mr. coffman. mr. coffman votes aye. >> miss shea-porter? miss shea-porter vote no, sir. >> mr.ridgell votes aye. mr. mafay? mr. mafay votes no. mr. gibson? >> no. >> mr. gibson votes no. >> mr. kilmer? >> no.eel >> mr. kilmer votes no. >> mrs. hartzler? aye. mr. castro? mr. castro votes no. dr. heck? >> aye. >> dr. heck votes aye. >> ms. duckworth? >> runnion votes aye. mr. peters. mr. peters votes no. mr. scott. mr. scott votes aye. mr. enyart. mr. enyart votes no. mr. pallazo. mr. pallazo votes aye. mr. gall ego. mr. nugent. mr. nugent votes aye. miss gabbard. miss gabbard votes no. mrs. gnome. mrs. gnome votes aye. mr. cook. mr. cook votes aye. mr. bridenstein. mr. bridenstein votes aye. dr. wentrip. dr. wentrip votes aye. mrs. with a loresky. mrs. with a loresky votes aye. mr. burn. mr. burn votes aye. mr. jones. >> has everyone voted? >> mr. chairman. i'd change my vote to an aye. >> mr. hunter needs to change his vote to an aye. >> mr. hunter votes aye. clerk report the tally. >> mr. chairman, there were 33 aye votes, 28 no votes. >> the amendment is agreed to. the next p

mr. coffman. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. coffman: i rise in strong support of h.r. 4031 because i failures t systemic of the v.a. exist far beyond the issue of appointment wait times. my subcommittee on v.a. oversight and investigations continues to uncover countless fail youfers leadership at the v.a. this lack of leadership is the driving force behind the unacceptable delays and cost overruns and major v.a. construction projects. the tremendous backlog of veterans disability claims and the horrendous patient care practices that have resulted in preventable patient deaths. the individuals with responsibility and authority in lead . are enabled to and as a result our veterans have suffered. it is time to usher in a new era of accountability at the v.a. and i urge my colleagues to support the department of veterans' affairs management accountability act of 2014. thank you and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from florida reserves. the gentleman from maine. mr. michaud: at t

mr. coffman. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. coffman: as a gulf war and iraq war veteran, i'm grateful for your leadership on the house committee on veterans affairs. h r. 4 61, the gulf war health research reform act of 2014, which i sponsored along with ranking member kirk patic right hand -- and full committee ranking member michaud restores the infence of the research advisory committee on gulf war illnesses to perform the role it has historically played. as intebbeded by congress. to improve the lives of gulf war veterans. this bill is necessary because some career v.a. staff have been trying to revive the discredited 1990's fiction that nothing special happened to gulf war veterans' health and that the problems experienced by gulf war veterans are, quote, what happens after every war, unquote. due to psychological stress factor. because there is no scientific evidence for this position, v.a. staffers have resorted to manipulating research studies and reports to try and revive this discredited theory. a major new v.a. gulf w

mr. coffman. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman is recognized. mr. coffman: i rise in strong support of h.r. 4031 because i failures t systemic of the v.a. exist far beyond the issue of appointment wait times. my subcommittee on v.a. oversight and investigations continues to uncover countless fail youfers leadership at the v.a. this lack of leadership is the driving force behind the unacceptable delays and cost overruns and major v.a. construction projects. the tremendous backlog of veterans disability claims and the horrendous patient care practices that have resulted in preventable patient deaths. the individuals with responsibility and authority in lead . are enabled to and as a result our veterans have suffered. it is time to usher in a new era of accountability at the v.a. and i urge my colleagues to support the department of veterans' affairs management accountability act of 2014. thank you and i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman's time has expired. the gentleman from florida reserves. the gentleman from maine. mr. michaud: at t

mr. coffman. all those in favor will say aye. those opposed, no. have it and the amendment is not agreed to. are there other amendments? mr. garamendi has an amendment at the desk. with the clerk please distribute the amendment? without objection the reading of the amendment will be dispensed with and the chair now recognizes, and from california for the purpose of offering and explaining his amendment. >> thank you mr. chairman. we had a long discussion on the mocks facility. this is a solution to the discussion we had. this amendment would require the department of energy to immediately solicit from appropriate contractors and qualified contractors the solutions to the problem. there are five different options presented by the department of energy. any qualified contractor that can solve this problem would be solicited or given the opportunity to put in it did as to how to do and what it will cost to be done and then we could make a decision on moving forward. among those options is the recurrent program the current mocks facility so mr. wilson yo

mr. coffman, that's an important question. the actual entry of the data was primarily done by the department of defense. you heard mention that there was one person injured by va and that was to test the system. i want to explain the registry 40 minute if i could. the registry is a seat at the department of defense, and so it is set up to take information more directly from the department of defense for servicemembers who do receive and eye injury. the va set up the architecture for the registry and over 50% of it was used by the department of defense in order to enter their servicemembers data into it. va has to go through a two-step process to enter the data into the registry. it's typical with cancer registries and all kinds of registries of that sort that information is harvested from a particular medical record, place in a repository and then entered into the registry. va has contract that you may have heard is currently up for bid, that we, the bid closes june 9. for the completion of the data entry into the registry, fi

mr. coffman: thank you, madam chairman. i rise to offer an amendment to the justice appropriation that would plus up the account for salaries and expenses by $1 million for the united states attorneys office and make an offsetting decrease in the amount appropriated for general administration. the first reason i offer this amendment is to acknowledge that over the past couple of years the united states attorneys office has devoted substantial resources in the successful prosecution of numerous individuals for the fraudulent use of service disabled veteran-owned small business preference program. my subcommittee worked diligently to bring attention to this type of fraud to the v.a. office of the inspector general, and to get his commitment to pursue these cases. a recent case involved the joint v.a., o.i.g., investigation of a sham company set up as a pass-through to secure almost $13.5 million in set aside contracts that rightfully should have gone to a business owned by a qualified service disabled veteran. victimizing vet

mr. coffman, and i am a co-sponsor on that. for many of the veterans of the gulf war who suffer from gulf war illness, it has been a long, hard-fought battle, just to have this government recognize that their illness and serious physical conditions are caused by toxic exposures. congress first created the research advisory committee on gulf war veterans' illnesses because the research being done at the time was considered inadequate. partially due to a mistaken belief that it was a psychological condition. through the research, we now know that gulf war illness is a about a dill tating physical condition, not something that's all in your head, as many veterans were initially told. mr. speaker, h.r. 4261 will ensure that the gulf war illness research advisory committee conducts and reviews objectsive research to help our veterans who are suffering from gulf war illnesses. this research is essential to finding treatments that improve veterans' health and quality of life. it is also important that causes of these illnesses be iden

. >> congress member coffman, some of the republicans who were mr. shinseki's shrillest critics were among those in department financing. i know you were first to call for his ouster. you voted against the bill to help the backlog. respond to the criticism in the times. >> that was an omnibus bill. there has been funding. there was dramatic increases in the v.a. that is not the issue. the fundamental issue is the transparency and integrity. the fact is the big problem right now is the fact that they were covering up the wait times for financial gain. so, we need to know the difficulty is not having transparency, you don't know what appropriations are necessary to make the v.a. run when there is not integrity and mismanagement in the organization. it needs a completely cleaning from top to bottom. the culture needs to change. i think the first step is certainly the firing of general shinseki. i want to thank him as a combat veteran with service in the army and marine corps. i want to thank him for his service. it did not translate in the v.a. it has a

mr. minney, you have five minutes for your remarks. >> chairman coffman, ranking member kirkpatrick and othermembers of the house on the committee on oversight and investigation, thank you for allowing the veterans association and its members to appear before you today. the blinded veterans association is here to express our views regarding the specific issues. the issue i'm going to discuss is hr 1284 the beneficiary travel. as a director of the government relations i've already spent more hours and days with members of the house committee on veterans affairs regarding this bill. for the veterans that are currently ineligible which are not beneficiary travel, title 38 section 111 does not cover the cost of travel for those not connected to veterans to one of the 13 blind rehab centers. or to any of the 28th spinal cord injury locations. if the law continues to stay as right hand, the veteran must bear the financial hardship of purchasing their own mode of travel to one of these rehab centers. the costs will certainly continue to discourage the veteran from traveling to a blind rehab center o