Before we get to audience questions, i wanted to ask a Public Service question, when veterans are approaching me, one thing i tell them is you should contact local congressman or senators office. They can help get you more information. Tonight, we have talked to veterans that were having issues with the va. Can you tell everyone how to get in touch with the office if they are having issues with the va . Senator cruz thank you for hosting and the leadership you provide and for being part of this discussion. I hope we have a candid and frank and real discussion about the challenges veterans face, the challenges our country faces. Some of those challenges are dealing with federal bureaucracy, and it can be confusing, frustrating, maddening. I can tell you in our senate office, we have an extensive team devoted to constituent service and it is a team with a lot of experience. It is headed by a woman, joyce, who has 30 Years Experience in constituent service. And one of the first things i did when i was newly elected to the senate is i made a call to my predecessor, kay bailey ofchison, who had a history extensive constituent service, and i said on election day, one your team to know i want to your team to know you should not feel they have to move on. Them. To talk to we want to keep that experience in the office, so we have a lot of experience, and their job is to serve you. Their job is to help you navigate this byzantine bureaucracy. I want to introduce the Deputy Director of our north texas office. Michael is here. [applause] north texas. In his job is to work for you. If you have issues with the va or other government aspects, reach out to michael. Ate. Govsite is cruz. Sen and we have offices across the state. You can find a phone number to the local office in your region that can connect to a dark constituent service back in connect to that can connect you to our services. I used to be a caseworker myself. We can get you more information and in some cases, finding that information gets your file pulled out of a long jam, sought ankara jew to use that. I encourage you to use that. Stories aboutgest health care in recent years has been the issues at Ethical Affairs with the va healthcare system. Why do you think the va has consistently had problems over the years and we had this cycle that we call reform and failure, where you have performs or things get better and then they get back to the way they were, what do you think is causing that . Hastor cruz the va wonderful professionals. Many are veterans themselves, healthcare professionals, other professionals that care deeply about fighting care to the veterans. We are grateful for the good service. At the same time, if you look, particularly the last few years, the scandals that have engulfed the va, i think have been nothing short of shameful. We have seen va facilities keeping bogus books, phantom books, lying about it, and wrongfully denying needed care to veterans. Careme cases, lifesaving to veterans. That is disgraceful. Part of the challenge is it is a massive government bureaucracy, larger than the u. S. Navy, and getting a massive Government Institution to be responsive is difficult. I think two things are needed most importantly. One is accountability. There needs to be real accountability, something i have been fighting for in the senate for years, to provide real accountability. If there are va employees who violated the law, the criminal law, they should be prosecuted, and if they have wrongfully denied care, then they should be terminated or reprimanded as the facts and circumstances dictate. There needs to be accountability that if you are keeping bogus books, you should be out of there. That is not easy to do in the system of the va that resists accountability. I have been pressing in the cba, unrealing with Accountability Measures so we hold supervisors and anyone fighting a lot accountable. A second and broader reform i think is important is choice. I am a passionate believer that every veteran should have the right to see any doctor you choose. It should be your decision. ,f you want to go to the va that is your right. You have earned it, you have bled for it, and you should have that right protected. It you want if you want to go to the local doctor down the street, you should have the right to do that, as well. That is the most powerful structural reform is the only way to change the government monopoly is introduce competition, and competition, giving veterans real choice, the biggest benefit of that is that competition is the one thing we can count on to improve the quality of care in the va to shorten waiting times, to make them more competitive because of veterans have the power to choose the Health Care Professionals you want to see, that empowers you and improves the whole system. Absolutely, and that has been two of the primary reforms. Choice and accountability. That is new law something we have been working on for years. I know it would not have happened in the previous presidency. With that, went to think so far what do you think so far with the President Trump is doing at the va . Senator cruz it is early to say. We are six months into the administration, but the president has declared a strong commitment to the va performance unless the secretary. I am encouraged by that. That commitment to reform is an important starting point. We need to demand real results, and i will say the president s budget. He proposed increasing the budget for the va about 6 billion a year and putting an additional 3 billion into the Choice Program. The Choice Program as it exists now is narrow, but i viewed the existing Choice Program a little bit like the camels nose under the tent, where i am glad to get it started and it want to keep getting that camel thrown under the tent until veterans have full and robust choice. Im encouraged i have been a big supporter of making what is supposed to be a private Program Permanent and expanding it. I think it is a strong sign that the president s initial budget proposed a budget increase for choice, introducing competition and expanding it. Absolutely. Some things in a washington, even with the budget increase, despite other issues we discuss these days, some are viewing it as a budget cut because it does not increase as previously proposed, but that is the way things work in washington. Pivoting to another issue. You introduced a new bill that would create a new position at the va. Normally, when we think of new government positions, people are suspicious, but can you tell us about this new bill, what it does and why it is important . Onator cruz it is focused information technology, and it would create a chief Information Officer at the va in charge of all i. T. Through the va. This was one of the recommendations, the commission on care came out with last year because if you look at i. T. , it has been a troubled area of the va, whether you are dealing with Electronic Health records, realtime locations of medical which the lack of that has caused significant problems in terms of sterilizing equipment, infection. You look at private hospitals, they are moving towards using technology to improve inventory, safety and health care outcomes, and the va has been lagging behind. We talked a minute ago about the bogus recordkeeping. Well, having a fully integrated, unified i. T. System would make that much, much harder to happen because if you had the records where you had one centralized system that was strong i. T. It becomes much harder to hide the delays and it becomes apparent to see if there are waiting periods, you cannot hide it. Officer willf hopefully help transition the va to using i. T. In our Technology Much more effectively. Absolutely. One of our former advisers who works with the va was with the commission on health care, and he says you cannot run a Health Care System without using the same technology rules as the department of education. Think you hit on a key point that the current gaps worked to hide the critical and normally, you should be suspicious about new government positions but i think it is a good step forward and a great tale. Pivoting great bill. Pivoting to other issues senator cruz by the way, there is another area i wanted to expand the position and that is our embassy in iceland because i think in dealing with recalcitrant eurocrats, it would not be a bad thing to transfer about 10,000 of them to iceland. [laughter] [applause] interestingly, that was the tactic the eva used that hopefully, but this new legislation, that will not happen. Reform, youding were on the Senate Arms Service committee. You just finished completing the National Authorization act. For those of you who do not know, that is the defense policy and spending level for the u. S. Military for the next fiscal year. You guys moved quickly this year. Were you satisfied with the product that came out of the committees work . Senator cruz i think it is a very strong bill. I have served the last years on the Arms Service Committee and fightingt that time for the men and women of our military. One of the critical priorities is rebuilding the military. The last eight years, we have seen a military budget devastated. We have seen the impact of sequestration, the result has been readiness levels have dropped, troop strengths are down, modernization is down, training and equipment is down. We are in a bad, bad shape. As distressing as the Public Information is, if you go to a classified briefing on what our adversaries are doing, what russia, china, north korea, and iran are doing, it will scare the living daylights out of you. This is getting to be a more and more dangerous world and our ability to defend ourselves on one front, much less two or three at a time, is dramatically below what it needs to be. The National Defense authorization act, which last week passed the senate arms committee, increases the authorization for funding for the military and increases it to 700 billion. That is a big deal. That is serious funding to take care of the needs to increase our troops, our strength and readiness. One of the important aspects is the f35 program. The f35 program i have been a strong champion of in the senate. Inis enormously impactful north texas. You have over 30,000 jobs in the state of texas dependent on the f35 program. It is critically important to our National Security and our ability to protect ourselves. The recent red flag exercises, f35 participated for the first time. Had over 820 to one had over to 1 kill ratio. Several weeks ago, i had the chance to fly in f35 flight. Got up, full cockpit, everything, god in it, did a in in, run, god it look, imbing run, cannot fly. I landed on the carrier, did not crash, did not blow it up. I was very glad. It does Say Something about the technology of it that someone who is not a pilot was able to do it. The Stealth Technology on that is such that flying up with the instructor by my side, were flying in the air and he says, there are two fighters. They cannot see you. You are invisible on their radar. Lets mark them and we will get them later. We went and did the bombing run, hit the target, blew it up. He turned around, took out the fighters. They could not see me. All they saw was the sole and boom all they saw was miss ile and boom. The technology was on the screen and you had just the trapezoid and you just keep directing we landed and cut, and it is amazing technology. One of the important things about Defense Authorization act is its substantial increases are authorization to purchase new f35 for the United States and allies. That is a big deal for defending the country. Largest35 is the Procurement Program in dod history. I think it is getting to a point where they are working out the kinks, but they would be general acknowledgment that we have had trouble in development and procurement to history. Senator mccain has talked a lot about that as chairman of the Arms Service Committee. They have been talking about changing some of these acquisitions and Development Systems that ensure we do not get the cost overruns. Do you think the Senate Version can continue some of the work you have been doing on that over the past years . Senator cruz i do and i think it is moving in a positive direction. The f35 had significant cost overruns and we should be concerned about that. That is something the president was outspoken on and i encouraged him on reducing cost but not in jeopardy to the program. The program is too important to our National Defense. It is fine to try to reduce the cost. That is a responsible use of taxpayer resources, but we need to maintain the integrity of the program. One of the things i help do was facilitated conversation between the ceo of Lockheed Martin and the president , have that conversation where the administration came out in support of the f35 but saw some cost reduction. I think that is a positive back and forth in terms of a winwin for everybody. It is also part of the reason we see with big german contracts prices going through the roof. Procurement contracts are prices going through the roof. By going to one cliff after another and another, we do not have the ability to plan out a run of purchases over a longterm, i hope we get past that. There are a lot of challenges in the senate for the hope we get past that because having Adequate Funding and study and predictable funding is an important part of procurement perform in common sense reforms to improve the process. One must question before audience questions, you have been one last question, you have been a strong supporter in the pentagon audit. It i recall, you asked general mattis a question about that during his hearings and you supported legislation to make that happen. Is the dod moving toward a point where it can be audible . Senator cruz that was one of the first bills introduced in the senate, a bill to audit the pentagon. We do not have the reliable audit of the pentagon. That is amazing for those in the private sector. Imagine if you could not audit the company. That would be a ridiculous outcome and you get the feds mad at you. Well, the pentagon is an organization where we do not have an audit, we do not know where the money is being spent. I think we are making some progress in that regard. It is something that continued to press. I pressed secretary mattis in private and also publicly, but to press forntinue fiscal accountability. That is one of the ways you direct resources where they need to go. The prior administration, the obama administration, had enormous funds that were going down that holes, wasting money. I recall several years ago, about 7 billion in their alternative Fuels Program that for navyalgae fuel boats, and they were spending massive amounts of money on trying to run ships on algae. I had some fairly heated exchanges. [laughter] i know that is hard to believe with the former secretary of the navy, where he explained the private sector was not in a position to innovate when it came to energy, and it was going to be the military that was going to redesign our global energy. I suggested perhaps those the air force built a wind farm in alaska that they had to shut down because they discovered where they built it, the wind did not blow. [laughter] what i suggested over and over is instead of political boondoggles, we invest the money in her soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, training, equipment and tools we need to win wars . [laughter] we will go [applause] we will go into audience questions. It is probably best we do not talk about the former navy secretary. When you said you spoke profanity, i would mention there are some senators i am not sure speak english. I think i am from arizona. Senator cruz i will decline to comment. A good navy men. Now, we will transition to audience questions. We have great questions. If we do not get to your question, we will give it over to the senators staff. Senators staff. Questions need to do and engagement. I think that is important. I will call out the name of the individual and where our microphone runners . Jim, our press secretary, he will come over to you. If you are in a middle seat, i would ask you step out and ask the question and the senator will answer. First, dominic in the front. This is a really good question. Va bill passed in for had some accountability executives and it was overturned in the court. Dominic, one of our best volunteers, is concerned that the new va accountability bill will not stand up in court. Do you think it has a better chance of surviving lawsuits that were paced by the previous bill . Senator cruz dominic . Thank you for all that you do and we appreciate all of it. Basically, my concern is every time we turn around, there is something in the news about being challenged in court. But do you think as far as the court and if it would be overturned or how that would work . Senator cruz thank you for your service and that may broadly say to everyone, thank you for your service. We are grateful for you defending this nation. [applause] right to be concerned about any commonsense reform being challenged. Apparently, the epa has turned off the lights. [laughter] we might have slipped a breaker. Senator cruz all right, so we will have a townhome in the dark a townhall in the dark. Ought to texas, we give light by fire. That woke the hotel up. Like a fire and someone ran to get the circuit breaker. [laughter] time i talk about the Second Amendment in texas, i am afraid people will pull out their guns and shoot in the air. [laughter] which has a way of making the venue hosting unhappy. You are right to be concerned about legal challenges. It is fair to expect them. In Congress Passes legislation, it is on the firme