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Today, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.), delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared, at the start of the Committee’s oversight hearing entitled, “Accountable or Absent?: Examining VA Leadership Under the Biden-Harris Administration,” which will discuss the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) accountability culture. Including, whether VA leaders fully and adequately address misconduct, both substantiated and alleged, to ensure that veterans are served by a safe, productive, and prosperous VA.

The Committee will also discuss how VA leaders have, to date, addressed issues like: (1) patient safety concerns stemming from alleged or substantiated misconduct at VA Medical Centers nationwide, including, but not limited to, the Rocky Mountain Regional and Hampton VA Medical Centers; (2) the Critical Skill Incentive bonus payments; (3) the lack of VA Medical Center employee confidence, including, but not limited to, the VA Loma Linda Healthcare System’s employee confidence, that VA leaders will adequately address employee concerns; (4) VA’s budget shortfall; and (5) senior leader misconduct.

The Committee will come to order.

Before we get started, I ask unanimous consent that Representatives Obernolte and Crow be able to sit at the dais and participate in questioning.

Hearing no objection, so ordered.

Throughout this Congress, this Committee has conducted rigorous oversight of the Biden-Harris Administration’s management of V.A.

It is our bipartisan responsibility to make sure V.A. is properly serving veterans– period.

We have investigated leadership mismanagement, misconduct, and ineffectiveness at medical centers across the country.

This includes the Auora Colorado, Hampton Virginia, Loma Linda California, Mountain Home Tennessee, and Buffalo New York medical centers, among others.

The Committee has also examined allegations of individual misconduct, including sexual harassment, against senior leaders, throughout V.A.

As I said earlier this year, this behavior has no place at V.A., and I will always do my part as the Chairman of this Committee to put a stop to it.


One despicable example of such misconduct are the recent sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations coming out of the Mountain Home Tennessee V.A. Medical Center.

Employees who work at this facility have outlined at least three different instances of alleged sexual harassment or sexual assault that occurred within the facility.

If this was not bad enough, the Mountain Home V.A. leadership allegedly knew about some of the allegations for nearly six months, but never intervened.

Another example of misconduct is the coordinated decision by senior leaders to give critical skill incentive bonuses to nearly every V.A. Central Office executive.

As Chairman, I have also encouraged whistleblowers to expose waste, fraud, and abuse of resources and violations of law and policy.

Whistleblowers know when the bureaucracy has lost its way.

That’s why my oversight team has spent hundreds of hours talking to them and conducting oversight visits.

Unfortunately, we have seen a lot of mismanagement and misconduct …

…a lot of things that should not be happening…

…a lot of things that veterans and taxpayers expect us to end.

And in all these scandals, there is one constant.

A complete lack of accountability within V.A.

We have seen the Biden-Harris Administration fail to effectively lead the federal government , and unfortunately V.A. is no different.

Senior leaders and managers in V.A. must be responsible for employees they supervise and the work environments they create.

Setting a positive example for employees on how to properly serve our veterans is not optional.

But time and again, when V.A. leaders and managers are inept, commit misconduct, or create hostile work environments, they are never held accountable.


Instead, such leaders are left in place, and collect a healthy paycheck, until Congress, the Inspector General, or the press finds out.

But even then, offenders usually get shuffled to another office, to cause more problems while still collecting the same large paycheck.

In one case, a medical center director was moved into a V.H.A. administrative position after being found to create a psychologically unsafe and dangerous workplace.

But, it gets better. V.A. later found this individual routinely engaged in inappropriate conduct that created a toxic work environment in the new office the leader was moved to.
I ask this administration to help me understand how moves like this make any shred of sense.

In another example, a facility director who mismanaged medical providers’ clinical performance reviews, which could have led to poor veteran care, was merely reassigned to a cushy V.H.A. Office.

This lack of accountability is not fair to all the other hardworking V.A. employees– many of which are fellow veterans – or the veterans who rely on V.A. for their care and benefits.

I introduced the “Restore Accountability Act of 2023” last year to prevent these bad apples from lingering around V.A. and collecting paychecks from the taxpayers.

This legislation would restore the authorities in the 2017 Accountability Act and would allow V.A. to timely and appropriately discipline employees.

Because right now, under the Biden-Harris administration’s watch, accountability is nonexistent.

This lack of V.A. accountability is happening as V.A. has completely lost control of its budget and has I.T. projects ballooning by tens of billions of dollars.

That includes the Digital G.I. Bill, Financial Management Business Transformation and the electronic health record system.

Poor leadership also includes bad management, poor judgment, and lack of transparency.

We are seeing that all over V.A.

Finally, we have the budget shortfalls.

Mr. Jacobs has told us there is a nearly 3-billion-dollar hole in disability compensation and education funding.

The Biden-Harris Administration is demanding Congress bail them out or veterans’ benefit payments may be delayed.

My friend, Representative Mike Garcia has introduced a supplemental bill, the Veterans Benefits Continuity and Accountability Supplemental Appropriations Act, with strong accountability measures.

I proudly support this bill and was pleased to be an original co-sponsor.

V.A. has no excuse for failing to budget for the PACT Act.

But we must hold the veterans harmless.

Dr. Elnahal also tells us there will be a 12-billion-dollar hole in health care funding next year.

But V.A. stonewalls us when we try to get to the bottom of it.

We got a story that did not add up nearly two months ago, and V.A. refused to provide any more briefings before this hearing to further explain themselves.

Either V.A.’s estimates are completely unreliable, or the Administration presented a dishonest budget request in the spring.

We have to find out the truth and press for accountability so this never happens again.

This is serious business, and veterans’ wellbeing is at stake.

With that, I now recognize Ranking Member Takano for his opening comments.