National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

Mr. BENNET. I thank the Senator from Arizona for that additional time
and for his commitment and the ranking member's commitment to our
national security. I deeply appreciate it.

Amendment No. 1540

Mr. President, I would like to talk briefly about amendment 1540,
which the Senate will consider shortly. I am here with my colleague
Senator Gardner from Colorado. We are here on this bipartisan amendment
to require the Government Accounting Office to audit the way the
Veterans' Administration constructs major medical facilities and help
identify exactly where the money went on some of these projects.

The Veterans' Administration is building several major medical
facilities across the country, including one in Aurora, CO.

The project in Colorado has been grossly mismanaged leading to
excessive cost overruns. Other projects across the country have had
similar problems for years. For years, our delegation and practically
anyone who has been involved with the Aurora project--almost anybody
who has driven by the Aurora project has pushed the VA to acknowledge
that there is actually a problem and to come up with a plan to fix it.
Unfortunately, the VA has so far failed to do this, and veterans across
the Rocky Mountain region have continued to wait for this new medical
center.

We should ensure and must ensure that the mistakes on the Aurora
project never happen again, but we all concluded that with greater
accountability and transparency the right thing to do is to move
forward and complete this critical facility.

As many of us have experienced up here, imposing accountability and
transparency on an enormous Federal bureaucracy is elusive and
complicated. The GAO has the necessary expertise to identify realistic,
hard reforms and to make them stick.

We have to hold the VA accountable to our taxpayers so we can move
forward to give the Rocky Mountain region's veterans the care they
need. The VA and Congress are going to have to work together to get
this project back on track. Finding the money to do this will be
painful. It will be difficult, which is why we need to ensure that we
account for every dollar that has been spent. But failing to complete
this hospital is not an option. It would be a broken promise. Having a
half-finished hospital in Colorado would be a national disgrace, and on
behalf of our veterans, we cannot allow it to happen. It would be a
disservice--worse than a disservice--a broken promise of the worst kind
to the hundreds of thousands of veterans across the Rocky Mountain
region and throughout the United States.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I wish to express my
gratitude to my colleague from Colorado, Senator Gardner, for joining
me on this important amendment.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source