[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9337]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         GENERAL ERIC SHINSEKI

  (Mr. CULBERSON asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. CULBERSON. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank General Eric Shinseki for 
his service to the Nation, as an Army general, as Secretary of the VA, 
and I am glad that he made the right decision today in accepting 
responsibility for these terrible systemic problems that we have seen 
throughout the VA that the inspector general has confirmed extend 
throughout the entire system of veterans being forced to wait for 
health care. It is an absolutely unacceptable situation, and General 
Shinseki has done the right thing by accepting responsibility as the 
man in charge. I urge him and the mid-level and upper-level leadership 
of the VA to do the right thing as well and accept responsibility.
  We need to see these veterans given access to health care 
immediately. Every one of them is on a waiting list that has kept them 
from access to doctors, and they need to immediately be put into a 
private hospital in the VA system as quickly and as humanly possible. 
The Congress has given the VA all the money they need, all the 
authority they need, to do their job to make sure these men and women 
who have served our Nation and defended our freedom get access to the 
best medical care in the world.
  I want to make sure the VA understands that the Congress is going to 
continue to do everything that needs to be done to ensure those 
veterans are taken care of.

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