Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, well, they are at it again. It is another overreach by this administration. This time, the U.S. EPA is reaching not only what you might term navigable waterways, but all waterways of the United States they want to deem as theirs.

This would mean mud puddles, and this would mean irrigation ditches and drainage ditches. They want to have jurisdiction over everything, so they can regulate it, tax it, and what-have-you.

It goes way beyond anything that has ever been legislated in this body and is a complete overreach. The U.S. EPA needs to withdraw this proposed rule. It is outside of the law.

It is outside of the ability of our people to have private property rights and to have an economy, especially in rural America, where farming, ranching, and timber operations can all be affected by a vast overreach by the U.S. EPA.

They need to withdraw this rule. We need to hear from the American people how this is going to affect them in their jobs in their local economies.

Mr. Speaker, on Saturday, I had the chance to join with the Consul General Dong-man Han in presenting the memorial wreath at the 25th annual Korean war veterans lunch held at the VFW hall in Anderson, California. It was an honor to be in the company with such a courageous group of men who fought hard for the freedoms that the people of South Korea enjoy today.

The luncheon also served as a solemn reminder of the sacrifices that have been made on our behalf and the commitment we have to our veterans. That commitment wouldn't be embodied any better than by my friend Kim Chamberlain, who is a Korean immigrant.

As I assured the many veterans in the audience on Saturday, from the first time a constituent alerted me about issues he had faced with the VA until today, the vigilance of my office, myself, and many of my colleagues in this House, that commitment will remain to get to the bottom, to get solutions for the VA and the problems the veterans face on the backlog of not only their health issues but, as well, the backlog of even having their cases heard and the benefits.

So, many questions still remain. I look forward to meeting with the new director of the Oakland regional office there pretty soon and getting to the bottom and getting real solutions for veterans. Our commitment remains on them.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman of the committee, Mr. Lucas, for his help and support, as well as the big picture bill, H.R. 4413, which is a necessary and reasonable approach to the modest reforms that are needed to the overall legislation.

This measure includes badly needed reforms and policy changes that are necessary for the CFTC to run more efficiently, stabilize the commodities industry, and ensure continued growth in our agricultural sector.

The U.S. needs regulatory relief for end users and certainty for our markets. That is why I am pleased to report that my legislation, H.R. 1038, which the chairman mentioned, which passed the House on June 12, 2013, with unanimous support, is included in this bill.

H.R. 1038, the Public Power Risk Management Act, is a targeted reform that protects over 47 million Americans from unnecessary electricity and natural gas rate increases. These 47 million Americans are ratepayers of over 2,000 publicly owned utilities who use swaps and energy futures to manage their risks and stabilize costs.

Unfortunately, the Dodd-Frank Act, which was intended to make reforms to our Nation's financial industry, has inadvertently restricted public utilities' access to natural gas, electricity, and other energy futures.

For example, in my own district, the city of Redding's municipal utility believes that limitations to hedging options in the future will increase the

costs to their customers. This unintended consequence of Dodd-Frank is negatively impacting utilities in many congressional districts across the U.S. The impact of this limitation means fewer sources of energy for publicly owned utilities, which translates into higher costs for millions of American ratepayers.

H.R. 4413 will bring relief to commodity end users, utility ratepayers, and the greater agriculture community, a vital asset to our Nation. Let's keep this country and our ag community growing and doing business by passing this commonsense piece of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to acknowledge the good work of the Defense Appropriations Committee in retaining the U-2 aircraft platform, which is based in northern California's Beale Air Force Base, where 1,000 personnel from Nevada, Yuba, Placer, Sierra, Sutter, and other nearby counties work to ensure that our troops have the most timely and accurate intelligence possible.

As the commander of U.S. forces in Korea recently testified, the U-2 provides intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance--ISR-- capabilities that do not currently exist in any other platform.

The committee recognized that, while the Global Hawk and unmanned aircraft, in general, bring a number of new and future capabilities to the fight and to the ISR mission, the Global Hawk serves as a complement to the U-2, not as a rival.

While I understand the fiscal constraints that the Air Force is under, I am pleased to see that the Appropriations bill directs the Secretary of the Air Force to present a plan to the committee before taking any action to retire the U-2 fleet.

The capabilities gap that would occur in ISR mission should the U-2 be graveyarded would be both immediate and be felt for years to come.

Mr. Speaker, we need to retain this aircraft for our security.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of Mr. Denham's amendment.

High-speed rail has been a boondoggle in California pretty much since day one. The voters, when they had it presented in front of them as Prop 1A in the 2008 election, they were shown a $33 billion project that would connect San Francisco to Los Angeles with a continuous high- speed rail project.

What we found out, within 3 years, was after the price went up initially $45 billion, that a true audit turned out it would be $98.5 billion. After that, the Governor real quick decided to change the project and use the connectivity of the Bay Area and Los Angeles, their local systems, to make up for it, which is illegal under Prop 1A. It has to be continuing from San Francisco to LA. You can't use local transit systems under Prop 1A.

So now what we see is that they were able to downsize the cost to only $68 billion over what the voters, by a 52 percent, not an overwhelming margin, merely 52 percent, approved.

They were sold a bill of goods. That is why we shouldn't spend another Federal dollar or State dollar which enables--the Federal dollars enable the State dollars to be spent. We need to stop that here until they come up with a real plan that shows the financing.

They haven't shown the financing yet. We can identify $3 billion worth of Federal money, $9.95 billion worth of State money, approximately $13 billion for a project in the downsized illegal form that is only $68 billion, they say.

Where does the other $55 billion come from?

They have no idea. There is no private sector money. There is no more Federal money that is going to happen, other than the $3 billion that has been captured from the stimulus package of a couple of years ago.

We need to take that money and channel that into something else that we need to do desperately, such as our transportation infrastructure which we are speaking about here this week. Or in California we have a desperate need for water supply during our drought, instead of a boondoggle which is going to pave through a bunch of our ag land in California, as well as important other infrastructure.

What do we hear about it?

Oh, it is going to save CO2. It is going to be a panacea for global warming. You know, for 30 years it won't even help toward this project of global warming. Instead, part of their plan is they are going to have to plant trees to offset the construction of high-speed rail because it is going to have a higher CO2 footprint than what we already have.

It is boondoggle after boondoggle. We talk about jobs. These aren't real jobs. The numbers have been inflated since day one. They tried to tell us 3 years ago that it was going to cause a million new jobs for California.

When we finally pinned them down in a State committee, they said, well, that means a million job years. It turns out to be it might be 5,000, 10,000 jobs under construction, not a million jobs. It is deceit after deceit.

We need to plow this money that we have federally back into something that would help our transportation infrastructure in California or in the Nation, help build water supply, anything but this project here, which is full of deceit and empty promise after empty promise.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize William Brown Ide, the leader of the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt, and the only President of the California Republic. After California's annexation into the United States, Mr. Ide served as a Probate and County Judge, Presiding Judge of the Court of Sessions, County Recorder, County Auditor, County Clerk, County Treasurer, Deputy County Surveyor and Deputy Sheriff of Colusi County.

Mr. Ide passed away in December of 1852 with only a wooden grave marker that disappeared shortly thereafter. It is thanks to a local man, David Freeman that Mr. Ide's gravestones have been corrected after he collected funding from various organizations and did much of the labor himself.

In just over a week, on June 7th, 2014, the new gravesite for Mr. William Brown Ide will be unveiled. I would like to thank Mr. Freeman for his work to ensure that important historical figures like William Brown Ide are remembered, as is the history of the great state of California.

Mr. Speaker, with the resignation of Mr. Shinseki from the VA Administration, he did the honorable thing as a great veteran, but not a great administrator. A general has to know what his lieutenants are up to, and if he is not getting results he has to demand and get action.

Now, as we move forward, we can't let this story today--the resignation or the speculation about who will be the next Director--be the story. It still needs to be focused on what is happening at the regional offices, what is happening with veterans health being delivered to them, what is happening with the Veterans Benefits Administration getting through the backlog of cases and having them seen, having their claims finished for a change.

We have much to do, so do not get, Mr. Speaker, diverted by today's news

or upcoming speculation on that. There are still many people at the mid-level management, regional directors, and the regional centers that need to be held accountable and get immediate results now and not way into the future after much more backlogs.

Mr. Speaker, as the secret waiting lists in veterans health care come to light more and more, I implore my colleagues to include the benefits administration in the VA as part of this investigation. I echo Chairman Miller's statement from yesterday's hearing, where he told the witnesses: ``Until VA understands that we are deadly serious, you can expect us to be looking over your shoulder every single day.'' Count on it.

I want the Oakland Regional Office to know that I, too, am serious and will continue to spend my time and that of my staff to correct the claims disaster crushing the veterans in my district. With the help of an ever-growing group of whistleblowers at the Oakland VA, we absolutely will be looking over their shoulder every single day.

Claim dates are concurrently being manipulated by the Oakland VA to improve their backlog statistics. This is a flagrant disregard of VA rules and contrary to the training received by every employee. Because of practices like these, thousands of veterans in my district are not even eligible for the secret health care waiting lists that we hear about, such as in Arizona. Their claims are still pending or summarily denied on technicalities prior to full consideration.

Many of these veterans have more than one claim unanswered. One man in my district has a 36-year-old claim, and a secondary claim appears to have been deliberately sidelined now for 212 days. Despite these facts, the Oakland VA boasts that they have no claims over 125 days old. I meet veterans just like this man every day with claims that have gone on for years.

Thanks to a handful of dedicated VA employees working with my office, we have learned that these delays are an engineered disaster designed to control the VA budget in Oakland. By reducing the claim expenditures, Oakland's management has become eligible for bonuses, and received them. Withholding benefits for personal gain is perhaps the most despicable aspect of the VA scandals.

Veterans benefits are supposed to be a non-adversarial system. How can that be when employees have financial incentive not to process claims? Doesn't that explain the endless veteran claims with missing records and the staggering delays in processing? It is time to restore the VA to a veteran-centered system with real accountability.

Last Thursday, I made public the statements of whistleblowers regarding some 14,000 unprocessed claims at the Oakland office dating back to the '90s, as depicted in this poster. We have since heard that Oakland VA responded by sending a large number of these claims on a swift trip to Manila for ``scanning.'' That is Manila, the Philippines. We don't know how many they have sent, and we don't really have an accountability for if they were actually sent at all.

After sitting untouched for years, the fastest process we have is scanning these files in the Philippines? How many of these veterans have given up on their claims or even died during this period? Were these veterans contacted to say their claims have been located?

Indeed, we hear that the budgeting in Oakland has actually gone for new desks, new furniture, and I have even heard spiffing up the director's suite with an ungraded or new restroom. We don't have money in the budget to buy a scanner so that the claims can be processed locally, we have to ship them out of the country? This is the response we get for some cases, almost 20-year-old claims sitting on a desk in a hallway at the Oakland VA. That is appalling.

On Tuesday morning, urgent phone calls came pouring into my office from Oakland employees who had been working with us who were unable to verify these files had actually been shipped. They feared that many of them had been destroyed or perhaps hidden once again in a janitor's closet or an elevator shaft somewhere.

I made repeated calls to the Oakland office that afternoon to check on this situation. Multiple calls to the interim director, Mr. Hackney, have gone unanswered, and we have yet, that I know of, to receive a response.

Every American should be appalled at this broken system. Mr. Speaker, it is time to expand our inquiries to the Veterans Administration as well to attack these problems from the bottom

up while we have the opportunity. Remember, without a benefits rating, our veterans aren't even eligible to get on the secret waiting list at the veterans hospitals.

This isn't just about Arizona. It is almost everywhere within the system. This administration has known about this situation for at least a year, yet we hear what we hear. Only now are we really getting to the depths of the problem at the VA nationwide.

With an important national day of remembrance just behind us here in Memorial Day, and now we are coming upon the 70th anniversary of D-day, the invasion of Normandy, where our heroic troops really started the assault on taking back Europe from a regime that was evil, why can't we, the way they marshaled those resources to do that huge, huge invasion, marshal the resources in this country now to help our veterans, in honor of them just past Memorial Day and the upcoming of D-day, with missing files? Instead, let's process them.

Mr. Speaker, at a time in the West--especially in California--of severe drought, we need to take immediate action to address the issues of water storage and of building

supply that California and the West need for our future--for agriculture, for the great needs we have--that have been neglected for so many years.

We haven't built any significant storage in California for at least 40 years, and it is high time that, in this time of drought, we seize this opportunity to move forward with bipartisan legislation, such as what I am carrying, H.R. 4300, to build Sites Reservoir--whatever it is going to take--to add to our water supply in the State and for our Western States.

I ask for the Congress and for the Senate to come together and get behind a measure to build water storage for the West.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 1 o'clock and 17 minutes a.m.), the House adjourned until today, Friday, May 30, 2014, at 9 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, this is a conversation that has been a long time coming. I am in my first term here in the House of Representatives, and soon after becoming a Federal Representative, it became very apparent to me that our veterans in California, in our districts, and all across the country really need a lot more of our help, as Members of Congress, as our staff both in our districts and even in D.C. can do for us for the veterans.

You have seen the revelations here lately that have finally gotten the attention of the American public, with what has been going on in Arizona, previously Pittsburgh with Legionnaires' disease, and the many other revelations about how poorly our veterans are being treated in this country once they have served for us and have come home, expecting the things that they were promised before they made that service for us.

For example, revelations about secret waiting lists in the Veterans Administration as we have seen in Arizona. They have shocked most Americans here in recent weeks.

Today, I speak out on an even bigger crisis within the VA system, and that is the monumental failure of the Oakland, California, Veterans Benefits Administration.

Most of our veterans must run through this nightmarish gauntlet before they can even hope to be added to the secret waiting list at a Veterans Administration medical facility.

Here on the floor we talk a lot about claims backlogs often, and we have seen mountains of paper files. Our inevitable solution always seems to be to give them more money to fix the problem. Well, the Congress, with the American taxpayers' dollars, has funded VA pretty adequately. We have made an effort here recently to try to help catch up with the backlog with the funding required. We were then issued cheerful responses of decreases in processing times that are systematically manipulated by upper level officials at VA in order to show progress to make us go away.

Right now, the Oakland office boasts that they have no claims over 125 days old. In reality, tens of thousands of the Oakland VA are trapped in a cycle many veterans call ``delay, deny and wait until they die.''

One main trick is to omit key information that would help the veteran in his or her claim, whether it be the exams, timelines, what have you, then deny the claim, ship it off for 2 or 3 years' worth of review and appeal process. In the meantime, we will deem it processed.

The management is more interested in the open number of claims stats on the reports than processing them accurately or in a timely fashion, and then reaping bonuses by posting a savings to the government--to the taxpayers--by denying these claims and these payments.

How many veterans are homeless because their claims for benefits have been sitting on a cart or in a janitor's closet or in the hallway by the director's office for years--or even decades? Benefits that would help them to not be homeless, to have shelter, to have better health, to even be in a place where they could then seek employment and be in a much better way?

How many veterans have suffered and died waiting years for their claim to be handled so they could seek medical treatment? Some of it needs to be very timely to have exams and treatment.

How many of our veterans have given up hope and committed suicide out of desperation and despair that comes with years of waiting, because they don't feel like anybody cares about them anymore and that they don't have any value to our society?

Yet, on weekends like we have coming up, we glorify them--as we should, those that have fallen--on Memorial Day and later in the year on Veterans Day. Yet this is what our government does to them. We know that we have veterans that take this ultimate step of suicide. We know they exist.

I submit that many of our Nation's veterans are part of a backlog that exceeds the most extraordinary numbers we currently have on file. For example, for this past year, my own office has been assisting for a full year a veteran with a 36-year-old claim. Due to management practices--if you call them practices--at the Oakland Regional Office, this veteran still suffers this day from not having his claim properly handled. Remember, he is not even eligible yet after 36 years to make it on to the secret waiting list for medical care, as in Arizona, to then finally graduate to the real list. Hasn't even made that in 36 years yet.

The Veterans Affairs Department's mission declares:

Our values are more than just words--they affect outcomes

in our daily interactions with veterans and eligible

beneficiaries and with each other. Taking the first letter of

each word--integrity, commitment, advocacy, respect,

excellence--creates a powerful acronym, ``I CARE,'' that

reminds each VA employee of the importance of their role in

this Department. These core values come together as five

promises we make as individuals and as an organization to

those we serve.

Now, let me underscore we know there are many, many very hardworking and caring VA employees out there that want to get results for the veterans. Many of them have been veterans themselves. So this isn't to impugn all of them. This is about upper management--on a topic that has been even one the President has focused on this week--not getting the job done and trying to snow us here in the Congress and the American people about the results they have been claiming.

Thanks to a growing group of employees who understands these core values I just mentioned and now feel empowered to step forward because they see there are people who really want to get behind them, I have been given a number of multiple signed, sworn statements by employees on what is happening behind the curtain at the Oakland Veterans Benefits Administration office.

Right here on this easel is a statement I received from one of them in the letter. It is just one of the few examples that I will read for you:

I am an employee of the Veterans Administration Regional

Office in Oakland. I took a photo on May 19, 2014, showing

stacks of paper piled on a cart. This paper is actually

informal claims going back to the late '90s and 2000s. These

claims were not reviewed until November of 2012. These claims

continue, to this day, to be a pile of paper on a cart that

no one wants to deal with. I was part of the initial project

reviewing these claims. My initials are on them from

November, 2012.

Again, this is an employee from the Oakland center.

Congressman LaMalfa, I want you to know that I am a proud

Navy veteran of 10-plus years and looked at the opportunity

to work at the Veterans Administration as a chance to really

help veterans. In the 5 years I have worked there, I know I

have helped people, but there is so much more that could be

done. The management at the Oakland Regional Office is

concerned about the numbers and not the veterans. Terminal

and homeless veterans wait for too long for the help that

they need. I believe that there are a lot of wonderful

employees that truly want to help but are being directed by

management to worry about number control.

What I don't understand is why they can't be more

transparent about the number of claims and the need for more

resources. We need more employees to do the job; we don't

need new carpet and desks like they just gave us when

veterans die waiting for us to do our job. This job is has

literally made me sick. I go to work knowing that during my

day, I will have to help the veterans in a low-key way and

not what I am being told is needed to get the veterans

numbers down. This makes me physically ill. I think about all

the letters begging for help and we seem to do so little.

I believe Oakland needs new eyes. I believe we need more

oversight. I believe far too many veterans die each day while

we worry about what our numbers look like. These veterans go

home with me each night in my thoughts and regrets of the day

because we seem to do so little.

This is a small sample of what is happening here, and we have additional statements, as well, about what is going on inside the Oakland VA, and maybe an example of many of them across the country.

In this photograph is an example of the files. Right now these are waiting in the hallway, and before that, they were found in a broom closet where they had been stashed for years. Some of these claims go back to the mid-1990s, untouched, only recently discovered, yet they still get walked past and not handled. Stacks of them, the filing cabinet.

The next letter is from an Oakland VA employee--a real employee. We are keeping their names back for now because we want people to know that we are going to help them if they come forward with this information:

In November 2012, myself and several other individuals were

given a special project to work. The project consisted of

approximately 14,000 claims dating back to 1994 that had

never been worked. These claims are considered informal

claims because they did not come in on a prescribed form.

Informal claims are worked differently. A letter is sent with

the correct form later for the veteran to fill out, and when

the form is returned, the claim is actually opened to work.

If the form is returned within 1 year, if the veteran

receives compensation, their benefits then would go back to

the date of his first correspondence, the informal.

We were given these claims to analyze, and very quickly we

began to realize that these were not all informal claims but

actionable ones, not to mention how old some of them were. So

many of the letters that came in were from veterans, or their

surviving spouses, who were begging for help at the end of

their life, and they never got a reply because they had died

by the time we got them. I went home so many nights crying

because a veteran or widow had begged for help, and we stuck

the request in a four-drawer lateral cabinet--kind of like

so--with 14,000 other ones. Each day we were required to

report back to our supervisor on the numbers and how they

were broken down. If the veteran had already died, it is

considered non-actionable and put aside. Whether it actually

made it to the veteran's folder is unknown to me.

Again, this is an Oakland employee:

If it was an informal claim and the claimant was still

alive, those were put in another pile to eventually review

again and maybe do the letters. If the document received came

from a veteran who had already filed a formal claim, then

these would be considered actual claims and be reviewed by

another person before being acted upon. So each day we would

report our numbers and separate out the documents. We began

to speak up about how old these were and why hadn't we acted

sooner on them, and we were very quickly removed from the

project for speaking out.

These claims were within feet of the assistant service

center manager; she literally walked by them each day, and

yet they remained untouched until November 2012. Word was

that a staff member from VA headquarters had actually been

the one to find them while she was there doing an onsite

inspection. And yet several long-term employees have told me

that management knew they were there. Either way, most were

very old.

I don't know how many veterans or spouses died before we

responded, but, I personally know of several hundreds that

got nothing, and the thought of us doing nothing to help

these men and women in their most desperate times is haunting

to me.

Again, signed by an Oakland VA employee.

A third letter addressed to me states:

Dear Congressman LaMalf: I cannot thank you enough for the

work you and your staff have done--

a big credit to my staff who worked very hard on this--

for the veterans in the northern California area. One

particular case should have been decided with the evidence on

hand last year. I read the examination today and found that

the exams have been in the system, and there has been no

action on that claim for what the system states is waiting

for the examinations. The information is there, and the

rating should be completed based on the evidence on hand.

Please keep advocating for the veterans. I cannot thank you

enough. I am a veteran myself who served honorably for over 9

years and was not provided the benefits from the VA per the

law until I--the veteran who is now an Oakland employee--

started working for the DVA myself and found out everything I

was not informed on.

I left the U.S. Marine Corps, after serving honorably as a

military police K-9 officer and member of the SWAT team. I

worked hard and, as a result of my disabilities, required

several surgeries and, recently, due to the hostile work

environment at work, have become progressively worse.

I have tried to report this to management, but they did not

like hearing the truth and started to make my life at work

miserable 2 years ago. The news is starting to pick up on

what I have tried, myself, to report regarding unethical

conduct in the VA. Prior to the news picking up on the real

problems at the VA, I have been reporting this information to

the Senate and Congress Members in the Bay Area's district.

I have reported this to the VA Office of Inspector General

on two different occasions. I have reported this to the GAO.

I have reported problems at the Oakland VA to the Federal

Labor Relations Office of the General Counsel for 2 years,

with no assistance.

I have three EEO claims, with one more in the works, that

have not been processed by the VA ethically or morally,

according to the applicable laws, up to and including the

OEDCA in Washington, D.C.

I am begging you to please open a formal investigation into

the unethical conduct of the VA Oakland regional office.

The unethical conduct I know of is the fact that the

Oakland VA management has not been held accountable for the

misconduct or several felony violations that has been

recently reported by me.

Since coming out as a whistleblower, I have had many

employees discretely discuss some extremely disturbing

information with me regarding what is actually going on in

the VA and why the management is trying to stop me at all

costs.

The unethical conduct goes far beyond my employment

difficulties at the VA Oakland regional office. I have come

to find out that the Oakland regional office is not only

lying to Congress about their numbers, but the Oakland office

is hiding claims that were received in 1999.

I have seen these claims in the office as late as May 20,

2014. These claims should be in the claims files if there is

not action because the veteran has died in the process, not

still sitting around the office for over 15 years.

There are a number of claims that are over a year old.

There are many more that have been ``lost in transit'' to the

scan sites, often in some other State. The VA is ethically

challenged, but this is unacceptable, to lose a veteran's

claim and not tell them or try to make the situation right,

just ignore them and hope they go away or to not process a

claim properly for over 15 years.

This is a real letter from a real Oakland VA employee. It continues:

The claims have been sitting for over a year, after having

been screened last by a group of VSRs and no action taken

because they were sitting in someone's office, then in some

storage closet by the director's office on the 17th floor of

the Oakland Federal building.

Again, I have made multiple statements to many agencies of

the U.S. Government in hopes that the illegal and

unprofessional conduct from the management would stop, but

the parties who I have reported to this, with ample amounts

of evidence provided, have explained that the corruption

cannot be stopped without some sort of ethical investigation

conducted.

Please initiate some type of ethical investigation by an

agency that is not going to try to cover up what they find,

rather report the truth and do the right thing.

I have been a law enforcement officer in the U.S. Marine

Corps, and I know that what is going on at the Oakland

regional office with me and other veterans. It is wrong per

the law, not my opinion.

Please, Congressman LaMalfa, assist us in whatever you can

do. The veterans deserve better.

Semper Fi, USMC Disabled.

This is what it looks like. There are unfinished files sitting in the hallways, previously found in a broom closet.

Lastly, in a letter from yet another person who stepped forward when they finally saw somebody fighting back at different levels, our Veterans' Committee and other offices around the country, they see the shame being brought upon our veterans and, with that, our country.

This letter says:

There are huge amounts of these claims that are quite old,

but because they are reclassified, are not worked

expeditiously. Lots of these claims go back several years,

but they are being worked as if they are only 2 or 3 years

old because they are in a different group, and that is not

considered a priority.

A lot of these claims, the 930 series, are review claims

created because they found something wrong that we did.

Usually, it is not logging in evidence in time before the

claim is closed.

I personally logged in evidence on May 16, 2014, that was

received by our regional office and date-stamped August 1,

2013. The claim had been closed months before, but because

this evidence had not been logged in, it had also not been

considered in the decision, which was a denial of benefits.

Things like this happen every day.

Now, we open a review claim that will not get worked for

months and, sometimes, a year or more. We have veterans that

are terminal and asking for aid and attendants, and you would

think that these claims, along with the older date of claims

of the homeless, would be worked first, but a lot of the

times, they are not.

If the regional office can do several easy claims, like

hearing loss, tinnitus, then they will do that because then

more claims are taken off the books, even though these may

not be the veterans with the most need.

So, there, you see manipulation of statistics, manipulation of timing, making the numbers look better, and not making the veterans feel better.

I hope that image is one that will stay with you, all who have seen this or will see this all across our country. Much more needs to be done, not just pretty words, not just press conferences, not we will look into it or that we will throw money at it.

Congress does stand prepared to ensure that there is adequate funding to do it right, but we also expect that the dollars that taxpayers send to the government are used wisely and efficiently and not for bonuses for people that are acting not just ineptly, but, I believe, corruptly.

It is time to stop rewarding this bad behavior with more accountability. Americans have seen these stories. These horror stories are demanding a fix for the veterans health care system and their benefits. We must also demand an end to the phony claims, phony numbers, decades of waiting. It isn't just ineptness or miscues or errors. Someone is very deliberate and, I think, worthy of prosecution as fraud.

I thank those VA employees who have been bold enough to step forward and let us know about what is going on in the backrooms behind the scenes. They are good employees who just want to see veterans served all across the country, so we want to hear more of these stories from anybody who might be watching or see this all across the country.

Contact your own Congressman, contact us, contact whoever will listen and seek remedies that mean something as we celebrate our fallen veterans this weekend. It isn't just about barbecues and skiing and picnics. Let's remember and honor these people.

The system is broken, but it doesn't have to be if we are willing to demand accountability and demand it immediately. That is what I am about, what my office will be about, my staff, but also many of my colleagues that either serve on the Veterans' Affairs Committee or don't.

We will continue to spotlight this and make sure that the stories are heard all across the country, and those who are doing this to our veterans, these criminal acts, ultimately will be held responsible.

So I thank the whistleblowers, those VA employees who do care. We know there are many, many of you and thank you for your effort. God bless our veterans who have suffered and are still waiting and know that you have allies in this place who will see this through and get you the service you deserve.

God bless you all. God bless America.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues today in supporting H.R. 4031, which brings sorely needed accountability to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The President said, today, that he would hold those accountable who are responsible for the wrongdoing at the VA, but we have heard that tune before. As a candidate, the President denounced delays and poor care at VA facilities.

He pledged to build a 21st century VA and to confront what he called the broken bureaucracy of the VA. We can hope to hear more than platitudes here in the near future, but I am a little skeptical.

The President has done very little to hold this VA staff accountable, and now, we have seen the deadly consequences of the broken VA system in Arizona. Like other administration staff who have violated the law, those responsible for these acts are simply on paid leave.

Unfortunately, the VA's problems are not unique to Arizona. With VA employees actually coming forward in helping us to expose these problems, we have learned of similar efforts to conceal huge problems at the Oakland VA regional office, including cooked books, hidden files, and a refusal to meet veterans' needs.

Some bureaucrats seem more interested in receiving bonuses than in serving our veterans. It is time for that to end. Mr. Speaker, we need to do this now. Pass H.R. 4031.

Mr. Speaker, in recent weeks, we have made some strides in the area of the Department of Veterans Affairs and what that means for the Nation's veterans as well. Addressing the huge backlog and the atrocious practice of assigning bonuses to the upper members of the Department of Veterans Affairs for not getting the backlog done is an area we still need to continue to address.

We are also working on a project here that would allow our caseworkers in our congressional offices to have stronger jurisdiction in helping our veterans' cases. We have a situation where brokering happens where one office may broker a case to a different VA office elsewhere, maybe in the same State or in a different State, and we find that the one office can't help us, yet the new office where it has been brokered to doesn't seem to believe they can talk to us or our staff either.

We want to put the word out to Secretary Shinseki and all of the VA about the need to allow us as representatives of the people to have that firsthand ability to help our veterans have their cases solved and heard timely, no matter what the office jurisdiction is. We are looking for that help in that pronouncement by the Secretary to get this reform through.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank my colleague Mr. Costa and my other California colleagues, as well as everybody in this body that seeks to make things right with our veterans and the VA.

While I always support reasonable spending, I would rather direct appropriate funding from the general fund towards the issue that is causing all the other horrendous issues at the VA. It is the backlog of veterans' claims.

All the illegal and unthinkable activities that have been uncovered in the last year, much of it, I believe, stems from the backlog that is only going to increase if the VA does not get things right and quickly.

I have veterans in my district that have claims that have been pending for over a year. This is simply unacceptable--in many cases, well over a year; in some cases, decades.

Much like Mr. Costa, my veterans feed into the Oakland VA. This facility has the longest wait time for claims to be finished in all of the U.S. Our veterans do not deserve this. Something has to change, and it has to happen now. Today, we are drawing a line in the sand that this backlog is unacceptable.

My hope is that this amendment offered by Mr. Costa, Mr. Thompson, myself, and several others will be a step in the right direction in getting these claims closed in a fair and timely manner. We are giving the VA the necessary resources to get this done. We expect them to actually get it done.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I appreciate Chairman Culberson for allowing the time here today on this important topic.

Mr. Chairman, the VA continues to broker cases as a means to lessen the backlog that many Members are clamoring about. This amendment I am offering with my colleague, Mr. Huffman, who wished to speak today, is very important to both of us and to many of my other colleagues.

When a case is brokered out of the Oakland VA office to the San Diego VA office, for example, San Diego will tell my staff that they are not allowed to update them on the status of a case because it is not in San Diego's jurisdiction to do so, they basically claim. We know there are no VA rules in law that state that caseworkers cannot be updated on a veteran's case.

This amendment simply states, if a congressional office is looking for an update on a veteran's case that has been brokered to another VA office, that the staff will be given a status update with no jurisdictional concerns.

As Members, we serve our constituents. It is a reasonable request that caseworkers in our offices should be allowed to receive an update on a case regardless of where that case has been sent so that this VA backlog can be solved. Our veterans should not suffer because of this backlog. This issue of jurisdiction needs to be clear to all VA facilities across the U.S. so that our veterans are getting the answers they need through our casework staff. If we are going to continue to broker cases, then the brokered office must be communicating with our staff members, who are trying to get the answers that they need to the veterans.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, I would like to yield to my colleague from California (Mr. Garamendi).

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate my colleagues. This has been a bipartisan effort on a lot of VA issues here today we are seeing, which is a really good sign.

Mr. Chairman, thank you for allowing me some time to speak on this subject. I will be withdrawing this amendment at this time, but we will be following up on this issue via other means soon, because it is very key that we have the ability as the elected officials and our staff to communicate fully with all aspects of the VA, especially since there is, as I mentioned earlier, no law or no rule stating that we cannot have this but more, maybe, roadblocks put in place by certain staff.

Mr. Chair, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment at this time.

I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today as a cosponsor of the amendment offered by my friend from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus). I appreciate his effort on that.

It is hard to believe what I am here hearing in here today. When you look at the backlog, when you look at how veterans are being treated in this country, in northern California, it is amazing that we are on complete different wavelengths here.

The lack of accountability and transparency within the VA is nothing short of shameful. Yet again and again I have heard from many veterans in the north State concerned about the timeliness and the frustrating claims process at VA facilities in California, namely, the Oakland office, which is one of the slowest regional offices in the Nation. Despite past promises from the VA to improve the backlog, service to our veterans has continued to deteriorate. This negligence and mismanagement is completely unacceptable.

When veterans are being denied access to the care and services they rightly deserve and expect, reform is necessary, certainly not bonuses to senior executives. When a program funded by taxpayers is failing to provide the level of services expected, accountability, not compensation, should be demanded.

Rewarding incompetency not only exacerbates the most pressing issues within the VA, but also serves as an insult to the men and women who have given so much for our country, as well as the very many good caseworkers on the VA staff who see no bonus but yet still try to do their jobs underneath that regime.

This amendment is about fairness and doing what is right by fulfilling the promise to our veterans. It ensures our veterans receive the benefits and services they were promised and restores accountability within the VA to make certain taxpayer money is rightfully spent, fixing the backlog and incompetency that is harming our veterans' health and insulting them, as well as the American taxpayer.

This amendment isn't about throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This is about throwing the bonuses out with the bathwater.

I applaud Congressman Rothfus for his leadership in standing up for our Nation's veterans. I urge my colleagues to support this important measure.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am honored to follow a gentleman like Mr. Gohmert here. My subject matter for this minute is about the National Day of Prayer. I would like to add to his comments: we should also pray for Israel.

Recognition of the 63rd Annual Observance of the National Day of Prayer will be this Thursday, May 1.

Our Nation has a rich prayerful heritage, a heritage that began with many of our first settlers to the New World and strengthened through the first national call to prayer invoked by the Second Continental Congress in 1775.

As reflected in the writings and speeches of our forefathers, prayer has had a profound influence not only on the lives of these great leaders, but also on the content of the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents.

In his farewell address, President George Washington warned about the consequences that will descend on a Nation that excludes religion from the public arena. He declared the ``indispensable'' importance of religion, and proclaimed that: ``Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.''

Today, prayer remains very important in our daily lives, not only to our society, but to each of us individually as well. It calls to mind our actions and helps support us in our daily tasks.

Today, I ask my colleagues to join with me to continue this tradition of prayer and ensure that God remains involved in the affairs of leaders of this great Nation.