Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND VETERANS AFFAIRS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (House of Representatives - June 15, 2007)

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Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Thank you to the distinguished colleague and gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Chairman, having been a member of our armed services for over 20 years and a member of many of our veterans service organizations for a long time and now as a representative of tens of thousands of veterans, I can assure you that no one has been a bigger supporter and fought harder for veterans than the gentleman from Texas.

It is an honor to stand here as we have crafted, I believe, under his leadership, one of the best pieces of legislation that has ever come through the House. I thank you for that, Mr. Chairman.

Having represented the district of southern Minnesota that includes the Mayo Clinic, the efficiency and quality of care in health care services is of deep concern to me.

One of the areas that I am concerned with, and one that I look forward to working with the chairman and his committee on, is how we figure out how to make sure that VA and the Department of Defense are fully cooperating in the efficient use of their health care resources.

In the past, the VA and the DOD have been encouraged by Congress to do the best they can to make sure they share those resources effectively. Some great examples of successes come out of that. Joint purchasing of pharmaceuticals has been one of those where we have seen great savings for our Nation, great savings for our veterans.

A year ago, the Government Accountability Office found that the VA and DOD are, indeed, making progress. But they also made some suggestions where they said standards must be developed to measure that performance in order to determine whether they are doing an adequate job of sharing their health care resources.

A year later yet we haven't seen, even though DOD and VA have agreed, we haven't seen them implement some of those recommendations.

Once, again, I applaud the chairman for a great piece of legislation, very thoughtful. I applaud my friends on other side of the aisle for great cooperation, thoughtful care, and an absolute commitment, a moral commitment to taking care of our veterans.

I look forward to working with you on this issue in the future to make sure that we are not only taking care of our veterans at the highest quality standard; we are also safeguarding those precious resources of the American taxpayers to make sure we are not duplicating services when we don't have to and to make sure that we are maximizing our effect.

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