Hack different products together and create what would become the iphone. Tonight after words on cspan two and 9 00 p. M. On wednesday, senator ted cruz held a town hall meeting in mckinney, texas. His is 55 minutes [applause] before we get into the audience questions, senator cruz, i wanted to ask you a couple of questions. The first one is kind of a Public Service question. When veterans are approaching me with problems at the v. A. , 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 prior to coming in here that were having some issues with the v. A. Can you tell everyone how to get in touch with your office and what kind of services you can provide if they are having issues with the v. A. . Sen. 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 h dealing with the leviathan that is federal bureaucracy, and it can be confusing, frustrating, maddening. It can make your head explode. 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 hutchison, who had a history of extensive constituent service, on election day, i want your team to know they should not feel the need to move on. I want to talk to them. 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] michael lives in north texas. His job is to work for you. If you have got issues whether with the v. A. Or some other government aspect where you need help navigating, reach out to michael. Our website is cruz. Senate. Gov and you can find the phone number for the north texas office. For folks elsewhere, we have offices across the state. You can find a phone number to the local office in your region who can connect you straight to our constituent services. Both democrats and republicans provide them. 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 so i encourage you to use that. Obviously a lot of discussion about health care in general, but one of the biggest stories about health care in recent years has been the issues at the department of veteran affairs with of the the v. A. Heh care system. Why do you think the va has consistently had problems over the years and we keep having the cycle of reform and failure, where you have reforms or things get better and then they get back to the way they were . What do you think is causing that . Sen. Cruz the v. A. Has wonderful professionals. Many are veterans themselves, healthcare professionals, other professionals that care deeply about helping and providing care to the veterans community. We are grateful for the good service. At the same time, if you look, particularly the last few years, the scandals that have engulfed live the have been nothing short of shameful. We have seen the a facilities. A. Facilities keeping bogus books, phantom books, lying about it, and wrongfully denying needed care to veterans. In some cases, lifesaving care to veterans. That is disgraceful. That is not how the system should be working. 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 the a employees the v. A. 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 v. A. That resists accountability. I have been pressing in the senate, working with cba, unreal on real Accountability Measures so we hold supervisors and anyone violating the law accountable. A second and broader reform i think is critically 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. If you want to go to the v. A. , that is your right. You have earned it, you have bled for it, and you should have that right protected. If on the other hand you want to go to the local doctor down the street, you want to go to the local courtyar cardiologist, 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 v. A. To shorten waiting times, to make the v. A. More competitive because if 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. We had a new law that is something we have been working on for years. I do not think it wouldve happened well, i know it would not have happened in the previous presidency. With that what do you think so trumpwith how president and dr. David chilton is doing . T the v. A. Sen. Cruz it is early to say. We are six months into the administration, but the president has declared a strong commitment to the v. A. As well as 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. I was very encouraged that the president 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 narrow ands pretty circumscribed, but i view the existing Choice Program a little bit like the camels nose under the tent, where i am glad to get it started and i 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 Pilot 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. Unfortunately, as with some things in 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, that that unfortunately, as you know, is the way things work in washington. Pivoting to another issue. You introduced a new bill that would create a new position at the v. A. 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 . Sen. Cruz the legislation i introduced and rolled out last week is focused on information technology, and it would create a chief Information Officer at the v. A. , a Senior ExecutiveService Position in charge of all i. T. Through the v. A. 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 v. A. , whether you are dealing with Electronic Health records, realtime locations of medical equipment, 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, to improve safety, to improve health care outcomes, and the va has been lagging behind. Another critical piece of it 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 anyone looking that if there are waiting periods, you cannot hide it. Adding a chief officer will with serious experience and ability to supervise it will hopefully help transition the v. A. To using i. T. In our Technology Much more effectively. Absolutely. One of our former advisers who now works with the v. A. Was with the commission on health care, and he says you cannot run a Healthcare System using the same technology rules as the department of education. I think you hit on a key point that the current gaps in the system were exploited during the scandal to hide the wait times and its critical. Normally, you should be suspicious about new government position, but we are supporting this bill. I think it is a good step forward and a great bill. Pivoting to other issues sen. 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 bureaucrats, it would not be a bad thing to transfer about 10,000 of them to iceland. [laughter] [applause] interestingly, that was the tactic that the v. A. Used because they cannot fire them. Here in texas, it was an unfortunate issue, but hopefully this new legislation, that will , not happen. Defense spending reform, you were on the Senate Arms Service committee. You just finished completing the fy 2018 National Defense authorization act. For those of you who do not no, that is the bill that sets 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 . Sen. Cruz i think it is a very strong bill. I have served the last years on the Senate Armed Services committee and have spent that time fighting for the men and women of our military. One of the critical priorities is rebuilding the military. The last eight years, we have seen our military budget just 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. And i will tell you as distressing as the Public Information is, if you go to a classified briefing on what our adversaries are doing, what russia is doing, what china is doing, and what iran is 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. It is about an 100 billion increase. 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. The f35 program is enormously impactful in 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 a 20 to 1 kill ratio. That is a massive differential, a qualitative advantage. One of the most Amazing Things i had the opportunity to do since serving in the senate was several weeks ago, i had the in f35 flight simulator. Got up, full cockpit, everything, got up in it, did a bombing run, shot down two fighters, and landed on an aircraft carrier. [laughter] sen. Cruz look, i cant fly. The amazing thing is 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. What is amazing is 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. You can see them. They cant see you. Lets mark them and we will get them later. Go to your bombing runs. 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 missile and boom. We went to landing on the carrier. What was amazing is the technology is such that you have on the screen what would be your heads up t display if you are wearing the helmet. You had just the trapezoid that you just keep directing and we landed and cut, and it is amazing technology. One of the important things about the 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. The f35 is the largest 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 troubled development in procurement in 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 . Sen. Cruz i do, and i think it is moving in a positive direction. It is clear 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 to focus on reducing cost but not in jeopardy to the program. The program is too important to our National Defense. Those perfectly 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 facilitate a 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 c with big procurement contracts are prices going through the roof. If the uncertainty of military funding. It is funding our government by continuing resolution by going to one closed after another cliff after another cliff 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 steady and predictable funding is an important part of procurement perform along with common sense reforms to improve the process. One must question before audience questions, you have been a strong supporter in the pentagon audit. If i recall correctly, you asked general mattis a question about that during his hearings and you supported legislation to make that happene. Is the dod moving toward a point where it can be audible . Sen. 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 i continue to press. I pressed secretary mattis in private and also publicly, but we need to continue to press for 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 programs that were basically just rabbit holes, wasting money. I recall several years ago, about 7 billion in their alternative Fuels Program that included algae fuel for navy boats, and they were spending massive amounts of money on trying to run ships on algae. I had some fairly heated exchanges. [laughter] sen. Cruz 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 our soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, training, equipment, and tools we need to win wars . [applause] we will go into audience questions. I talked about being civil and respectful, so its probably best we do not talk about the former navy secretary. Sen. Cruz when you said you spoke english and profanity, i would mention there are some senators i am not sure speak english. I think the curren