Senator Johnny Isakson is the Chair of the Senate Veterans Committee and his office issued the following Friday:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, December 18, 2015
Contact: Amanda Maddox, 202-224-7777
Lauren Gaydos, 202-224-9126
Isakson Highlights 2015 Accomplishments for Veterans, Looks Ahead to Next Year
“We’re going to make the VA work for veterans.”
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, spoke on the Senate
floor last week to highlight the Senate’s many accomplishments to help veterans get the care and benefits they deserve:
“I
think it is important that we pause for a moment at the end of the 2015
[and] look back upon the last 12 months. Particularly, we look back at
the Department of Veterans (VA) and the veterans
that have served our country and reflect on the problems that we have
solved and the things we want done to better improve those services.
“When
the year dawned, we had a scandal in Arizona at the Phoenix VA
hospital. We had bonuses being paid to employees who had not performed,
we had medical services that weren’t available to the
veterans who had earned them and deserved them. And we as a Senate came
together in the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, which I chair,
[and] had a bipartisan effort to see to it we addressed those problems.
So for just a second I want take a moment to
highlight what we have done… collectively and in a bipartisan way for
those who have served our country and our veterans today.
“Number one, by the end of January we had passed the
Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act to deal
with the growing problem of suicide of our veterans. This law is already
working with more psychiatric help available to our veterans, quicker
responses for those who seek mental health,
better diagnosis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain
Injury and a reduction in the rate of suicide that takes place in our
veteran community. That was affirmative action, passed 99-0, Republicans
and Democrats, in the Senate of the United
States.
“We took the Veterans Choice Act,
which had just passed in August of 2014, and made it work better for
the veterans of our country. In the first nine months of this year, the
VA fulfilled
7.5 million more individual appointments for veterans and benefits than
they had in the preceding year, all because we made the private sector a
part of the VA and allowed veterans to go to the doctor of their choice
under certain qualified situations. We
made access easier, we made access better, and because of that, we made
health care better.
“Then
we addressed the Denver crisis. In January we got a note from the VA
that they had a $1.3 billion cost overrun on a $1.7 billion hospital. A
328 percent increase in cost with no promise that
it would go down. [Senate VA Committee] Ranking Member Blumenthal and
myself and the Colorado delegation flew to Denver, brought in the
contractors in the VA [and] we made significant changes. First of all,
we took the VA out of the construction business.
They had proven they didn't deserve the ability to manage that much
money or to build things. Their job was to deliver health care. We took
the construction and put it in the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers
where construction and engineering is responsible.
“We told the VA you may have a $1.385
billion cost overrun, but if you're going to pay for it, we’re not
going to borrow it from China. You’re going to find it internally in the
$71 billion budget
of the VA. And they did. By unanimous consent, this Senate and the
House of Representatives approved the completion of that hospital, the
funding of the shortfall, the management takeover to the Corps of
Engineers, and today it's on schedule to be completed
for the veterans of the Midwest and the West in Denver, Colorado.
“Then we dealt with many other
programs like homelessness and caregiver benefits to our veterans’
caregivers to see to it we had the very best care possibly available.
“Then we changed the paradigm in
terms of the VA. The VA had so many acting appointees and so many
unfilled leadership positions that they couldn't function as well as
they should. So we went in
and we approved Dr. David Shulkin to be Under Secretary for Health. We
took LaVerne Council and approved her to be Assistant Secretary for
Information and Technology. We took former Congressman Michael Michaud
and made him the Assistant Secretary of the Department
of Labor for Veterans’ Employment and Training. We put highly qualified
people who knew what they were doing in positions where we had
vacancies. We’re already seeing a benefit in health delivery services
and planning for information and technology coordination
and hopefully inter-operability between the VA and Department of
Defense in terms of transition of medical records, which is so
important.
“But we also did another thing. We
said we're no longer going to tolerate scandals in the VA or look the
other way, and we're not going to pay rewards and bonuses to people who
aren’t doing the
job. …We’re going to pass legislation that’s going to hold the VA
accountable, have an [employee] record if they're not performing, and in
the future prevent any VA employee who is not doing their job from
getting a bonus for a job that's not well-done. That's
the way it works in the private sector. It ought to be the way it works
in the government.
“Then we took another problem. We
took the problem of the scandal in the VA relocation benefits which cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue to the VA, funds that
were… used for transferring
some employees within the same geographic area where they were
originally working and we told Secretary McDonald to… get in there and
clean this [scandal] up. As a result, the former Brigadier General,
retired, who was the head of that department, resigned
from the VA rather than face the music in terms of the investigation.
“We took affirmative action to see to
it that we’d have no more scandals. We have zero tolerance for poor
performers and we want to reward good performance. That's the way it
needs to be. It's very
important to also understand that we have goals for the future. We're
going to continue to meet as a committee with the VA leadership on a
quarterly basis. Senator Blumenthal and I go and meet with the
leadership to see what they're doing and share with them
the frustration we have in the House and Senate about things that
aren't going right, but share with them the joy we are hearing with the
things they're doing to improve.
“And then we’ve set goals for next
year. A full implementation of Veterans Choice Program that includes the
consolidation of all veterans’ non-VA health care to see to it the
veterans get timely
appointments and good quality services from the physicians in the VA or
physicians in their community.
“We're going to improve the
experience of our service members in transitioning from active duty to
veteran status. Quite frankly today that’s the biggest problem we have
in the country. Active duty
service members who leave service and go to veteran status fall in a
black hole. There is no inter-operability of VA and DoD health care
records and electronic records. There’s no transition and handoff. We’re
going to see to it that that changes.
“We’re going to improve the
experience of women veterans including protecting victims of military
sexual trauma. We're going to combat veteran homelessness and… go from
the goal of the president
to get it to zero. We've already reduced it by a third.
“We're going to ensure access to
mental health so no veteran that finds himself in trouble is unable to
have immediate access to counseling. And on that point, I want to
commend the VA for the suicide
prevention hotline which has helped to save lives in this country this
year. We're going to continue to see to it that we have more and more
access for our veterans.
“Simply put, we’re going to make the
VA work for the veterans and work for the American people. We're going
to have accountability of the employees. We're going to reward good
behavior and we’re
not going to accept bad behavior. And in the end we're going to take
the veterans of America who serve their country and make sure they get
every benefit that's promised to them and delivered in a high quality
fashion. And we're going to do it working together
as Republicans and Democrats and as members of the Senate.
“As we close this year, I just want
to pause and thank the members of the Senate for their unanimous
bipartisan support for the significant changes we have made to address
the problems of the Department
of Veterans Affairs and to remember this holiday season the great gift
we have all received which are our veterans who have served us, many of
whom have sacrificed, and some of whom have died to see to it that
America remains the strongest, most peaceful
and freest country on the face of this earth.”
Watch Isakson’s full floor speech online
here. Last month, Isakson sent a
letter
in honor of Veterans Day to members of the Senate thanking them for their work to help veterans.
###
The
Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is chaired by U.S. Senator Johnny
Isakson, R-Ga., in the 114th Congress. Isakson is a veteran himself –
having served in the Georgia Air
National Guard from 1966-1972 – and has been a member of the Senate VA
Committee since he joined the Senate in 2005. Isakson’s home state of
Georgia is home to more than a dozen military installations representing
each branch of the military as well as more
than 750,000 veterans.
