During a House Veterans' Affairs committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Keith Self (R-TX) spoke about the VA's lack of concrete results from policies.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We've heard a lot of Washington speak here today. Does
00:08anybody know what those ribbons up on the flags are? Campaign ribbons? They're
00:17battle streamers. Veterans that we are talking about, those represent the
00:23campaigns that our veterans fought in, were wounded in, died in. That's the
00:27veterans we're talking about here. I've heard a lot of Washington talk, Ms. Tan,
00:31in your written testimony, it talks about how critical it is that
00:36veterans and beneficiaries self-report changes. I agree with that, but what I've
00:41heard here is we haven't fixed the problems so that our veterans have the
00:45education and the training to know when they are supposed to do things, and you
00:50heard the chairman say that in his district some people don't have computers,
00:53so we've heard this time and time and time again from my time on this committee
00:57we have, our veterans don't know, and we've made it so complex, Mr. Arante's
01:02testimony, we've made it so complex for our veterans. Those battle streamers up
01:06there represent the veterans that we're talking about here in Washington speak.
01:13Ms. Tan, how many OIG, and two separate answers here, how many OIG
01:19recommendations do you have outstanding, and how many GAO recommendations does the
01:25department have outstanding, OIG and GAO. These are recommendations of people that
01:31are telling the department things to improve your processes. How many do you
01:34have open?
01:35Ms. Tan, sir, I don't have the total number of all of those pending.
01:39I would like to know because we have got to do better. I mean inputs are not outputs. I want to
01:48start hearing outputs about how we fix the problems. With that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.