Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. We attached the Rothfus amendment earlier, and I believe the amendment I was going to be offering in a couple of moments would have probably been a little duplicative, but I want to make a specific point.

We have had a series of amendments here and discussions in regards to bonuses for VA leadership. There are frustrations and concerns particularly when we look at previous GAO reports which say the matrix--some of the data, some of the collection--on wait times and other things that substantially the bonuses are based on, as this GAO report says, may actually be very inaccurate.

If the performance bonuses continue to exist, Mr. Chairman, would you be willing to work with someone like me and my office to try to find a better way? My fear is that right now, in the way it is designed, we incentivize playing games with the wait times. The world works on incentives and disincentives.

Can we work together to come up with a better methodology of how we incentivize good acts so that we are all comfortable that we are moving towards, shall we say, a proper analysis of the outcomes, and, therefore, we reward those?

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