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Partisan bickering thwarts action on VA bill

Tipton among lawmakers questioning huge funding request from agency
Tipton

WASHINGTON, D.C. – As time ticks down toward the August recess, the House and Senate are clashing over finding common ground to fix the broken Veterans Affairs system.

Both the Senate and House passed bills to reform the department after an uproar over a backlog of long patient wait times and falsified records covering up those delays.

Since passage of the similar bills, the Senate and House have butted heads over costs. Adding to tension, Acting VA Secretary Sloan Gibson’s request for an additional $17.6 billion to hire new staff, build and update facilities, and invest in new record systems has congressmen on both sides of the aisle reeling with sticker shock.

“We can throw money at a problem, but are we really fixing it?” Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez, said Thursday about the VA’s additional funding request. “There needs to be accountability, a system that works for vets and that the dollars are going to actually helping veterans, not funding bureaucracy.”

Both the House and Senate made new proposals Thursday that cut the costs of each of their original bills but still allow veterans near overburdened facilities, or if they live more than 40 miles away, to use private care and seek medical care outside the VA system.

Mike Hayward of Veterans for Veterans in Archuleta County said there has been growing frustration about the lack of movement in Congress.

“It’s really sad that they have to play politics with the veterans’ lives and health; there wasn’t much difference between the two bills,” Hayward said.

With the House and Senate each unveiling a new plan, things aren’t looking as rosy for smooth passage of a VA reform bill as a month ago, when lawmakers predicted quick action.

Thursday afternoon, Democrats boycotted a last-minute meeting between the House and Senate called by Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House veterans panel.

Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders I-Vt., said he wasn’t aware of the meeting, and he blasted Miller on the Senate floor for backing the Senate against a wall with his “take it or leave it” proposal.

“Any sixth-grader in a school of the United States understands this is not negotiation. This is not what democracy is about,” Sanders said on the Senate floor.

With less than a week before Congress breaks until September, Tipton joined calls from both sides of the aisle to put politics aside when it comes to veterans.

“These are men and women who put their lives on the line for this country, and promises were made to them, and we have an obligation to make sure those are fulfilled,” he said.

mbowerman@durangoherald.com. Mary Bowerman is a graduate student at American University in Washington, D.C., and an intern for The Durango Herald.



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