July 26, 2023

Ranking Member Takano's Opening Statement at Today's Full Committee Markup of 11 Bills

Press Contact

Libby Carlson

WASHINGTON, DC — Today House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Ranking Member Mark Takano (CA-39) delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared, at the start of the Full Committee Markup of 11 bills, including the Elizabeth Dole Home Care Act and the Student Veterans Benefits Restoration Act:

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  

Several items on today’s markup agenda represent the results of bipartisan compromise and hours of staff negotiation.  

I wish to thank the Committee staff for their work to get us to ‘yes’ on legislation that will benefit homeless veterans and student veterans.  

I am also thankful to staff for their dogged and unrelenting efforts to get CBO to look at more data and revise its score on the Elizabeth Dole Home Care Act.  

This bicameral and bipartisan bill represents some of the excellent work we can do on behalf of veterans if we work together and find common ground. 

While I am supportive of 10 of the 11 bills on the agenda, I must highlight my concern that we are marking up the so-called ‘Restore VA Accountability Act’ today.  

This highly problematic bill has been rushed from introduction to markup in about a month’s time. However, I hope we may pump the brakes before any floor consideration of this deeply flawed legislation, which likely has provisions that will prove not only to be unenforceable, but unconstitutional, and therefore of no benefit to veterans or any notion of accountability. 

I am troubled that last week my colleagues raised the hue and cry about due process concerns when it came to veterans’ access to guns, and yet are so willing to throw those concerns out the window when it comes to the hard-working civil servants at the Department of Veterans Affairs.  

It is especially stark when the whole premise of this bill is based on a belief that there simply must be thousands of terrible VA employees out there just waiting to be fired, when I believe there is nothing further from the truth.  

Of course, any organization might benefit from improvements to supervisor training, performance management, and a more robust human resources function, but no organization can be improved by mass firing and demoralization. 

We ask a lot of our VA workforce because they serve veterans every single day, but I know the VA workforce appreciates its mission – over a third of the workforce ARE veterans themselves.  

We saw this workforce stand up and deliver care and services during an unprecedented public health emergency, and 259 of those employees gave their lives in that service.  

I do not believe that people who gave everything for the mission deserve to have rights stripped away from them. 

This bill is not about accountability, it is about a soundbite, no matter the harm that this political attack creates by undermining veteran trust in VA and disincentivizing Americans from choosing to serve veterans at VA. 

This is especially troubling at a time when VA needs to hire up for PACT Act implementation and while it faces thousands of ongoing vacancies. Who would want to work for an organization where you have few civil service protections as compared to EVERY OTHER federal agency? Where working hard and moving up into supervisory and leadership roles further diminishes your rights and puts you more at risk? 

I voted for the 2017 law, but the last six years of litigation and examination by the courts have left me with the conclusion that we were misguided and clearly did a poor job in drafting the law in the first place.  

I won’t compound my mistake here today and vote for another rushed bill that will accomplish little.  

I’m more than willing to have a serious conversation about true accountability, and that includes Congress putting some real muscle behind the physical and human infrastructure needed to support a workforce, but I cannot support something that we may as well just call the ‘Attack on VA’s Workforce Act.’ 

Our veterans deserve better, and the VA employees that serve them deserve better. 

I yield back.”