Timothy Walz

Mr. WALZ

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, we must enable the VA to recruit and retain the most capable people to serve our Nation's veterans. We also know that one size does not fit all when considering an applicant's background and experience. If an individual has gained valuable experience over many years at an agency, we don't want to eliminate them as an option. Federal hiring officials need the most complete list of options available to select the most highly qualified employees. I do not object to requiring former political appointees at the VA go through the proper selection process when they apply for nonpolitical, competitively selected positions. I truly appreciate the spirit and intent of the gentleman from Colorado's amendment. I support it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I do not oppose this amendment. It is smart. I have seen how important employee exit surveys can be in facilitating and understanding how an organization can be improved, made more efficient, or take constructive criticism. It makes absolute sense that employees filling them out know that they can provide honest responses because their anonymity will be protected by law, not by a promise or regulation. Ensuring that exit data is collected on the VISN level will give VA leadership the most accurate look at where in the country higher retention policies are working and where they are not. That is just good, best practice. Mr. Chair, I support the gentlewoman's smart amendment.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chair, every Member of Congress has heard directly from their constituents who receive health care from the VA that it is understaffed. This is true at all levels, but it is vital to both the workforce and the veterans served that each medical center have permanent leadership. I think all of us know--and there is an old saying--if you have been to one VA facility, you have been to one VA facility. Again, it may seem like the easiest thing to say that leadership matters at these facilities. Nothing matters more. When a VA facility is moving in the right direction, it can always be traced to strong, directed leadership. In almost every case each one of us has worked on, whether it is weak leadership or lack of leadership, those situations go awry. I have a situation in Minnesota where we have been waiting for leadership for a year. We were notified, I believe, a week or so ago that we are finally getting that. I enthusiastically endorse Mr. Bost's amendment, which would require the Department to get these things done, develop and implement a plan within 120 days of enactment to hire a permanent director for each medical center which does not have one. As the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) says in his amendment, a new director may well be identified from senior executives already within the Department, or he or she may be someone from outside the agency who meets the qualifications and wants to work at the VA. What is necessary is that filling these open directorships be made a priority. Requiring the VA to show us the plan to do so and provide regular updates as that plan is implemented is a way to set this priority. I commend the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Bost) for getting at the heart of this. This will be about accountability. It will put the right people in place to make the right decisions and get the care for our veterans. Mr. Chairman, I strongly support it, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), my good friend, the distinguished minority whip.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in opposition to H.R. 1259. Let me be clear that I rise in opposition not after serving this Nation in uniform for 24 years; not after serving on this committee longer than anyone else on the committee; and not with serving honorably with my friend, the chairman, who--I want to be clear, first of all, where the commonality lies around this issue, about 95 percent of it, you are not going to find daylight between us. The idea that anyone would put a special interest ahead of the care of a veteran is not only distasteful, it is wrong to assume that. There are legitimate differences on how to get accountability in the VA, and we have come to some conclusions that get us pretty close. This piece of legislation--and I do not condemn the committee because this is truly a bipartisan committee, but, for whatever reason, for the first time in the decade-plus that I have served on this committee, we have brought a bill to the floor without a hearing. We held a markup and brought it to the floor. The majority has the right to do as they please. What that deprives us of is the ability to build consensus around issues we know we share. I know the chairman's heart is providing absolute best care to every single veteran. I also know the chairman's heart is to make sure that every employee who is doing their job is respected the way they are supposed to be. There is not disagreement on that. This piece of legislation, and framing it as a false choice between veterans and the employees, the majority of whom are veterans, in many cases, serving other veterans, is a false choice. The chart that was put up, I belong to half those organizations. There is also an organization that is on there that differs from the others because it is a 501(c)(4) with the sole purpose of political attack ads on Members of the opposing party. Leave them off the sheet. The other ones I agree with. The others are 501(c)(3)s advocating for veterans, but for us to pretend this isn't a proxy fight for outside groups on something bigger is disingenuous and moves us away from the place we should have gotten. To show you the comity, my friend from Tennessee gave an impassioned, logical, and, in my opinion, correct assessment on the Veterans 2nd Amendment, H.R. 1181. I agree with the chairman on this. I believe we could have built consensus by bringing that through the committee, but it doesn't change the fact that I think the chairman eloquently got to the heart of that. I know what the heart of that was because the majority side used the term over two dozen times, ``due process.'' It matters. These are veterans working in the VA who should have due process to their Second Amendment rights and to their employment rights. It ensures that the working environment attracts and retains the best and brightest. So let's go through a little bit of what is here. One of the things is, we talk about going back and breaking a sacred pledge. You can disagree what is in the collective bargaining that was done between the administrations, Republican and Democrat, and those employees who work there, but to go in and arbitrarily change that from Congress, how is that due process? How about in the next bargaining agreement you make the case that those things need to be there. I will stand there with you and tell you this: The public sector unions need to give more, because you know what happens if they don't? They get painted with those examples. I hear some people say there are 350,000 employees in the VA, and they gave five examples of five bad people. You should give those examples. That is unacceptable, horrid, and should never be agreed to. This is a zero sum proposition. If one bad employee gives substandard care, Mr. Chairman, to one veteran, that is a failure, and the majority and the minority are in absolute agreement on that. But here is what I fear. We have had legislation--and I will offer up an amendment to do this--that has bipartisan support, that has Senate support. We will see if I am right or wrong on this, but I am almost certain--and it is our responsibility in this House not to message things for those outside groups to run attack ads, it is to get things that actually get through. I am saying today--and I will be the first to come back and tell you I was wrong on this--the process of getting legislation into law to be enacted by the agencies means compromise must be there. I think we come back here in October, this isn't done yet. Why don't we give on the 5 percent that is not agreed upon and get the 95 percent right so we can act to enact it? This is going to be the perfect getting in the way of the good, and I would argue the zeal to get it done in the way of due process. I do not question the heart of any of my colleagues to get this right. I do not question--I hope it would not come back to me--the outrage I feel when I hear the story--and I know when the chairman tells me it, it is true--of someone showing up intoxicated trying to provide care to a veteran. How in goodness name is that person not done, not removed, and not moved forward? I will have to tell you this: I have been there on this. I am a public schoolteacher. Do you know who hates a bad public schoolteacher the most? A good public schoolteacher. What really angers me is when management doesn't do their dang job, follow the law and remove those people, and give the due process to them. The same thing happens in the VA. Management needs to do their job. We have issued subpoenas for Phoenix, we have issued subpoenas for Philadelphia, we have issued subpoenas for St. Paul of people doing egregious things, not caring for veterans. They should come here, and they should lose their jobs. In some cases, they did. Do you know what they all did have in common? None of them were part of a collective bargaining agreement. They were the management. My fear on this is you have bad managers making bad decisions, and if someone speaks up, Mr. Chairman, who is a lower ranking member, their only protection to improve the system is by collectively bargained grievance processes to make sure their due process is heard. That is all we are asking for. I do not deny there are going to be proxy fights on this. I will not deny that I believe the public sector unions need to be in a partnership with this. I believe we should have had them in a hearing and set those union members down there and asked them: How in God's name can you justify this? Ask them and say: What would help so that we can do this? I have witnessed this as a public schoolteacher. Beating up on public schoolteachers all the time is not the best way to entice good people to go into public school teaching. I ask people, whether it be teachers or the veterans--go ask your veterans, how many have received quality care at the VA? How many really appreciate that floor nurse who did what he or she was supposed to do? How many are grateful that their cardiac surgeon is one of the best in the world and is choosing to make less money to serve there? But I won't deny this. We have managers who are unaccountable. This piece of legislation does not get at the heart of it because the teeth are saved for the rank-and-file members. I agree. I think the gentleman is exactly right. I want to read something. You tell me if this is okay. We had a VA employee who was written up and subsequently fired because they were practicing medicine without a license. That is outrageous. Outrageous that you would go there and you don't have the license, and you are practicing medicine. That person was fired. If we pass this piece of legislation, they are done and they are not coming back. But there is a little bit different story to this. This was a Navy veteran in Arkansas, and you know what they got it for? Not picking up a scalpel and doing something that a doctor should do, not writing a prescription for an opioid and trying to steal medicine, which does happen. What they did was, they entered the wrong code on a chart, and that got them for practicing medicine without a license. When they went through the approved negotiated grievance process, not only did they find out that this was wrong to this combat Navy veteran trying to serve other veterans who was discharged by a manager, it turns up the lack of management oversight. It was the entire system was flawed and the chart was wrong. So the grievance process not only returned the employee back to their rightful job, it fixed the system guaranteeing better care for veterans going forward. So I don't disagree. When we try and make it, the big scary thing is, oh, we have unions that don't care about veterans, don't care about what the care is, and what we need to do is fire those people immediately. Well, you know what? Some of them do need to be fired. But if there is not a process in place--this Navy veteran caring for other veterans was released without due process--we don't find out about a broken system putting veterans' care at risk. That is what is at stake here. My point is not to disagree. The chairman has insights into veterans that I think are second to none. The committee works together on this. Once again, when you gain the most votes, you get the majority, and I respect that. But I would also say that if we want to build consensus around this, I am going to offer up a piece of legislation that was written by a Republican Senator that has the ability to pass, be signed into law, and will get at the heart of this by going after the managers. Mr. Chairman, it is important to me, and I know it is important to my chairman, a Vietnam veteran himself, it is important to the staff sitting behind, veterans ourselves, that we not allow what has happened in this country to get into the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, to divide us over talking points when our goals are exactly the same. When we have legitimate differences, again, I don't think it is fair to me, as a veteran and a union member, to put something up that says you are choosing sides. I am not choosing sides. We are all in this together. What I disagree with is it is my opinion--and I wish I would have had experts testify to this, employment law people, bring the union folks in there, have us have this debate so that we can say: you know what, these changes are good, these won't make a difference. I respectfully oppose the way this legislation is written. I respectfully totally associate myself with the chairman on why he wants to do it and why he believes that this is best. I only ask, take a look at some of the improving amendments that can get us all to the same point, and give us the benefit of the doubt that we are not assuming the worst. And I don't--as some have said, this is an attempt to bust unions or bust the civil service system. That is the farthest thing from the chairman's mind. I know that because never, in my experience, has he done anything to disprove that veterans' care comes first, quality of care at the VA comes first, and accountability must go with that. My concern is, this doesn't get us there nor does it have a chance to become into law. With those things, let's come back at it, let's approach it a little differently, and let's find the common ground that is there. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Takano), my good friend, the vice ranking member of the full Committee on Veterans Affairs.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, you are hearing it here, and these are folks, we work together. This idea of accountability matters deeply to all of us. We know when you are in any business, this business--we have had colleagues of ours in here be arrested for buying cocaine from undercover police officers in Washington, D.C. Well, that brings great discredit to every single one of us, but I certainly don't think it requires all of us, then, to go through the same thing that person is going through or deprive us our rights of where we are at. This idea of due process, and what we are asking about, is not something meant to protect a bad employee. In fact, it is just the opposite. It is meant to improve the workforce. My plea on this is--much of this bill, there is agreement on, Mr. Takano was right--it went a step further. Having been a rank-and-file person in a collectively bargained unit, my goal was to provide the best quality education so our students could learn--an environment, quality teachers, and all of those things. I am at a loss for the desire to come here and decide that, and again, we say it in passing: Well, I don't want to deride all of those really good employees who are there. I just want to take away their collectively bargained right that was there. Even though we can give example after example, like Robert. He was a service-connected disabled Navy veteran with over a decade of experience at the Veterans Benefits Administration. He was demoted after consistently, every single year, receiving highly satisfactory or top-rated performance reviews. Robert volunteered to be part of a quality review team to get rid of the backlog, and he had the audacity to tell his manager that there were better ways we could do this. Perhaps all of this overtime pay and consolidating all of these claims to one place was not in the best interest of that. That manager, on the way out the door, demoted and tried to remove Robert from that position. Now, keep in mind, that same manager, all of those years before, had rated him well. Well, maybe something happened. Maybe Robert started doing something wrong. Maybe Robert wasn't that good an employee. But again, under this piece of legislation, Robert's collectively bargained right--which he used and grieved it and got back his job, and subsequently, the manager had problems on their performance reviews, where it came from. So again, don't set this up as if everything is wrong. And I would make note of this: We are doing our best to attract the best and brightest to the VA. Nobody is defending the bad. But when I hear folks come to the floor and it is nothing but what a horrific place this is, I leave this for you, Mr. Chairman. I also have the privilege of representing America's premier medical institution in the Mayo Clinic, and I look at what they do. Folks at Mayo Clinic will tell me some of the finest cardiac surgeons in the world are at the Minneapolis VA. I will also tell you this. If you, in America, go to any hospital-- Dr. Roe can attest to this--the thing that you should probably be most worried about and the thing that kills most people--over 90,000 a year--is hospital-acquired infections. Do you know who does it better and has the lowest rate, better than Mayo Clinic, better than Johns Hopkins? The VA. So somebody among those rank-and-file members who is cleaning the operating rooms and cleaning the equipment is doing so in a manner that is better than any other. What message are we sending them today? If a manager doesn't do their job and decides they want to fire you, we are going to lump everybody together. I just ask, once again, to my colleagues, to this body, these are things that should have been debated in a hearing. We should have brought in the experts. Here is what I think. I think you would build a broader coalition-- because I have to be very honest with you. I think our public sector unions could help us and step up and say: What was the real situation here? How do you respond to this egregious breach of trust? And what do you think would be a better way? I am not saying they would give us a suggestion. I want to be very honest and not disingenuous. They may not answer us. We should have at least asked them: What would you do to make this better? What could speed it up, and what could protect them? We didn't do that because we didn't have a hearing, and I think that stops building the consensus. I think it makes it harder to get this. I will tell you this. The bill I keep referencing that was over in the Senate had 45 Senate cosponsors. Good luck getting 45 of them to agree today. It is Thursday, and we did it on an accountability plea that also had the support of every single one of those groups on there, except one, to support that piece of legislation. So we went a step further. We didn't have a hearing. We tried to let outside groups frame this as a veterans versus public sector union folks, who were also veterans. That is not what it is. We just need to get it right. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Again, we are not going to find a lot of disagreement. I will tell you what a good first step would be: hire some surgeons. There are openings there. This is our first salvo at trying to fix the VA. We have an appeals bill that every single veterans service organization agrees: appeals modernization. We have worked that thing through. We have had the language. It is not here. We have a Choice bill that is expiring August 7. We have had a hearing with the VA Secretary, and that is the way it should have been. It is not here today. What we have is a bill that did not go through regular order, a bill that obviously didn't build a consensus, and this is very unusual to have a bill from the VA Committee. I bet you 90 to 95 percent of the time when one hits this floor, it gets 300 to 400 votes up on that board, but this one is not. So, again, if the contention is that Members of this House don't care if there is a bad employee working there, that is disingenuous and wrong. But if we do believe, putting it in place--and again, the example I gave, the chairman is right. It took Robert 6 weeks to get all of the information gathered together because the manager who left was holding on to it and had to get the union to force the release of that information. His 14 days would have come and gone, and that is it. This is why, sometimes, I am not going to defend 400 days. That is ridiculous. I am not going to spend--if they are dragging their feet. But this guy got fired by a manager, got demoted down, wanted to get the information. The outgoing manager said, ``It isn't my problem.'' The union had to go--and had to go, in this case, almost to court--to get the information back to them so he could present a case that said exactly what was ruled upon: You got fired illegally by a bad manager. I am telling people, if you are angry when things go wrong at the VA, you have got 330 million Americans who are with you. We have subpoenaed them. None of them were collectively bargained. The problem is in management and middle management not doing their job. Do your work. You know what would be great is if the management actually did what they are supposed to do and improved bad performance before it gets to a point where it causes problems and you actually improve that employee, which saves us money from having to go out and hire someone else and you have the system working better. But to watch something go wrong, not do your due diligence, not follow the law, then fire someone and then complain that it takes too long to fix it, how about we figure out what really gets, keeps, retains, and makes the VA better? There are other places that we could work on. Ninety percent of it, you have got my agreement. I think you are going to see that 10 percent is going to ensure this does not get into law; and that, in itself, is simply wrong because no one disagrees. We could make this system work better. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chair, after the gentleman finishes with his speakers, I will close. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I would say that I am pleased that the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz) is going to use the Oversight and Government Reform Committee to provide oversight of this administration. I welcome it. I have some suggestions for some other oversight of the administration, and I would be glad to share them. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chair, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chair, I am glad we got an opportunity to debate this, which is what we should do. There is no disagreement that we need to hold folks accountable. We need to get the best people at the VA. We need to commit to improving the VA the best we can. My respect and admiration for the chairman is as it has always been, the highest it can be. I know his heart and his intellect is aimed at that. We have some legitimate differences on this. I don't believe they are so big they can't be overcome. I do believe we should try and keep this away from the partisanship that so often engulfs this House. My commitment to Chairman Roe of Tennessee is to do the best I can to continue to try and improve upon these. We have a lot more work to do that will be happening together to improve the care of our veterans. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is just a simple technical correction. It does not change my concerns with the underlying bill on H.R. 1259, but I am not opposed to the technical corrections. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I thank Chairman Roe of Tennessee and Chairman Sessions of the Rules Committee for making this amendment in order. I have voiced my concern with the regular order. I think it is important to note that we are given the opportunity here to offer amendments in good faith, and I am grateful for that. This amendment to H.R. 1259 would replace sections 3 and 9 of the underlying bill with bipartisan legislation from the Veterans First Act that was first introduced by Senator Isakson last Congress. This is a piece of legislation I have been talking about. It is supported from both sides of the aisle, as well as those veterans service organizations, with the exception of one, that was shown earlier. If we hope to reach any compromise with the Senate on accountability, I believe this amendment could be made in order, be voted on, debated, and passed into it. The amendment specifically targets senior executives. It has been the senior executives, not the frontline employees, who we have subpoenaed before our committee, and who the VA has failed to hold accountable. Like H.R. 1259, it provides an expedited process for the VA Secretary to hold senior executives and VA employees accountable. For a senior executive employee, the employee would get 10 business days' notice. The employee subject to an adverse action would be able to grieve the action through an internal grievance process that would take no longer than 21 days. The employee would also be permitted to appeal an adverse action to court. It would also require the VA Secretary to develop a performance management system for SES employees. Do your job. Have the management do their job. For VA employees, the employee would be removed from misconduct or poor performance that took place within the previous 2 years before the proposed removal. The employee would get 10 business days' notice. The employee would get 10 business days to respond to the charges. The VA Secretary would be required to provide the employee a decision in a reasonable period of time, and the employee would have 10 days to appeal the decision to the Merit Systems Protection Board. This takes a little time. The Merit Systems Protection Board would have 90 days to issue a decision. During that time, the employee would receive no pay and no benefits. My amendment would also leave in place sections 4 through 8 of H.R. 1259 because I agree employees convicted of felonies connected to their jobs should not receive pensions, and poor-performing employees should not receive bonuses. No disagreement. Most importantly, my amendment provides a fair process that protects whistleblowers. By allowing our frontline employees to use arbitration and grievance procedures under collective bargaining agreements, these frontline employees remain protected from bad managers who want to retaliate against them for speaking out when something is wrong. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, the choice is not as easy as that. Do you want to stand with Robert, the good employee who was fired by a bad manager who used the process to get their job back, or do we want to just hurry it? It is better to get it right than get it done. And I will point out, AFGE, the union you keep hearing about, Mr. Chairman, does not endorse my amendment. They do not endorse my amendment, nor do I care about that. What I do believe is that this amendment has the opportunity to improve upon on a bill that we 90 percent agree upon, taking out the piece that is going to make it difficult and not improve care for our veterans. And I guess the thing that I would hope matters, I believe-- and we will come back here and see. We will see. That is the good part about this place. If this piece of legislation is passed by October, by Halloween, we should have this bill through and it should be done, and we should be seeing changes. If we don't, perhaps we do this exercise again, through regular order, taking some of these suggestions that make it possible to get it done. I encourage my colleagues to support this change that makes sure we can get accountability. Let's agree where we know we agree. It is not picking one over the other. It is deciding how you give due process, encouraging good employees to have the rights that they have earned to improve that care and workplace while at the same time removing those that don't. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WALZ. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WALZ. This is not the Veterans First Act. It is pieces from the Veterans First Act, but changes.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment and, in fact, I am enthusiastically supportive of the amendment.

Mr. WALZ. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for bringing this forward. This amendment addresses an issue that we dealt with in our committee last Congress, where senior executives are transferred to different positions around the country, receive pay increases and relocation incentives. We subpoenaed two senior executives. In fact, the first subpoenas ever issued out of the VA Committee, I asked for them to get there; and they were backed by Mr. Roe, backed by our chairman and ranking member. And to refresh people's minds, these were folks that took positions of lesser power, used their positions to negotiate to get there, and then, in some cases, took $129,000 moving expenses. You cannot find anyone more outraged than me. And I will tell you, because it was not done correctly, and we didn't focus on this, I still work with some of those very same people. They have their jobs back. Now, the debate that the gentleman may have heard earlier is we don't disagree at all that we should get rid of these people. This amendment will focus on the right things, that is what we have been making the case of. So I applaud the gentleman. I am glad he is here. His military service is greatly appreciated. The statistics he gave on veterans shows that he will be there. I support this amendment, and I certainly believe that my colleagues should all support it. It is this type of work that improves upon a bill, as I say, once again, 90 percent of what is in this bill is in absolute agreement. This just makes the bill better. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.