This is just over two hours. I would like to call the hearing to order. First off, i would like to recognize the chairman of the committee for a segment. Thank you. I want to thank the senator for chairing the hearing today. Sen. Casey serving as Ranking Member at senator murrays request. They have both been real leaders on this subject. Senator burr was the original i will call it the all hazards preparedness act. In 2006. The law helps protect us from the full range of Public Health threats. In 2013, senators berger and senator burr and senator casey led the committee. Many members of the committee contributed, some are still on the committee. In the middle of the flu season, it is critical we reauthorize the act before many of its provisions expire and set number. I hope we will do this in a bipartisan way and i expect that. It has been the tradition with the law and with this committee on almost all of our major bills. Thele are not as aware of devastation of, for example, loop. I
We are working hard to collect every penny that we can. I am out of time, apparently. Mrs. Titus. Thank you mr. Chairman. A lot of that money leftover though, was used quietly to pay for the continuation of the denver project, wasnt it . Are you talking about the money from the treasury for the last five years . Wherever you found that. Its not available to us. We cant use that money. We thought we could, and its money that essentially becomes, as i said deobligated as expenses come in and also sometimes that there are new expenses for whatever might have happened in, lets say, in 14, and that money is used in that year, so you can become antideficient after the fact, so to speak. So that 1. 3 billion was not available to us. We had hoped it would be. I was the staff person that had the cryptic conversation with the house staff back in june and we had we thought we had a plan when i mean, in my opinion, quite frankly, we are a victim of our success. We have gotten many more veterans ca
Budgets. We had employees willing to give up compensation to meet this need of veterans in the community. Maybe some bonuses too. Miss walorski. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Secretary good to see you. Thanks for being here today. The problem that i dont understand with this, this is what i dont get, is that it seems like it keeps coming back to this issue of perception. You know you come today and you have your stats and your tables and your graphs and thoed kind of things and we over here, we want Solutions Just as badly as everybody else because were fighting for veterans in our district and fighting in a bipartisan matter and doing everything we can do legally through a legislative process but what weve been up to since you been here last is multiple hearings that go on every other day and look at the whistleblower retaliation, and systematic failures in denver and waste and fraud and abuse and ive been involved and every time your i. T. Chief has been here and we talked about this
Program or were gutting the Choice Program is absolutely positively wrong, proven by the data. 6 billion weve overspent 6 billion this year in in Community Care. Community care is absolutely essential. I think the issue is your hepatitis c drug, 1. 5 billion or whatever the number is for hepatitis c is part of the issue, and i dont think any one of us thinks that we should not be providing that drug. In no budget submission that i can recall was it discussed about that, although im hoping that somebody and ms. Brown actually talked about the forecasting that somebody was looking at the approval of that drug and that it was coming on and that if it did come on that it was going to cause a significant issue as it relates to the nonva care item, line item he, of 6 billion, which is gone now, its never been gone before, but all of a is sudden this year its disappeared. And my question was if we didnt have the pot of money that youre looking at now to solve this crisis, how would we solve t
Again, there was still no mention of a Hospital Systemwide shutdown. And finally at the hearing on june 25th itself there was no mention of a Hospital System shutdown coming in august. Mr. Secretary, im disappointed about the slow, painstaking revelation of this crisis by the department thats led by you. I understand their excuses as to why we are in it this position, however, somebody somewhere took their eye off the ball. Just as congress established a cap on spending for the denver project that va busted, Congress Also provided a budget for va for fiscal year 2015 which the president signed into law and it, too, is now busted. In both instances va has Left Congress with very little time to react to a crisis created by vas own management decisions. While we will not penalize veterans for vas management, or transparency failures, the days when va can come to congress and just say cut us a check are gone. Asking for flexibility without supporting information is not enough. Similar to t