To thank you and the Ranking Member who is currently not here, but you all in this committee have done such a great job in responding to this crisis. I think showing excellent leadership. We heard from the va directly. Weve heard from the gao, the office of Inspector General, hearing from the private sector. Each of us in our individual capacities are listening directly to the veterans in our community. I ask we have a panel of vet vans and Veterans Service organizations if we are talking about veterancentered care, we need to hear from them. And add to mr. Mcclains excellent suggestion of having a Management Organization identified structural and organizational weaknesses and complement that with the veterans and what they are missing in their care right now. I think one of the issues that has to be included in that review is the issue of accountability. Weve talked about and described our frustrations with the amount of money thats been authorized and appropriated. Virtually lost wit
Past five or six years. But i think pretty obviously its a misallocation of the those resources. Mr. Collard. Not only a misallocation, but perhaps just looking the other way when you have the resources. I think i heard on monday night the fact, chairman miller, that you raised a specific financial number thats been invested or been provided for i. T. And i. T. Related services. The question was raised, wheres the money . And so whether its whether its misallocation or just, perhaps, an ignoring of those funds available, perhaps, leads to the current state. Dr. Mccaughey. Yes. The v. A. Budget has increased 173 from the year 2000 through 2012. That in inflation adjusted terms is 72 . The increase in total v. A. Patients was 69 . So the funding increased at a faster pace than the number of patients who had to be treated. And the number of acute care patients who need costly care increased only 49 . So the v. A. Funding should have been adequate to meet the increased demands on the syste
What theyre trying to do. Thank you. Eric cantor announcing hes stepping down as majority leader effective july 31st following the defeat yesterday in his primary in the 7th district of va virginia. Were going to take a few more minutes of your calls and then well show you the entire News Conference because some of it was shown over on cspan and some of it here on cspan 3. We wanted to show you all of it and take more of your call. John is calling us from illinois, independent line. Caller yes, good afternoon. First of all, you got to realize, the major Tea Party Groups did not come out openly supporting mr. Cantors opponent. And i think the major issue facing this country is that illegal invaders coming into this country. What are we going to do with all of these thousands of kids crossing the border. We should send them back. Definitely we should send them back. Were going to absorb them in our society . Who is going to pay for all of this. Lets check twitter. Cspan chat is the hasht
Commitments on Financial Assistance should not be caught up in bureaucratic hurdles here. A timelye to flow in way. As my chairman talks about, the market plan was not only about funding, it was also about active Technical Assistance. When we met with the government there, they welcomed largescale infusion of Human Resources in the country on all the major reform issues. They looked to the United States for expertise. They looked to the Diaspora Community for its expertise. They looked at the europeans, particularly poland, for its expertise. Poland is engage in constitutional reform issues as well. Service reform, after all of these issues, having Technical Assistance on a large scale embedded in ministries, and governments, offices, and civil Civil Society this is all welcome. We believe that International Engagement is critical at this time. Onto anothere topic, and that is russia. I had an executive in my office this morning i will not name the name or the company because i do not
Asymmetric strength is our economy for their asymmetric strength of some of our good ideas like these and the debate with ukraine could help with these ideas and that would go a lot further than some of the other ideas. May i ask each one of the witnesses just very briefly, dont have a lot of time on this question of Energy Efficiency and natural gas that we help with rivers flowing other issues but the real issue do you all agree this is an area we should zero in on and that will make the bigger longterm difference in any change in our Energy Market . Energy efficiency in the ukraine helping ukraine produces on natural gas is a good thing and i think we actually went that direction in 2012. The price for households pay for their heating gas is one sixth the price that ukraine was paying to import that. By raising the prices they are going to introduce a huge incentive for all of those households. Thank you. Absolutely. There are two major components along with others and i would inclu