Demanding Accountability

DEMANDING ACCOUNTABILITY -- (Senate - September 27, 2006)

Mrs. MURRAY. Madam President, the hardest decisions we make in the Senate involve asking our fellow Americans to risk their health and their lives in defense of our country. The cost to our country, to our communities, and to our families is so great that in any war we have an obligation to make sure we are doing right by our service members, by our veterans, and by our country.

That is why we in this Congress need to ask questions. We need to ask questions such as: Do our troops have a clear mission? Is there a plan to achieve that mission? Do our troops have the support and equipment they need to succeed? Do we have the right people in place? And are we taking care of our veterans when they return home from military service?

For too long, this Congress has not done its job of asking those questions and demanding answers. Here in Congress, we have a responsibility. We have a responsibility to make sure the Bush administration, or any administration, is fulfilling those critical requirements. So today I rise to offer an update on where we stand on some of these questions and to share some disturbing news from recent reports. The evidence I am going to share with my colleagues today points to five disappointing conclusions, and they all demand hearings and they demand accountability.

First of all, the Bush administration misled Congress about its failures in planning for the care of America's veterans.

Secondly, the Bush administration still does not have a plan to care for our veterans.

Third, we do not have a clear mission in the war in Iraq. And that fight has greatly impacted our ability to prosecute the broader war on terror and, according to the latest intelligence estimate, has helped to fuel new terrorist recruits.

Fourth, the Bush administration has put politics over progress in Iraq and at home. In Iraq, it sent political cronies to staff the provisional government instead of experienced professionals who could get the job done. From ``Brownie'' at FEMA to new reports about the HUD Secretary, the Bush administration put politics over competence.

Finally, Congress--us--we are not doing our job of oversight. Unless we hold hearings, until we demand answers, and until we require accountability, we will just keep muddling through with the same poor results.

We can do a lot better. We can be safer. And we can be more successful. But it has to start with an honest assessment of what is working, what is not, and what we need to change.

In that spirit, I want to discuss those five conclusions I mentioned, starting with the fact that the Bush administration misled Congress about its inadequate efforts to care for our veterans.

Over the past 2 budget years, the Bush administration was dramatically wrong in its planning for veterans health care. The result was a $3 billion shortfall last summer. And this was not just a failure in planning. It meant failing to get our veterans the services they required in a timely fashion. It meant veterans had to face long waits to see a doctor. And it meant they did not get the care they deserved.

That horrible planning is no way to care for the veterans who have sacrificed so much for us. We can do better. That is why after that failure I joined with Senators AKAKA, DURBIN, and SALAZAR. Together we asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate what happened at the VA. Well, this is the report we got back. Frankly, the answers are pretty damning, and they cast doubt on whether we can rely on this VA for accurate numbers and straight answers.

I wish to focus on the four findings in this report.

First of all, the GAO found that the VA knew it had serious problems with its budget, but they failed to notify Congress, all of us here. Even worse, they misled us. The report suggests that the VA could still, today, be sending us inaccurate information in its quarterly reports.

Secondly, the GAO found that the VA was basing its budgets on ``unrealistic assumptions, errors in estimation, and insufficient data.''

Third, the Pentagon failed to give the VA up-to-date information about how many service members would be coming down the pipeline and into the VA.

Finally, the GAO found that the VA did not adequately plan for the impact of service members coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

For me, I think one of the most disturbing findings is that the VA kept assuring us here in Congress that everything was fine, while inside the VA--at the same time it was assuring us things were fine--it was very clear that the shortfalls were growing. The VA, in fact, became aware it would have a problem. In October of 2004, inside the VA, they knew they had problems, but they did not admit those problems until June of 2005. Veterans were telling me of long lines and delays in care. For months, I tried to give the VA more money, but the administration fought me every step of the way. And who paid the price for those deceptions? America's veterans, and that was just wrong.

Let me walk through some of the deceptions found in this GAO report. It shows a very troubling gap between what the VA knew and what the VA told us.

According to the GAO report, starting back in October 2004, the VA knew that money was tight. It anticipated serious budget challenges, and it created, inside the VA, a ``Budget Challenges'' working group.

Two months later, in December of 2004, that budget group made internal recommendations inside the VA to deal with the shortfall they knew they had. They suggested delaying new initiatives and shifting around funding.

Two months later, in February of 2005, the Bush administration released its budget proposal for 2006. The GAO found that budget was based on ``unrealistic assumptions, errors in estimation, and insufficient data.''

A week later, at a hearing on February 15, here, I asked the VA Secretary if the President's budget was sufficient. He told me:

I have many of the same concerns, and I end up being satisfied that we can get the job done with this budget.

Let's remember what was happening back at that time. I was hearing from veterans that they were facing delays in care and that the VA system was stretched to capacity. But the VA kept saying: Everything is fine.

On March 8, Secretary Nicholson told a House committee that the President's fiscal year 2006 budget ``gives VA what it needs.'' Well, I was hearing a much different story as I spoke with veterans in my home State and around the country. So that is why on March 10 I offered an amendment in the Senate Budget Committee to increase veterans funding by 3 percent so we could hire more doctors and provide faster care for our veterans. Unfortunately, the Republican majority said no.

Now, that same month, while that was happening, the VA's internal monthly reports showed that demand for health care was exceeding projections. That was another warning sign that the VA should have shared with us, but it did not.

On March 16, Senator Akaka and I offered an amendment here on the Senate floor to increase veterans funding by $2.85 billion. Once again, the Republican majority said no.

The next month, on April 5, Secretary Nicholson wrote to Senator Hutchison:

I can assure you that the VA does not need emergency supplemental funds in FY 2005.

A week later, on April 12, I offered two amendments on the Senate floor to boost veterans funding. First, I asked the Senate to agree that the lack of veterans funding was an emergency and we had to fix it. The Republican majority said no. So I asked the Senate to agree that supporting our veterans ought to be a priority. Again, the Republican majority said no. As a result, veterans did not get the funding they needed and the deception continued.

On June 9, I asked Secretary Nicholson at a hearing if he had enough funding to deal with the mental health challenges of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He assured me the VA was fine.

So for 6 months, we had happy talk that everything was fine within the VA. Then, in June, just 2 weeks after the Secretary's latest assurance, the truth finally came out.

On June 23, the VA revealed a massive shortfall of $3 billion. Well, I went to work with my colleagues and we came up with the funding. But we could have solved that problem much earlier and saved our veterans the delays they were experiencing.

By misleading us the entire time, the Bush administration hurt our American veterans. We could have provided the money when it was needed. We could have been hiring the doctors and nurses we needed. We could have been buying the medical equipment that was needed. And we could have been helping thousands of veterans who were sitting on waiting lists waiting for care.

Here is the bottom line. The Bush administration knew about this problem in October of 2004. They saw it getting worse month by month, but here in the Senate, in the House, they assured us everything was fine. They worked adamantly to defeat my amendments to provide funding, and they did not come clean until June of 2005.

That is unacceptable. I think our veterans deserve real answers.

This GAO report shows that the VA was not telling us in Congress the truth and was fighting those of us who were trying to help. I think we need to bring Secretary Nicholson before the Veterans Affairs' Committee so we can get real answers. We need to ensure that the VA doesn't repeat the same mistake of the past 2 years. We owe that to our current and future veterans who sacrifice so much for us.

We need an explanation of why the VA lied to us about the so-called ``management efficiency.'' The GAO found those alleged savings were nothing but ``hot air.'' This report clearly shows the Bush administration misrepresented the truth to us in Congress for 4 fiscal years, through 4 budgets, and 4 appropriations cycles about those bogus savings. When they could not make these efficiencies a reality, they took the funds from veterans' health care. That, too, is unacceptable.

This report also suggests that even in its latest quarterly reports to us, the VA is slow to report and doesn't provide key information we required, such as the time required for veterans to get their first appointment.

The GAO report also says that the Department of Defense failed to provide the VA up-to-date information on how many service members would be separating from service and seeking care at the VA.

That is frustrating to me because I have been asking every general who comes up here if they are doing enough to ensure a smooth transition from the Pentagon to the VA. In fact, on February 16 of last year, I questioned Secretary Rumsfeld directly. I got him to agree that caring for our veterans is part of the cost of a war. But he had no real answer when I asked why his request for the war did not include funding to care for our veterans.

Finally, the GAO report verifies that the VA failed to plan for the impact of the veterans who are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. I am very concerned that the Bush administration still, today, right now, does not have a plan to meet the needs of our returning service members.

Look at the gap between what the VA told us it needs and what we are actually spending on veterans' health care. In July, a few months ago, the VA sent an estimate to the Congressional Budget Office. The VA said it would need $1 billion a year for 10 years to care for veterans from Iraq.

But here is the problem. We are already spending more than $1 billion this year, and we still have not seen the lion's share of veterans return home. There will be more veterans needing help, and $1 billion a year is not going to cut it.

I have heard some of my colleagues speak about the generous increases to VA programs, and I agree they have been helpful. But unless the dollars we provide meet the needs of our veterans, we will not have fulfilled our responsibility to those we have asked to go to war for us.

Let's focus on one area of veterans health care--support for mental health challenges, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Here is what the Associated Press said recently:

More than one-third of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking medical treatment from the Veterans Health Administration report symptoms of stress or other mental disorders--a tenfold increase in the last 18 months, according to an agency study.

That is from the Associated Press. It is a good thing that veterans are coming home and seeking help. I hope it means we have made it easier to get care and we have reduced the stigma associated with the invisible impacts of war. During the Vietnam war, I saw those challenges firsthand when I volunteered in the psychiatric ward of the Seattle VA hospital.

I think it is good that our veterans are coming home and asking for care, but we have to make sure it is our responsibility in this Congress that we have the funding to meet that need.

The AP article I mentioned talks about a soldier from Virginia Beach, VA, who was having a hard time sleeping when he came home from Iraq. Do you know what he was told? He was told he would have to wait 2 1/2 months for an appointment at the VA facility.

Here is a service member who has gone to war in Iraq, done what his country asked, and he comes home and asks for help, and all he is told by the VA is to get in line and wait 75 days. I find that pretty disgraceful.

I have held a number of discussions in my home State of Washington with our veterans and with mental health experts. I was recently in Everett, WA, on August 17. I heard about the challenges they are facing on the ground.

Whether it is dealing with a large number of veterans with severe physical injuries, or traumatic brain injuries, the VA has no plan to deal with this.

Whether it is dealing with the 16 percent of wounded service members coming back from Iraq with eye injuries, which Walter Reed reported in August, the VA has no plan to deal with this.

Whether it is dealing with one-third of all service members to return home and separate from the military, who are seeking mental health services, the VA has no plan. And we in Congress are still not getting straight answers.

In that AP article, a VA official said he is not aware of problems with veterans getting mental health services. Dr. Michael Kussman is quoted as saying:

We're not aware that people are having trouble getting services from us in any consistent way or pattern around the country.

A lot of our veterans advocates disagree with that. In fact, another VA official pointed to serious problems in meeting the mental health need of our veterans.

In the May edition of the Psychiatric News, Dr. Frances Murphy, the Under Secretary of Health Policy Coordination at the VA, said the agency is ill-prepared to serve the mental health needs of our Nation's veterans.

In that article, Dr. Murphy notes that some VA clinics don't provide mental health or substance abuse care, or if they do, ``waiting lists render that care virtually inaccessible.''

The Bush administration has failed to deliver our veterans the care they need, denying them the respect they deserve. Given the VA's bad track record and misleading statements, we need to demand in Congress a real plan from the VA to ensure that our veterans get the care they have earned.

Another question we need to be asking in the Senate is about our mission in Iraq today. Unless we have clarity and purpose of mission, we are not going to know when we have achieved it and when our troops can come home.

We all want the same thing in Iraq--for our troops to complete their mission successfully and come home safely. But today our troops' mission in Iraq lacks clarity. What are they accomplishing there today? Overthrowing Saddam Hussein? They already accomplished that. Looking for weapons of mass destruction? They looked; no weapons were found. Are they supposed to be setting up an Iraqi government? We have done that. The Iraqi people have created a constitution, elected leaders, and filled their Cabinet.

Our troops have done everything we have asked them to do. What is left? Will the President's policies get us there? That is the discussion we ought to be having in the Congress. But every time we ask these questions, we get the same empty response from the President, his Cabinet, and the Congress: Stay the course.

Stay the course is not a good plan, if the course you are on is not working. We also have to get to the truth about the relationship between Iraq and the broader war on terror.

On September 6, on the floor of the Senate, I warned that the President's focus on Iraq has distracted us from the larger war on terror. I said the President took a detour from the war on terror and invested the majority of our resources into Iraq--seemingly forever.

That weakens our ability to fight the broader war on terror and it leaves us vulnerable. We have not made the investments here at home to protect ourselves, and we have not finished our work against al-Qaida. Bin Laden is still on the loose. Afghanistan is a mess, and United States troops are imperiled.

Today, 3 weeks after I gave that speech on the Senate floor, we learned that the National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the war in Iraq helped to fuel the recruitment of new terrorists. The administration's failure to plan and face the truth in Iraq demands congressional hearings so we can chart a better course.

We also need to examine how the Bush administration bungled Iraqi reconstruction. On September 17, the Washington Post ran a story titled ``Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq.'' That article describes how Americans were selected to work in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority. That article said:

Applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

It goes on to say:

The decision to send the loyal and the willing, instead of the best and the brightest, is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 and a half year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration's gravest errors.

Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered good will among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.

They had a political loyalty test instead of a competence test, and that may be responsible for how long we have had to stay in Iraq and the problems we now face. Congress--us--we need to look at that and we need to hold people accountable.

Unfortunately, this pattern and practice of political favoritism within the administration extends beyond Iraq to how the Bush administration handles Government contracts here at home. Just last week, we got new evidence that a member of the President's Cabinet has made a series of statements that highlighted the importance of politics in awarding Government contracts in his agency.

In May, I asked the Inspector General at HUD to look into Secretary Alphonso Jackson's public statements that he deliberately denied a contract to a firm that had been critical of President Bush. Now, last week, the IG sent me the results of that investigation. This report is 340 pages long, with hundreds of pages of sworn testimony from dozens of HUD officials. This report includes sworn statements from HUD personnel, stating that Secretary Jackson told his staff to monitor the political affiliation of contract competitors and consider those affiliations in the awarding of contracts.

Secretary Jackson said that a HUD contractor had strong political affiliations that were not supportive of the President, and the Secretary said he did not want the contractor to receive any additional HUD contracts. As a result, the contractor's award was subjected to an unusual extent of delay and review.

So we have a Cabinet Secretary telling his staff to issue contracts based on politics, not based on who can do the best job for us, the American taxpayers. It is true that, in looking at the record, the Justice Department concluded:

that no apparent criminal violation could be discerned based on evidence to date.

But the Justice Department came to that conclusion only because HUD staff actually ignored the Secretary's inappropriate instructions.

When you combine what has been going on at HUD with what happened at the CPA in Iraq and reports about similar issues at the Department of the Interior, it is clear that this Congress--all of us--needs to demand accountability.

That is why, last week, I wrote to White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and urged him to take immediate steps to ensure that political favoritism and discrimination do not play a role in Federal contracts.

I recognize we cannot rely on the White House Chief of Staff to clean up the Bush administration, which brings me to my final point this morning.

We need real oversight. In this Congress, there has been very little oversight of this administration. The President has basically had free reign because of this Republican-controlled Congress, and we have failed to do the job in asking tough questions and demanding answers.

Norman Ornstein is an expert on Congress at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, and he said this Congress is the worst he has seen in terms of oversight.

He told the Philadelphia Inquirer:

These people have long thought of themselves as foot soldiers in the President's army, and their view is that oversight is something to avoid, lest they find something that might embarrass the administration. I don't see a single sign that this attitude will substantially change.

That was congressional expert Norman Ornstein on the Republican failure to oversee the Bush administration.

Democrats are trying to provide the oversight that Republicans so far have been unwilling to provide. On Monday, in fact, the Democratic Policy Committee held a hearing on preparations for the war in Iraq. Retired military leaders at that hearing told us that the Bush administration failed to plan for the war and that the administration misled the American people.

We had to hold those hearings under a policy committee banner because Republicans would not hold real committee oversight hearings. We have to have oversight here, no matter what the administration is, Republican or Democratic, so that we as Members of this body who represent people across the country can learn the facts and we can fix things that are not going well. That is our job. If we never have real hearings, if we never demand real accountability, well, we will never get good results.

I believe America can do a lot better. I believe we can be more secure. I believe our troops can be safer. But it has to start with the truth, not rosy predictions of how things will be, not declarations of will that gloss over the facts on the ground, not corruption in politics holding back progress. Simply the truth. And, so far, this Congress has been unwilling to let our citizens learn the truth.

I think the American people deserve better, and I hope each one of us goes home and thinks about what our responsibility is to the people we represent and to the future of this country.

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