[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 7]
[Senate]
[Pages 9690-9691]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           VA ACCOUNTABILITY AND WHISTLEBLOWER PROTECTION ACT

  Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the Senate recently passed the Department 
of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act. 
This legislation is intended to improve the VA by strengthening the 
process of holding nonperforming VA employees accountable, but it does 
this by removing certain due process protections that are currently in 
place to protect VA employees from unlawful discrimination or 
retaliation. Dr. David Shulkin, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, 
asked for this authority to reform the personnel system, and the Senate 
obliged his request.
  In Hawaii we have a much different and more pressing problem that 
this legislation does not address, and that is the challenge we face 
with recruitment and retention of VA leaders and filling vacant 
positions at the VA.
  Nowhere is this challenge more evident than in the VA's yearlong 
search to recruit a new executive director for the Pacific Island 
Health Care System in Honolulu. During this time, six executive 
directors from six different VA healthcare systems on the mainland 
rotated through Hawaii on an interim basis. The VA said that its search 
dragged on for so long because it faced a shortage of individuals with 
the right skills to fill these medical director positions, but that is 
no excuse. The VA should have been doing more to develop a pool of 
qualified people to fill vacant medical director positions. Failure to 
find long-term, stable leadership undermines accountability not only at 
the highest level, but across the entire healthcare system.
  I am also bothered by the decision to rotate medical directors in 
from other healthcare systems, even on an interim basis. This stopgap 
measure failed to ensure the proper leadership required to provide 
long-term direction for the Pacific Island Health Care System and to 
make sure that there was someone to hold accountable for the delivery 
of services to the more than 120,000 veterans that the VA is 
responsible for in the Pacific. Those veterans and their families 
deserve better.
  Leadership recruitment is not the only staffing issue we face. In its 
September 2016 report on the Pacific Island Health Care System, the 
VA's Office of the Inspector General specifically noted that 
recruitment and retention of staff is an ongoing challenge across our 
neighbor islands, in large part due to cost of living, distance, and 
physical isolation. At the time of its report, the OIG noted that there 
were 75 unfilled positions at community-based outpatient clinics across 
Hawaii. These are vacant positions at clinics that directly affect 
veterans' access to healthcare.
  I worry that removing important due process protections for VA 
employees will only make this problem worse, because, where there are 
already issues in physician recruitment and retention, the VA could 
compete through the promise of a stable job, in an environment free 
from unlawful discrimination or retaliation. Knowing that those 
protections are in place is not only helpful to attracting recruits, 
but it is helpful to promoting a culture free of inequity and 
intimidation because people know they will be held to account for their 
actions. That kind of culture is critical to recruitment and retention 
because the last thing the VA wants is hard-working employees to search 
for jobs that offer better working conditions elsewhere.
  At our recent subcommittee hearing on military construction and 
veteran affairs appropriations, Secretary Shulkin acknowledged that the 
VA has seen cases of documented whistleblower retaliation, and that is 
important, because it means that Secretary

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Shulkin is going to have to be vigilant so that this new legislation is 
not abused. In his mind, he is not seeking this legislation so that the 
VA can fire employees without any reason or to allow supervisors to 
abuse them, and I hope that is how this plays out in practice across 
the country, but there is going to be more risk for a workforce of 
360,000 that is decentralized, where decisions are made locally, and so 
we will be vigilant with him and will hold Secretary Shulkin 
accountable for any wrongdoing.
  We are still left grappling with the challenge of recruitment and 
retention, and unfortunately, this legislation does not address it, and 
it may make addressing it even harder. With nearly 50,000 vacant 
positions across the VA workforce, Congress needs to get a handle on 
this issue because these vacancies risk undermining the delivery of 
services and care to our veterans who rely on the VA. We can and need 
to do better by them.
  Thank you.

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