have unfettered access to guns, regardless of whether they will turn the weapon on themselves or their loved ones, and that any determination otherwise is simply wrong. The broadly reaching bill arbitrarily removes every veteran flagged by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System from its rolls, literally putting tens of thousands of lives at risk.

Let's look at the facts. Under procedures currently in place by the VA and the Department of Justice, an individual who lacks the mental capacity to contract or to manage his or her own affairs can be prevented from purchasing a gun. This term applies to veterans with severe mental illnesses who require a fiduciary to help manage their VA benefits. If the veteran thinks there was an error or that he or she was unfairly disqualified, the veteran can utilize the same due process and appeals procedures that are available for other VA decisions.

Under the current process, which was codified in the 21st Century Cures Act just a few months ago, the veteran is allowed a hearing before the Board of Veterans Appeals and given several opportunities for judicial review and appeal in Federal court.

Mr. Speaker, this bill turns this sensible and humane approach on its head. It is time that we acknowledge where we are as a country. It is time that we deal with the fact that we are in the midst of a veterans' suicide epidemic. Twenty veterans kill themselves every day. That is 7,300 of our finest and bravest persons in our society. Two-thirds of these suicides are carried out using firearms.

A Department of Veterans Affairs report, provided to Congress in 2015, revealed that nearly 20,000 veterans diagnosed with schizophrenia, 15,000 diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and thousands more diagnosed with dementia, Alzheimer's, and serious depression were on the NICS rolls. Under this bill, these individuals and many more would be given immediate

access to guns, putting themselves and others in danger.

Even as our Nation suffers shooting after shooting, Congress has not acted. Democrats held a sit-in in this very room in that well in this last Congress to protest the callousness of the House Republican leadership in preventing us from even considering legislation to protect our citizens with reference to guns. Rather than act to address gun violence, we instead considered legislation like this, which will actually lead to more gun violence, Mr. Speaker. The logic and lack of compassion in such an approach absolutely escapes me.

Our country has witnessed horrific shootings in the past few years. Dozens of children were murdered at Sandy Hook. Nearly 50 people were killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. One of our very own from this Congress was nearly assassinated while holding a townhall event in 2011. We continue to ignore the ramifications of shootings at Oak Creek, Aurora, Virginia Tech--I could go on and on--Charleston. The list just continues. 32,000 Americans lose their lives every year from gun violence.

We have grieved together. And I, along with several of my colleagues, have stopped standing down here in the well for a moment of silence and then going back to our regular business after hundreds of our people are killed throughout this society. We have demanded change together, and we have been shocked by the paralysis that has gripped this institution when it comes to taking commonsense steps to end our country's gun violence epidemic.

Today, we see in this bill another measure coming out of Republican leadership that sprints toward the goal set by this country's powerful gun lobby. Listen up, NRA, there are people like me that aspire to have a zero rating by you every year. And it is not just the gun lobbyists, it is gun manufacturers as well. It may be great for the gun manufacturers' bottom line and the NRA's bottom line, but it is terrible for those brave men and women who have served this country so fully, those brave men and women who suffer wounds that may not be visible to the naked eye, but are no less real and worthy of our attention.

With each new tragedy that occurs, whether it be a mass shooting or the 20 servicemembers we lose every day to suicide, those who stand in the way of legislation to address our country's gun violence epidemic are increasingly culpable for its continuation. I am disgusted with this morally bankrupt obfuscation, and I think the American people are, too.

Let me lay down a marker. Of the 435, plus six Members of the House of Representatives and the 100 U.S. Senators, I want to see the first person when this measure goes into effect, if it does, and 174,000 veterans are taken off of the NICS rolls and can access guns, the first one that dies--and I hope we track it--I want everybody to stand up and remember that we had a chance to stop it here. Don't tell me, if 20 veterans are killing themselves every day and if 7,000-plus of them are killing themselves every year--and we won't even mention domestic violence and the horror that comes from those guns--if we continue this effort, we will allow more deaths along those lines.

Before concluding, Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words about the final bill encompassed in this rule, H.R. 1259, the VA Accountability First Act of 2017, and the Republicans' continued assault on the working people of this country.

At its core, this bill is an attack on workers' rights, plain and simple, and will do more harm than good in our efforts to improve care at the Veterans Administration. This legislation would strip the collective bargaining rights of VA workers. It weakens an employee's right to appeal. It weakens protections for VA workers who speak up against mismanagement and patient harm.

Republicans claim they want to help fix our VA system, yet, with this bill, they do that by insulting, undermining, and attacking the very employees who serve and care for our veterans, including the over 120,000 veterans who work for the VA. Yesterday, one of our colleagues presented at the Rules Committee a statistic that I didn't know. Of the 2 million Federal employees in this great Nation of ours, 640,000 of them are veterans. So when we get ready to pare back this government that somehow or another people have targeted for all sorts of cuts, if you read today's budget proposal by Donald John Trump, you will see that lots of these veterans will be losing their jobs, in addition to all of the things that we have already discussed.

We need to make improvements at the VA. Everybody knows that. That is clear. But singling out VA employees and their protections is counterproductive, to say the least, and only compounds manpower shortages plaguing the agency.

This legislation will exacerbate recruitment problems and impair retention at the agency. It threatens the agency's ability to build a robust clinical workforce by threatening the quality of care that the VA will be able to provide.

I don't know what the pique is by my Republican colleagues with reference to workers in this country. They talk a very good game about protecting workers and we are going to bring back jobs and we are going to do all of these things that are going to protect the middle class.

I will get a chance to talk about this a little bit more, but I am very proud of the unions in this Nation. They are the unions that people like my father and countless of us who served in the House of Representatives worked in and helped build this Nation. They are the people that our veterans from the Second World War, the Korean conflict, and Vietnam who became union members and went on to do things for collective bargaining that made workers' rights be better for people in America. And I don't see tearing them down--let alone in the VA administration--is something that we need to do.

Mr. Speaker, my friends on the other side of the aisle know exactly where their priorities lie with this bill, and it is certainly not with improving the quality of care of our veterans, but rather in exploiting yet another opportunity to attack the rights of working men and women across our country.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I have great respect for my colleague whose district abuts a portion of my district in Florida. I want to make it very clear that it is important to listen to what a person says. My colleague just commented that I did not offer the specifics with reference to persons who suffered some form of mental illness; and he said that, in my passionate remarks, I failed to provide those specifics.

Let me go back and read you my remarks again. A Department of Veterans Affairs report provided to Congress in 2015 revealed that nearly 20,000 veterans diagnosed with schizophrenia, 15,000 diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and thousands more diagnosed with dementia, Alzheimer's, and serious depression.

Is that specific enough for you, or do I need to add additional reasons?

Evidently my colleague didn't hear that.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Reclaiming my time, is schizophrenia one of those things that isn't specific enough for you?

Reclaiming my time, that is what you should have said rather than say that I didn't offer specifics, and I just want to make that very clear to you.

I don't think that people with diagnosis of schizophrenia, that have been allowed--that their fiduciaries have determined that their mental illness allows that they should not get a gun, I suggest to you and to anybody that those persons that have a gun--and I made the distinction. You evidently didn't hear that part either. I made the distinction about the Second Amendment and how much I support it and I support veterans, and I support veterans' rights to defend themselves. But I don't support crazy people having guns, whether they are veterans or not, and it is just that simple.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano), the vice chair of the Veterans' Affairs Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I would urge my friend from Colorado to know that I have no additional speakers and I am prepared to close if he is prepared to close.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, my friend that sits on the Rules Committee, my colleague from Georgia, correctly speaks to this issue and its need to go to the Judiciary Committee or other committees to ensure that veterans have the appropriate adjudication.

I don't know where he or my colleague from Florida would place schizophrenia. I am not a mental health expert, but I have spent a good portion of my career here in Congress dealing with issues and trying to address issues of mental health, be it veterans or not.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I am going to offer an amendment to the rule to bring up H.R. 696, Representative Schrader's bill to exempt the Department of Veterans Affairs from Donald John Trump's hiring freeze. As we have already discussed, my amendment to allow the VA Secretary to fill vacant positions, regardless of whether they were vacated before or after the hiring freeze, was blocked last night in the Rules Committee.

There are nearly 47,000 vacant positions within the VA, and we should not be limiting the VA's authority to fill these positions, especially as we continue to work towards reducing patient wait times.

On a bipartisan basis, Members of both the House and Senate have requested that the VA be exempt from the hiring freeze. Mr. Speaker, this is commonsense legislation to ensure that the VA can recruit and hire qualified staff to meet the needs of our veterans.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, we are gathered here, once again, to debate the same old, tired, irresponsible, and morally bankrupt policies championed by my friends across the aisle, policies that will, while we face a suicide epidemic among those servicemembers who have so bravely served this country, make it easier for them to take their own lives by increasing their access to guns. That may be good policy for the powerful gun lobby and gun manufacturers, but it is horrendous policy for the American people.

We have before us legislation that will gut workers' rights for VA employees while also making it easier to reprimand those who are brave enough to speak out against the ills they see occurring at the VA--ills that have and will continue to undermine the quality of service our veterans are able to receive.

All of this moral ineptitude is set against the backdrop of a healthcare plan recently put forth by Republicans that will raise the number of uninsured in this country to 24 million in under 10 years. This includes 14 million folks being unceremoniously kicked off of Medicaid and 7 million Americans kicked off of the health insurance plans they receive through their employers.

This is a plan that will increase premiums for individual policyholders by up to 29 percent. This is a plan that will increase, particularly for older Americans, out-of-pocket healthcare expenses.

Mr. Speaker, in the final analysis, this is no plan at all but rather a shameful and cynical massive giveaway to the ultrawealthy at the expense of the middle class that will result in hardworking Americans paying far more for far, far less.

Mr. Speaker, I have been in this institution 25 years, and I have been on this Earth 80 years. I have seen an awful lot of trauma during that period of time. I served as a State court judge and had the responsibility of Baker Acting--it is called in Florida--people to mental institutions. I have established fiduciaries for people who were unable to take care of themselves. I worked actively when we had mental health hospitals to keep those mental health hospitals open.

I would say to you, Mr. Speaker, so that you can say to the gentleman who asked that I apologize, that I apologize for nothing having to do with any remarks that I made within the confines of what is allowed in this institution. The simple fact of the matter is I used the term ``crazy,'' and I had reference to schizophrenia. Now, it may very well be that these are not broken people, it is that they are brave people who came home with problems. But crazy is crazy, and I would say that until the day I die.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), my friend, for the purpose of inquiring of the majority leader the schedule for the week to come.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that information.

I would now like to ask him, we passed the DOD Appropriations bill and sent that to the Senate. We have already done the MILCON bill. And I am wondering--there are ten remaining bills--whether the majority leader could give me some idea, in light of the fact that the CR, which once it goes to April 28, we will either have to do those bills individually or in some sort of an omnibus, whether the gentleman has any idea how soon we might be considering the balance of the year's appropriation to September 30?

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for that insightful comment.

Let me say this, Mr. Leader, if, as we did in the Defense Appropriations bill, if we follow the template where we will reach bipartisan agreement on those bills in committee without any poison pills language in them--which you did on the appropriation bill, and, as you saw, we appreciated that, and we were overwhelmingly supportive of that effort--I would hope that, Mr. Leader, you would urge--and I think, very frankly, I am a big fan of Mr. Frelinghuysen, who is the chairman of the committee. I think he is a Member that I have worked well with over the years, and I think he is somebody who is going to do the committee proud as its chairman--but I am hopeful that we can do, as we did with the appropriation bill for the Defense Department, a similar procedure. So I think that the majority leader will be pleased with our support if, in fact, that can happen.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

Mr. Speaker, on a less happy collegial note, it comes as no surprise to the majority leader at the height of our displeasure and disappointment as it relates to what is going on, back to the consideration of the reconciliation process for the repeal or modification of the Affordable Care Act with the American Health Care Act. The bill was posted this Monday, this past Monday night, it was marked up on Wednesday, there were no hearings, there were no opportunities for witnesses to come forward. And as the gentleman knows, he is absolutely correct, I like these quotes, but I like these quotes because they point out theoretically what I would have great agreement with in terms of process.

Particularly, I call your attention to a quote of Speaker Paul Ryan: ``Congress is moving fast to rush through a healthcare overhaul that lacks a key ingredient: the full participation of you, the American people.''

That quote was July 19, 2009. That quote was referring to the process involved in the adoption of the Affordable Care Act.

As the gentleman knows, the Affordable Care Act had 79 hearings. As the gentleman knows, there were 181 witnesses who testified about the Affordable Care Act. As the gentleman knows, that process took approximately 1\1/2\ years, 8 months of which was waiting to see whether Senator Grassley would participate in a bipartisan way in forging healthcare reform in this country.

The gentleman is well aware, not only have we had literally hundreds of thousands of people around the country come to townhall meetings, many that his Members have held, and express their deep concern about the loss of healthcare security if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. So there is no doubt that the American public--I am not saying it is 100 percent--but a large number of the American public are very concerned.

The gentleman further knows, I am sure, because I am sure he has seen the letters, the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, the American Nurses Association,

even the Consumers Union, and hundreds of other groups representing providers, patients, even insurance companies, have expressed deep, deep concern about the adverse consequences of the passage of the American Health Care Act that was marked up in the dead of night. We were criticized. The gentleman apparently doesn't agree with that. But the facts are the facts. They are not alternative facts.

You started marking them up on Wednesday morning, there was some delay during the day, as you know, because we were very concerned about how fast you were moving that. Less than 48 hours after it was introduced, it was marked up. No hearings, no witnesses, no ability to read the bill.

As a matter of fact, shockingly, Mr. Brady voted against an amendment which said: Read the bill. Now, what was shocking about that is that was Mr. Brady's amendment that he offered back in 2010. He voted against the amendment that said: Read the bill. I don't think anybody really had much opportunity to read the bill before it was marked up.

Greg Walden, who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said also, in July of 2009:

On a bill of this significance, you would think that we

would at least allow people to come in who are affected by

the extraordinary changes in this bill and have a chance to

let us know how it affects them.

That was Greg Walden, now the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, July 9, 2009. He is now in charge of that committee. Not a single witness testified on the bill that was marked up in his committee. And it was marked up through the dead of the night, if we want to parse our words, because it started in the morning of Wednesday. But it didn't end until the morning, 26 hours later, on Thursday. Which meant that Mr. Walden kept his members in their seats marking up a bill, except when they were voting coming over here, for 26 hours straight on one of the most consequential bills this House will consider and that the Senate will consider, affecting, as I said, millions and millions and millions of people.

Now, I understand the Budget Committee is scheduled to mark that bill up on Wednesday, just a week later. Again, I don't know whether there are going to be hearings and if those hearings will be open to the witnesses that should be called to testify on a bill of such impact.

Let me do one additional quote, because the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee had an interesting quote as well. He said: ``The Democratic Congress and White House simply aren't listening. Democrats are ramming it through over the public's objections.''

That was on March 17, 2010, some year after the bill had been introduced. Thousands of meetings had been held by Republicans and Democrats around the country on the bill. And, as I said, 79 hearings and 181 witnesses later. That is what Chairman Brady said.

And, of course, Chairman Brady, in less than 48 hours, had a markup. Now, he did not have quite as long a markup. It ended at 4:30 a.m. Thursday morning. So that was the dead of night. Or, if you want to parse words, perhaps, the dead of the early morning. But, nevertheless, most of my public wasn't up watching. I presume even at 4:30, which would have been 1:30 for your public, they weren't up watching.

So this was done out of the sight of the public and is inconsistent, I suggest to my friend, Mr. Speaker, the majority leader, inconsistent with the pledge of transparency, openness, and those three quotes that I just read you that said the American people should have the opportunity to express their opinion on legislation generally, but certainly on legislation of this consequence.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to my friend.

I thank the gentleman for his comments.

Mr. Speaker, we have had, literally, tens of thousands of hearings that have dealt with almost every issue that this

House considers. I suppose I should take from the majority leader's discussion that, if we have had those hearings in previous Congresses, in the last Congress, the Congress before that, the Congress before that, and we have a substantial number of new Members in this House, and we have millions and millions of voters who are counting on this, we will just simply tell them: Read the transcript of 2002 or of 2009 or of 2013. That is not regular order, Mr. Speaker.

Regular order is you introduce a bill. It is referred to a committee, which in turn refers it to a subcommittee, and, even if it keeps it in the bosom of the full committee, it has a hearing. It posts the bill. It tells citizens throughout this country: If you have an interest, come in and tell us what your interest is, what your perspective is, what you think the ramifications of this bill are. The subcommittee marks it up, if it was referred to a subcommittee, then the full committee marks it up, and then it is referred to the floor. That is regular order, Mr. Speaker.

To rationalize a procedure which has a bill introduced Monday night and is subjected to 26 hours, straight, of markup on the following Wednesday, less than 48 hours later, no matter how you dress it up, that is not, Mr. Speaker, regular order.

What it is is trying to jam through a bill before the American public has an opportunity to tell us what they think about the bill. What it is is jamming through a bill and not allowing the providers, the doctors, the patients, the insurance companies, all of the stakeholders, to have an opportunity to read that bill introduced about 72 hours ago now--a little more than that, maybe close to 96.

That, Mr. Speaker, is not regular order. And I will tell my friend for whom I have a great deal of respect, I think he puts the best face on it, but nobody believed the Republicans had a bill, Mr. Speaker, until Monday night. Well, actually, I believed they had a bill at the last colloquy, and I looked for it all over this Capitol. I couldn't find it. It wasn't posted. The ranking member on the committee didn't have it. No committee Democrat had the bill. They couldn't read it.

So to pretend, Mr. Speaker, that hearings on some other bill at some other time in some other Congress suffices for regular order is something, Mr. Speaker, I cannot agree with. And if the situations were reversed, as I have experienced over the last 36 years, that side of the aisle would have torn this place apart. Why do I think that? Because I have seen it.

Yes, we had some delaying, four motions to adjourn, so that we had some time to figure out what this bill was about and some time to hear from the American people. It certainly wasn't enough time. We are going to be hearing more from the American people, I think, Mr. Speaker.

I appreciate the gentleman trying to say that, well, we only had 48 hours. Sometimes, Mr. Speaker, we do that in a hurry. And the reason is because we are about to go on a break. We are about to go on an August break or a recess or something of that nature. That is not the case. These committees didn't have to meet through the night. They could have met Thursday. They could have met today. They could meet next week. But this bill is being rushed through too fast with too much adverse consequence to the American people.

I would hope the majority leader would slow this bill down. I hope the Rules Committee has full hearings on this bill and that it does not have just attenuated hearings with few witnesses, because there are a lot of people who want to tell us, their Representatives, what their view is of this bill.

I know the Speaker has said there are going to be three phases to this bill, and the majority leader said so as well, and there will be additional legislation. I hope, Mr. Speaker, that my friend, the majority leader, will urge the committees not to consider additional legislation either in the middle of the night or with no notice and no opportunity for witnesses and no hearings.

Previous hearings will not suffice, Mr. Speaker. Other Congresses had hearings. This Congress has a responsibility to hear from the American people. That is what Speaker Ryan said; that is what Mr. Brady said; that is what Mr. Walden said. They said it at a time when they were in the minority, but it ought to apply when they are in the majority. And if we are in the majority, it ought to apply to us as well. I hope that happens, Mr. Speaker, for the country's sake, for our people's sake.

I will yield to the majority leader, Mr. Speaker, if he would like to speak.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks of the majority leader. I presume that he has heard from--I don't have the quotes in front of me,

but maybe I will bring them next week--the thousands of people who have said their lives have been saved by the Affordable Care Act; the thousands of parents with a child with a preexisting condition that, if the Republicans had succeeded in their 65 votes to repeal it, would not have been protected; the millions of seniors who are paying less for their prescription drugs because of the Affordable Care Act.

I could read all those letters.

Why do I read the letters of Mr. Walden, Mr. Brady, and Speaker Ryan?

Because they are in charge.

All our constituents, on either side, had no opportunity to testify on this bill. But Speaker Ryan, Mr. Walden, and Mr. Brady could have given them that opportunity, and they chose not to. They rationalize it apparently because, well, we had hearings in the past.

Does this bill have the subject matter of the ACA?

It does. But this bill was offered just some, as I said, 90-or-so hours ago. And the leader says: Well, that is okay. It is based on all those hearings we had.

The fact is this bill has not been brought forward for the last 7 years while there was a repeal for ACA.

Why?

We all know why. Mr. Speaker, it is because the majority could not come to an agreement, and they are not in agreement now. Perhaps, if this bill stands out there a little bit, it is so flawed they won't be able to get the votes on their side of the floor.

I was here--I don't think the majority leader was here--when we adopted the part D prescription drug program. It was called up by the majority, the Republican Party at the evening hour; and we voted from 3 a.m. until 6 a.m. And when I say we voted, that vote was kept open for 3 hours while they opportuned their Members: You have got to vote for this. President Bush wants it. You have got to vote for this.

We voted against it. But the vote was held open 3 hours, I tell my friend. That was not regular order.

Now, our side has held a vote open from time to time--never for 3 hours, but from time to time. That is why it is being rushed. It is not because they had a lot of hearings before, not because witnesses had testified they didn't like the Affordable Care Act. We understand that.

The issue is not whether people like or dislike the Affordable Care Act. It is how are we going to provide what the President has promised: access for everybody to health care at a lower cost and a better price.

I told the majority leader last week--and I repeat my comments, Mr. Speaker, to the majority leader this week--if they bring such a bill to the floor, I will support it. This bill does not do that.

So what President Trump promised during the election and what he promised from that podium just a few days ago is not what this bill represents. It is not what they promised to the American people.

What I asked the majority leader was--they are apparently going to have some additional bills--whether or not they will be also rushed through without hearings on the premise that there were hearings in the past.

I repeat that there are a lot of new Members in this body that didn't have the opportunity to have those hearings and weren't in this body. I don't know how many there are because I don't know how many Congresses we are talking about if we adopted this bill 7 years ago and then there were hearings subsequent.

So I don't know where we are going, Mr. Speaker, but I think the American people expect an opportunity to be heard. Yes, I may quote some next week.

The people who were elected by the American people to do their job have the power to open up the doors and open up the windows and pull back the curtains so that the American people could come in and testify. There were all those witnesses who testified in the last Congress and the Congress before that, but I am talking about the people who testified during a Congress in which we considered the bill. We haven't had an open rule this year, Mr. Speaker. We have had structured rules. We have had no open rule.

So in terms of the majority leader telling me, Mr. Speaker, that we want everybody to have their opportunity, and he caricatures one amendment that was--I think I would agree with him--more to show that not a single Republican would vote. And Mr. Brady, as I pointed out, didn't vote for his own amendment that he offered when the Affordable Care Act was marked up to say read the bill.

Time was not given to read the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I understand we are not going to come to any conclusion today; but I am hopeful that the process that was perpetrated on not only the minority but also the majority this week will not be repeated, and that the representations that have been made by the Speaker, by the young guns, and by so many others would be a process that is, in fact, open, thoughtful, and democratic.

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