[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 7726]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             ADDRESSING THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION BACKLOG

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. 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.

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