For being here and his hard work. After opening statement, well go to secretary shulkin for statement and then members of the committee for q a. Let me say, this meeting is not about whats happened in the past, its about whats happening right now to correct some things that happened in the past. This is an accountability hearing. Ive told the secretary that we want to take the legislation we passed last year on accountability, on appeals, to give them the tools to address the significant problems confronting the veterans of america, vsos of america, and this committee, to begin moving away from the problems of the past and toward the solutions of the future, in particular on appeals, in particular on accountability, in particular on the gi bill, all those things that are important to the veterans and their families. And i pick particularly on the leadership of the va as well. I want to thank secretary shulkin. Ive always been complimentary of him. People say im too nice to him. Im not too nice to him because hes been good to the veterans and ill be good to him as long as he has been. Hes been a forthright leader that were lucky to have, the veterans are lucky to have, and i feel this committee is lucky to have, but we are at the time where there are no excuses. There are no excuses for why we dont correct the problems weve had with hiring, the problems weve had with i. T. , theres no excuse for not correcting problems we have with veterans appeals and all those areas, so this is all about accountability, its all about standing forward, its all about looking at the past and what we did and looking for the results that are to come in the future so that we do a good job for the veterans of the United States of america. Is he still coming . Okay. Mr. Secretary, im going to swear you in for the purposes of this hearing, if youd stand and raise your right hand. Do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you are about to give before the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . I do. You may be seated. Mr. Secretary, im going to recognize you for your five minutes and well get to the Ranking Member when the Ranking Member shows. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Chairman isakson, senator moran, senator boozman, thank you for inviting me here to talk about vas progress. On behalf of the veterans we serve and the employees that serve them, thank you for your staffs tireless, bipartisan work. Its been great. We certainly appreciate and respect your leadership, mr. Chairman, and partnership in establishing those issues that were trying to tackle at the va head on, some of them, as you have said, have lingered for years. I have always said, i think we have the best committees in congress, and thats in large part due to leadership. We agree with that. Yeah, well, i wouldnt say it if it wasnt true, but i took an oath, so. Joining me today, seated behind me, i just want to introduce you, in case i need a lifeline today, peter shelby, our assistant secretary for the Human Resources administration, cheryl mason, our chairman of the board of veteran appeals, dr. Amy farakof, acting secretary for Community Care, and peter, the executive director of the office of accountability and whistleblower protection, and finally, mr. Robert whirley, our director of education services. A year ago at my confirmation hearing before this committee, i testified that id seek major reform and transformation of va. Today, the guide va reform and transformation were focused on five priorities. The first is to provide greater choice for veterans. Second, to modernize our systems. Third to focus our resources on whats most important to veterans. Fourth, to improve the timeliness of how we deliver our services. And fifth, to prevent veteran suicide, which is our top clinical priority. The president s executive order last week, which supported transitioning military members with Mental Health services during that first critical year as veterans is an important step. Thanks in large part to your leadership, which helped us pass legislation in 2017, the legislation i hope well be discussing today, were making progress on all five of those priorities. Appeals reform would be a good example. Its about modernizing antiquated systems and focusing resources while giving veterans more Timely Services and greater choice. Accountability and whistleblower protection is essential to our unwavering commitment to honoring veterans. It too is about sensible, responsive, modern systems that process and support people to make it better. The gi bill gives veterans better choice. Its about greater opportunity, especially for veterans returning to communities to pursue careers and fulfill dreams. Beyond these reforms, we have announced Sameday Services for primary care and Mental Health at every va facility across the country. We have extended Mental Health to veterans with other than honorable administrative discharges. So far, weve disposed of 111 out of 130 vacant or underutilized buildings, we published data publicly on wait time, quality data, Customer Satisfaction data, and last week we published our opioid prescription rates across the country. There are no other Health Systems in the country that publish this type of data. And because of that, i hope its because of that, were earning our Veterans Trust back. At the end of this last year, 70 of veterans who responded to our survey said that they felt like valued customers at va. Thats up from 46 in 2014. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, were deeply grateful for your role in supporting all those changes and others like them. Theyre immensely important. But when i look back over this year, were still largely managing through incrementalism, patching and repairing old systems and processes and reacting to crises. Vanke still is far short of the kind of bold transformational change that we need to serve veterans in the decades ahead. From health care to benefits, we have to fundamentally and holistically change our Services Delivery paradigm. My objective when it comes to health care for our veterans is to have a fully integrated, interoperable, operationally efficient system thats easy for veterans and employees and Community Partners to navigate. A full spectrum of care for veterans that capitalizes on our foundational services, delivering on our promise to provide worldclass services. We need a consistent, seamless experience for veterans at every va facility across the country. We need a National Network of modern facilities that meets the changing needs of veterans locally, and we need simple, convenient choice for eligible veterans among a network of highquality Community Providers in a single, consolidated program. Mr. Chairman, i applaud your efforts to get this done. Your draft legislation that passed out of this committee is highly responsive to the needs of veterans, and were all grateful for the work that you and the committee have done so far to make this a reality. Benefits are a gateway to va services, and we need benefit determinations to be simpler. Veterans should know what to expect and have more predictability. They shouldnt have to endure the burden of filing claim after claim after claim after claim. Benefits should better enable lifetime of independence and success for veterans, economic opportunity, physical and Mental Wellbeing and Financial Security for the severely disabled. In short, we need to begin an earnest dialogue with stakeholders about veterans benefits. Mr. Chairman, in the days and months ahead, i invite and welcome your support and leadership in helping us define and then pursue the kind of worthy transformational change the va needs so we can all achieve what we hope to achieve. I look forward to your questions tonight. Thank you, secretary shulkin. I appreciate those remarks very much, and i hope the Ranking Members coming. Is he still coming . Beg your pardon . Yes. Yes, okay. Ill start you can start the clock on me. And let me make somewhat of what may sound like an announcement at the beginning of the hearing. The secretary and i have been in a lot of conversations over the past month or so, and i want to thank the secretary for his stated support for what the committee passed out of committee. As we all know, we had a 141 vote, and as we all know, we had some differences of opinion on the veterans choice bill and the care bill that we passed out of committee. And i did everything i could to try and bring about a unanimous Common Ground, but it didnt get totally done. So i made a phone call to the white house and talked with the president. I believe, if im not mistaken, the secretary was on that phone call as well as a number of other people of interest. And the president and this is my repeating what i remember him saying to me, is youre all good guys, youve got Good Solutions on all sides. Yall see if you can work it out. And we tried to get together a couple meetings to work it out, but that didnt materialize one way or the other. My goal as chairman of the committee is to find a positive resolution to no matter what problem i confront, and not because it comes from my wisdom, but my persistence to see to it we keep our eye on the goal, and the goal is choice for our veterans, better Quality Health care, more accountable va. It is my understanding the president and the administrations going to send our committee in the next couple of days some suggestions that theyre looking for that might help us bring about a resolution, and i intend to work with senator moran and other members of the committee to see if we can do that and take to the floor to unanimously support a bill, or a bill that at least everybody had their chance to support and can have their chance to amend on the floor. One way or another, its time our veterans had a veterans policies that served their choices, gave them the choices they need, funded them so they werent subject to the last minute were out of money routines, which this bill does, by the way. We consolidate the stove pipe from seven to one, correct, secretary . And get those things done that we have to do. So i want to announce up front that thats forthcoming. When it gets here, ill get it to the committee. Well begin work on it and try and get ourselves in the regular order to find a bill that we can unanimously get to the floor, one way or another. And if we cant, i then will have made every effort to do so and ill do whatever i can to have it fully vetted on the floor, if necessary. But whatever the case, our veterans deserve the best of us, the best of us is to find a bill that we can agree on, and the best of us is to find the Common Ground to set up that meeting. So, i intend to do that and i appreciate the input the administration has given us and i look forward to continuing to work with them. And i want to extend ive got a little time left. You know, there are three or four things i want to talk about, mr. Secretary. One thing that concerns me deeply is the four positions that remain unfilled at the department. One is your former position. We plucked you out of va leadership to become the leader of va. That was a good idea. The bad idea is it still doesnt have anybody in your place where you were in terms of secretary of health. The assistant secretary of accountability and whistleblower protection is not in place. That person needs to be in place. The undersecretary for benefits, which is a critical position the va needs to be in place, and the secretary for information technology, which is absolutely critical, particularly with the sernor information coming in, has got to be filled somewhere sooner rather than later. I have asked these questions privately and have looked and i know youre trying, but this is one of those things where a for efforts not good enough. We have to figure out a way to get the best folks in the United States of america in these disciplines working for the Veterans Administration and working for our veterans. Can you tell us what progress you have made and what youre doing on those four in particular . Yeah. Let me give you a quick update on that. For our cio candidate, we have made a selection, and that person is now going through a vetting process at the white house. Our indications are that thats moving along smoothly. For the undersecretary of benefits, we had a commission, as you know by law we need to form commission. They selected three candidates. We made our top choice. That person withdrew, and weve now gone on to our second choice. Fortunately, all three candidates are excellent candidates, and that persons also going through vetting at the white house, and they understand the critical nature of this. On the undersecretary of health, we have this is now going to be our Third Commission. Weve had two commissions prior that did not select a candidate. The Third Commission will be chaired by deputy secretary bowman on january 25th and 26th. We have 11 candidates who have applied for that. We hope to have a successful selection out of that Third Commission process by january 26th, of which we would then forward three names on to the president for consideration that would go through vetting. On the assistant secretary for accountability and whistleblower protection, mr. Orourke is the executive in charge of the accountability and whistleblower protection office, and hes here today. That prompts me to tell you what happened this morning in the health committee. We had testimony on disasters and preparedness, and out of the blue, one of the chief people in charge of that for our country took a point to compliment the Veterans Administration and what the veterans hospitals and medical personnel did to help in the rescue of Senior Citizens in houston after the terrible flood, which reminded me of the importance of the va system that is a system that serves a more senior population, and i wanted to compliment you and the doctors on what they did to earn that praise, because thats a real good thing to have. Thank you. From a standpoint of accountability, i want to see some accountability with regard to the appeals process. I read your report and i read your remarks. I know youre working on demonstration project on appeals, is that correct . Yes. What timetable do you have, are you working towards, to move away from a demonstration project to a project thats fact of the matter exactly how were going to handle these appeals in the future to stop the back log from growing and begin to dissipate the back log . Yeah, today the back log stands at 470,000 appeals, so we have a lot of work to do. Because of your legislation, were now implementing a new process, of course. That will be fully implemented in early 2019, but weve actually started to make major improvements already. This year we are on track to do 81,000 appeals. That would be 30,000 more than last year. Just at this period right now of this fiscal year, were at 21,000 appeals. Thats 10,000 more than this time last year, so were Getting Better and faster and weve brought on new staff. Secondly, weve begun, and this was actually because of the feedback that we got the last time that we were together, weve begun to offer veterans now the choice in their legacy appeals to opt into the new process, so they dont have to wait. Weve had 3 of veterans opt in. These are people with long appeals, opt in. This is the pilot project, to the new process. And heres the good news, theyre getting their decisions within 30 days, and 75 of those decisions are going in favor of the veteran. So, its actually a pretty good deal. Instead of waiting five or six years, if they opt in, 30day decision, 75 approval rate, and thats beginning to address those legacy appeals. So appeals. Im hoping through our veteran Services Organizations and your office well encourage more veterans to consider, because its an elective option, to opt into the new process. Theyll get faster decisions and we hope accurate, good decisions for them. My time is up. As it ends i want to say this. I know our vsos are represented here today. We didnt ask them to testify. Theyre going to have their chance to address the entire house and Senate Committees in a few weeks in the annual report. We look forward to their input. I hope the vsos and the agency will do everything they can to did he s disseminate the fact that veterans are given the option to opt out. That is a light years improvement on appeals. I commend you on what you started. Senator moran . Thank you very much. Let me first say im going to depart our hearing as soon as my questions have been answered. But i would pay honor to senator dole, who we will all be in the capitol to honor today, in kansas and perhaps the country theres no more estee maryland public servant. While his Public Service was tremendous, his military service and his commitment to those with disabilities and that the veteran community is exemplary, no one meets that standard. I pay tribute to senator dole. Let me raise a few points and im going to make comment and ask a question, mr. Secretary. First i want to note that your cancellation of contract the contract for region four for Community Care troubles me. I understand that senator heller will raise this topic with you today. You have a request for my Sub Committee on appropriations to explain what happened in that regard. I look forward to that answer. Secondly, ill be submitting several questions for the record. Im interested in knowing the vas efforts in response to