Category Archives: Industry Jobs Oil Economics

Lerner’s Emails Are Here!

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After so much obstruction, so much testimony and delay, it has finally come to light that there is something called ‘disaster recovery tapes’ which for the most part every large entity has to guard against profound document loss. The IRS was no different yet no one seemed to be forthcoming with redundant systems.

Now since the mid-terms are over and scandals continue to mount, we have our work to do to go through documents to determine the names and connections of those in the Obama administration that have been covertly destroying the country.

30,000 missing emails from IRS’ Lerner recovered

Up to 30,000 missing emails sent by former Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner have been recovered by the IRS inspector general, five months after they were deemed lost forever.

The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) informed congressional staffers from several committees on Friday that the emails were found among hundreds of “disaster recovery tapes” that were used to back up the IRS email system.

“They just said it took them several weeks and some forensic effort to get these emails off these tapes,” a congressional aide told the Washington Examiner.

Committees in the House and Senate are seeking the emails, which they believe could show Lerner was working in concert with Obama administration officials to target conservative and Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status before the 2012 presidential election.

The missing emails extend from 2009 to 2011, a period when Lerner headed the IRS’s exempt-organizations division. The emails were lost when Lerner’s computer crashed, IRS officials said earlier this year.

In June, IRS Administrator John Koskinen told Congress the emails were probably lost for good because the disaster recovery tape holds onto the data for only six months. He said even if the IRS had sought the emails within the six-month period, it would have been a complicated and difficult process to produce them from the tapes.

The IRS also lost the emails of several other employees who worked under Lerner during that period.

Lerner, who retired from the IRS, has refused to be questioned by Congress.

She provided a statement at a March hearing, but then clammed up, following the advice of her lawyer to avoid self-incrimination.

The House, led by Republicans, voted in May to hold Lerner in contempt of Congress.

Congressional aides said officials from the inspector general’s office said it could take weeks to get the recovered emails off the tape before sending them to lawmakers in Capitol Hill.

In all, investigators from the inspector general’s office combed through 744 disaster recovery tapes. They are not finished looking.

There are 250 million emails ion the tapes that will be reviewed. Officials said it is likely they will find missing emails from other IRS officials who worked under Lerner and who said they suffered computer crashes.

Investigators said the emails could include some overlapping information because it is not clear how many of them are duplicates or were already produced by Lerner to the congressional committees.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee he chairs will be one of the committees that will examine the emails.

“Though it is unclear whether TIGTA has found all of the missing Lois Lerner e-mails, there may be significant information in this discovery,” Issa told the Examiner. “The Oversight Committee will be looking for information about her mindset and who she was communicating with outside the IRS during a critical period of time when the IRS was targeting conservative groups. This discovery also underscores the lack of cooperation Congress has received from the IRS. The agency first failed to disclose the loss to Congress and then tried to declare Lerner’s e-mails gone and lost forever. Once again it appears the IRS hasn’t been straight with Congress and the American people.”

 

Boehner Files Lawsuit Against Obama Today

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After the immigration speech Barack Obama delivered on November 20, John Boehner today filed the House lawsuit against Treasury and Health and Human Services.

The full 38 page complaint is listed here.

The points of the lawsuit are:

THE BASICS OF THE HOUSE LITIGATION

  • The president’s unilateral actions on the health care law’s employer mandate in 2013 and 2014 will likely be the focus of the litigation brought by the House.  There are many examples of executive overreach by the president, but his actions on the health care law are arguably the ones that give the House the best chance of success in the courts.
  • The litigation will focus solely on the president’s unilateral changes to the health care law because that’s how the suit must be structured in order to maximize the House’s chances of being granted standing by the court.  Basing the litigation on a laundry list of grievances against the president would make standing more difficult.
  • In the case of the health care law’s employer mandate, the president twice changed the law without going through Congress, effectively creating his own law by literally waiving the mandate and the penalties for failing to comply with it.  He legislated without the Legislative Branch.  The Constitution doesn’t give presidents the power to do that.  No president should have such authority.  That’s what the House litigation will argue.

Republicans call Obama executive actions ‘damaging to presidency,’ file lawsuit over Obamacare

By Paul Kane

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) launched a double-barreled response to President Obama’s recent executive actions on Friday, announcing a House lawsuit over unilateral changes to Obamacare and vowing to counter Obama’s move to protect millions of illegal immigrants from deportation with additional legislative action.

He warned that the executive action on immigration was “damaging the presidency” and that Congress will not let it stand without a fight.

“Time after time, the president has chosen to ignore the will of the American people and rewrite federal law on his own without a vote of Congress. That’s not the way our system of government was designed to work,” Boehner said.

The lawsuit, filed Friday against the Health and Human Services (HHS) and Treasury secretaries, challenges two of Obama’s executive actions: that his administration “unlawfully waived the employer mandate” and illegally transferred funds to insurance companies.

Obama’s executive actions twice delaying the employer mandate “directly contradict the clear and plain language of the health care law,” Boehner said in a statement.

Boehner also said that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the administration will pay $3 billion to insurance companies this fiscal year, and will make payments of $175 billion over the next 10 years under an HHS-based cost-sharing program, even though Congress has never appropriated funds for the program.

Boehner declined to spell out how Republicans would counter the immigration executive actions, which extend protections to roughly 4 million undocumented parents of legal U.S. citizens and young immigrants brought here illegally when they were children.

“We’re working with our members and looking at the options available to us, but I will say to you the House will, in fact, act,” Boehner told reporters Friday morning, in the first televised Republican rebuttal to Obama’s prime-time address Thursday night.

He dodged a question about the assertion by one of his own leadership team members, House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), that there was little Congress could do to restrict funding for the new program. Rogers and his staff said Thursday that funding for the implementation of the new policy does not come from the annual spending bills approved by Congress but instead comes from border fees, placing it outside the reach of congressional Republicans.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the leading opponent of the president’s action, told reporters Thursday that he would support attaching a policy rider onto the government funding bills that simply forbid the federal workforce from implementing the new rules on immigration. Sessions is leading the effort to keep government funding to a short leash into the new year, when Republicans take over the Senate and control both chambers of Congress, making it easier to get clear majorities for his preferred line of attack.

Such a move would require a 60-vote super-majority in the Senate, and it would almost certainly draw a veto from Obama, which, critics say, would lead to a possible shutdown of some federal agencies.

Boehner deflected those questions and instead blamed Obama for issuing too many executive orders to modify the controversial new health law that took effect over the last year, which left his rank-and-file Republicans unwilling to trust the president and refusing to even consider a broad rewrite of immigration laws.

“He created an environment where the members could not trust him, and trying to find a way to work together was virtually impossible, and I had warned the president over and over that his actions were making it impossible for me to do what he wanted me to do,” the speaker said, explaining his inability to even consider smaller pieces of the 2013 Senate-approved legislation that revamped border and immigration laws.

“We have a broken immigration system, and the American people expect us to work together to fix it, and we ought to do it through the democratic process,” he said.

In his prime-time speech from the East Room of the White House, Obama blamed Republicans for forcing his hand by refusing to approve immigration reform and told them, “Pass a bill.”

Conservatives inside and outside Congress want to use the budget process as a battleground to wage war against Obama and his immigration program. The proposed gambit raises the specter of another government shutdown, akin to the one that damaged Republicans last year.

In a floor speech Thursday, soon-to-be Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) suggested that his preference would be for Republicans to avoid becoming mired in a fiscal clash during the lame-duck session, shortly before the GOP takes control of the Senate in January.

Many conservative lawmakers are shrugging off those pleas, however. Furious with the president, they are planning a series of immediate and hard-line actions that could have sweeping consequences. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said Wednesday that Obama’s executive action should be met with a refusal to vote on any more of his nominees, and on Thursday, he compared the action with the ancient Catiline conspiracy, a plot to overthrow the Roman Republic.

Sessions (R-Ala.), likely the next chairman of the budget committee, has advocated for a series of stopgap spending bills with the intent of pressuring the president to relent. Sessions is the featured speaker at a Heritage Foundation event Friday morning in response to Obama’s moves.

And Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) — one of the loudest voices on the right — has hinted at bringing up impeachment measures. “We have constitutional authority to do a string of things. [Impeachment] would be the very last option, but I would not rule it out,” King said Thursday on CNN.

Robert A. Costa contributed to this report.

 

Why Keystone XL Failed

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The Keystone XL Pipeline vote passed by the House of Representatives failed in the Senate.

S.2280
Latest Title: A bill to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Sponsor: Sen Hoeven, John [ND] (introduced 5/1/2014)      Cosponsors (55)
Related Bills: H.R.5682, S.2314, S.2554
Latest Major Action: 11/18/2014 Failed of passage/not agreed to in Senate. Status: Under the order of 11/12/14, not having achieved 60 votes in the affirmative, failed of passage in Senate by Yea-Nay Vote. 59 – 41. Record Vote Number: 280.

The full text of the bill is here. To find out which Democratic Senators voted no, click here.

We all want the Keystone XL pipeline for the sake of jobs even though they may be temporary and some interesting people will make lots of money, however it should also be noted that this oil will not be used domestically. It is also important to use the Keystone legislation to see the behind the curtains machinations and money that drives law from many lobby groups, corporations and special interest.

Senate Keystone “Yea” Votes Took In Six Times More Oil & Gas Money Than Opponents

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Senate Democrats successfully blocked a bill Tuesday that would have approved construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The controversial measure fell one vote shy of overcoming a filibuster, with 59 senators supporting it and 41 opposing. The vote followed the bill’s approval in the House by a much wider margin, with 252 lawmakers voting to advance the pipeline.

The vote largely fell along party lines. All Senate Republicans supported construction of the pipeline but they were joined by 14 Democrats, including three of the four Democrat incumbents who lost their re-election bids earlier this month. For Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), the bill’s main sponsor, the vote was considered an important test of her effectiveness in advance of a Dec. 6 runoff that will determine whether she keeps her seat. In the House, 31 Democrats crossed the aisle to side with the Republican majority.

SVB

Construction of the pipeline has been decried by environmental groups and championed by heavyweights in the oil and gas industry. Both of these interests are no strangers to money in politics. The oil and gas industry has long been a generous donor to federal candidates and committees — and increased its donations in 2014 over 2010. In the environmental community, where the League of Conservation Voters has long been the lead player on this front, environmental activist Tom Steyer is 2014′s top overall donor.

Oil and Gas

The 59 senators who voted for the pipeline have received, on average, significantly more money from the oil and gas industry than those who voted against construction. Over the course of their careers, those 59 took in over $33 million in campaign donations from the industry, compared to the approximately $4.2 million received by the 41 who successfully blocked the bill’s approval. On average, those voting for Keystone have received $572,000 from oil and gas interests, compared with just $103,900 for those voting against it.

TAOG

Among the Democrats, the 39 “nay” votes received $4.2 million from oil and gas, while the 14 who voted with the Republicans received just under $4 million. On average, those voting no received about $108,000, while the Democratic supporters — who disproportionately represent states with strong oil and gas industry presence – received more than twice as much, about $284,000.

AAOG

But the amount taken in by Democratic Keystone supporters pales in comparison to that received by Republicans, who received $662,000, on average, from oil and gas interests. The 11 Republicans who will be joining the Senate in January have taken in $370,000 on average (likely an artificially small amount since most of these Republicans have had much shorter time periods in which to accrue this money).

In the House, the picture is even more stark. Keystone supporters have garnered $56.2 million from the oil and gas industry over the course of their careers, compared to the $5.2 million that opponents have brought in. On average, a “yea” vote took in around $223,000 over the course of his or her career, while a “nay” vote took in a paltry $32,200. For just the 31 Democrats voting in favor, the average oil and gas tally was $115,349 — slightly less than the Republicans were able to bring in, but much more than the Keystone opponents.

Environment

The environmental community has historically given much less to federal candidates than oil and gas interests have. One reason the tally is lower: We have no way of knowing which donors consider themselves environmentalists. We classify contributions according to donors’ employers, and far more donors work for oil and gas companies than work for environmental groups.

(Spending by the Tom Steyer-funded NextGen Climate Action super PAC, as well as that of other super PACs, is not reflected in these totals, which include only contributions directly to candidates.)

AAE

Environmental money largely followed the same pattern that oil and gas money took, but in reverse — Senate Republicans received far less than Senate Democrats (on average just under $11,000 compared to an average of $141,000 for Democrats). Among Democrats, those who voted to build the pipeline received less than those who voted not to: just over $98,000 on average, compared to the $183,000 that Democrats who wanted to deep-six the project raised.

TAE (1)

Similarly, in the House Republicans received far less than Democrats overall, but Keystone-supporting Democrats took in less from environmental groups and their employees than Keystone opponents. Keystone opponents received $6.2 million over the course of their careers, while Keystone proponents were only able to bring in $1.1 million, despite there being many more of them. On average, Keystone’s GOP supporters took in $2,932 from environmental interests while its Democratic cheerleaders brought in $14,196. Keystone opponents, all of them Democrats, took in $38,642 — more than twice as much as their nay-voting Democratic counterparts.

What does it mean?

It probably comes as no surprise that opponents of the pipeline — all Democrats — were more likely to be supported by environmental interests and that proponents were more likely to take in large sums from the oil and gas industry. Those Democrats who crossed party lines are a more interesting story: Although they more closely resemble their Democratic colleagues, they are far less likely to have received significant sums from environmental donors, but have received more from the oil and gas industry than those who voted against Keystone.

They are also less likely to be returning. Of the 14 Senate Democrats who sided with Republicans, four will be departing and many pollsters are speculating that Landrieu will not win her runoff. If she does not return, 65 percent of the Keystone-supporting Democrats will be members of the 114th Congress. Among the 39 Keystone opponents, however, five will not be returning — a yield of 87%. All of those five except for Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) will be replaced by Republicans.

Table

Though the 114th Congress will have more GOP senators, they will have, on average, received less from the oil and gas industry over the course of their careers than the Republicans currently in the Senate, but the difference is slight and probably explained by the incoming lawmakers having had shorter congressional careers than the senators they are replacing.  However, incoming Democratic senators will have received much less, on average, than the current Democratic class: A Democrat in the 114th Congress will have received $100,000 from the oil and gas industry, while a Democrat in the current Congress has received more $155,000.  It looks, therefore, like upcoming Congress’ Senate Democrats will not only be fewer in number, but will have a weaker connection to the oil and gas industry.

For the full data set showing how each member of the Senate voted and how much they received from oil and gas or environment, click here.

All numbers in this story reflect career (back to 1989 at the earliest) totals to members of Congress and are based on data collected from the Federal Election Commission on 11/17/2014. Only itemized contributions of greater than $200 are included in the industry totals.

 

U.S. Constant State of Emergency

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From the White House on National Security:

Progress

Guiding Principles

The President’s highest priority is to keep the American people safe. He is committed to ensuring the United States is true to our values and ideals while also protecting the American people. The President is committed to securing the homeland against 21st century threats by preventing terrorist attacks and other threats against our homeland, preparing and planning for emergencies, and investing in strong response and recovery capabilities. We will help ensure that the Federal Government works with states and local governments, and the private sector as close partners in a national approach to prevention, mitigation, and response.

The National Security Strategy, released May 27, 2010, lays out a strategic approach for advancing American interests, including the security of the American people, a growing U.S. economy, support for our values, and an international order that can address 21st century challenges.

But the last time a National Security strategy was addressed in total was 2010.

Meanwhile, see below.

The United States is in a state of emergency – 30 of them, in fact

By Christopher Ingraham

The United States has been in an uninterrupted state of national emergency since 1979. Here in 2014, we’re not dealing with just one emergency – there are currently 30 of them in effect.

That’s according to data on presidential declarations of emergency compiled by Gregory Korte of USA Today. “Those emergencies, declared by the president by proclamation or executive order, give the president extraordinary powers — to seize property, call up the National Guard and hire and fire military officers at will,” Korte writes.

President Obama has declared nine so far, eight of which are currently in effect — they primarily deal with preventing business with people or organizations involved in global conflicts or the drug trade. Obama has also renewed many of his predecessors’ orders — just last week he renewed our ongoing state of emergency with respect to Iran for its 36th straight year.

Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush took a light touch on declarations of emergency – they invoked only a handful, none of which remain in effect. But Bill Clinton proclaimed 16 emergencies and George W. Bush declared 14, 13 of which are still in effect today.

Blocking business transactions with various interests may not seem like national emergency material. But the language underlying these declarations is often nearly apocalyptic. Obama’s recent continuation of a Bush-era emergency relating to “the property of certain persons contributing to the conflict” in the Democratic Republic of the Congo states that “this situation continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the foreign policy of the United States.”

The Obama administration also maintains that “the actions and policies of certain members of the Government of Belarus and other persons continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

You may wonder why the president needs to declare a state of emergency to deal with what appears to be fairly routine instances of corruption in far-flung corners of the world. Korte notes that Congress provides little oversight on emergency declarations, even through it’s mandated to do so by law. In an era when tussles over executive power are a near-daily occurrence, this is a strange incongruity.

“What the National Emergencies Act does is like a toggle switch, and when the president flips it, he gets new powers. It’s like a magic wand. and there are very few constraints about how he turns it on,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton professor interviewed by Korte.

In the absence of a crisis, there’s little compelling reason for a government to adopt a permanent crisis stance. The danger is that a public desensitized to claims to extraordinary circumstances could be more likely to allow excesses of authority performed in the name of those circumstances.

As Korte writes, “A post-9/11 state of national emergency declared by President George W. Bush — and renewed six times by President Obama — forms the legal basis for much of the war on terror” — a war which has so far seen a rise in terrorism around the globe.

Hey Obama, the VA is Still Broken

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Congress, do your job on VA scandal

The Obama administration wants to be clear: they’re very, very angry over the dysfunctional state of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), where reports of falsified wait lists and delayed care at VA medical centers are growing into a national scandal for the executive branch.

Specifically, administration officials say they’re “mad as hell.” That’s how VA Secretary Eric Shinseki described his response to the scandal in testimony to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee last week.

 On Sunday, the White House chief of staff told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that President Obama, not to be outdone, is “madder than hell” about the VA’s failures.

Of course, what’s lost in this contrived and cynical display of outrage from the president and his VA secretary is the fact that they’re the ones responsible for the agency’s performance. If the VA isn’t working, they should be working to fix it—not telling us how angry it makes them, like a pair of passive observers to the scene.

If anyone should be “madder than hell” right now, it’s the veterans and their families who are suffering from VA’s poor service and performance.

We also now know that these problems were raised with the administration during the presidential transition in 2008.  The president and Sec. Shinseki knew about the problems then – red tape, wait times, uneven care – and yet did not fix the problems.  Instead, together they made the problem worse; exploding the VA budget without demanding commensurate improvements in performance.

We’re beyond the point when expressing outrage, or long drawn-out investigations, at VA can be considered a constructive response. We know what the problems are; it’s time for action.

This week, members of Congress will have an opportunity to set the department on the right course, by voting for the VA Management Accountability Act of 2014 (H.R. 4031). They should waste no time in passing this necessary reform.

The bill’s aim is simple — to restore accountability to a department where the leadership and bureaucracy have come to show an alarming indifference to their mission of timely and quality service to veterans. By empowering the VA secretary to fire and replace those executives who fail to perform, the VA Management Accountability Act is an important step toward righting the ship. Right now it’s nearly impossible to fire bad managers at VA, and therefore nearly impossible to hold leaders accountable.

It’s difficult to overstate the seriousness of the problems at VA.

In recent weeks, we’ve learned that officials at various VA medical facilities around the nation have been falsifying patient wait lists, essentially “cooking the books” to make it appear that veterans are receiving timely care. In reality, patients were waiting months for appointments—and in many cases, dying while waiting on “secret lists.”

In Phoenix, where the scandal broke, the retired VA doctor who blew the whistle on the fraud estimates perhaps 40 veterans died while waiting for care on the secret wait list. An investigation is in progress, and criminal charges for VA officials involved in the alleged fraud are a real possibility. Regardless of criminal charges and investigations—both of which should happen—we know this: the system is infected and needs systemic reform.

It’s against this backdrop that the need for stronger accountability controls at VA has become clear. While the department has suffered a string of scandals and performance failures, the current leadership has taken no steps to shake up the leadership team and force change. (The ritual sacrifice on May 16 of Dr. Robert Petzel, VA undersecretary for health care, was a sham—Petzel had already announced he was planning to retire in a few months.)

Greater accountability will serve as a spur to improved performance at VA. The department suffers from a “widespread and systemic lack of accountability,” Rep. Jeff Miller, said when he introduced H.R. 4031 in February. But he also noted that the department has many able and professional employees, who would benefit from stronger accountability controls to weed out poor performers.

“While the vast majority of VA’s more than 300,000 employees and executives are dedicated and hard-working,” Miller said, “the department’s well-documented reluctance to ensure its leaders are held accountable for mistakes is tarnishing the reputation of the organization and may actually be encouraging more veteran suffering instead of preventing it.”

The bill now has significant bipartisan support in the House of Representatives, with 118 members signed on as co-sponsors. That’s a good start, and other members of Congress should now join in supporting the bill’s passage. It’s time.

If anyone deserves to be “madder than hell” right now, it’s the veterans and their families who are suffering from VA’s poor service and performance. In the absence of leadership from the executive branch, it’s put up or shut up time for Congress. It’s time to do right by our veterans by restoring accountability to VA.

Pete Hegseth is a Fox News contributor. He is the CEO of Concerned Veterans for America and the former executive director of Vets for Freedom. He is an infantry officer in the Army National Guard and has served tours in Afghanistan and Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay. Learn more at: www.concernedveteransforamerica.org.

WASHINGTON — More than 600,000 veterans — 10% of all the Veterans Affairs patients — continue to wait a month or more for appointments at VA hospitals and clinics, according to data obtained by USA TODAY.

The VA has made some progress in dealing with the backlog of cases that forced former secretary Eric Shinseki to retire early this year. For instance, the VA substantially cut the overall number of worst-case scenarios for veterans — those who had waited more than four months for an appointment. That figure dropped from 120,000 in May to 23,000 in October. Much of that improvement occurred because patients received care from private providers.

Since May, the VA has been reduced the number of veterans waiting longest for care — its top priority — by 57%, according to James Hutton, a VA spokesman. From June to September, the VA completed 19 million appointments, an increase of 1.2 million compared with the same time last year.

“VA’s goal continues to be to provide timely, high-quality healthcare for veterans,” Hutton said in a statement. “Veterans and VA employees nationwide understand the need for reform, and VA is committed to putting these reforms into place. And while we have significantly improved capacity and access to care, we have not yet achieved our intended state — systemic and timely access across the board. It will be an ongoing and significant effort to reach our goals.”

To recruit more health care providers, VA Secretary Robert McDonald has proposed pay hikes for VA doctors and dentists, Hutton said. McDonald announced a restructuring of the VA on Nov. 10.

The new data show that dozens of hospitals and clinics leave a quarter or more of all their patients waiting 30 days or more for an appointment.

• Some facilities still have extremely long wait times for basic care, including 64 that have average wait times over 60 days for new patients seeking primary care. They include major facilities, such as hospitals in Baltimore; Jacksonville, Fla.; Temple, Texas, and Atlanta. All have at least 30,000 pending appointments.?

In Jacksonville, the average new patient is left waiting 77 days, a fact that previously obscured in the VA’s data because it was averaged into the much-better performance of the nearby Gainesville hospital. Jacksonville only sees two-thirds of its patients within 30 days, the worst rate of any major facility in the VA system.

The VA is hiring more staff to deal with those delays, Hutton said.

• Ten facilities reported waits of more than three months for a new patient to see a specialist. At the top of the list: the Westmoreland, Pa., clinic, where patients are waiting 174 days — nearly six months — for a specialty appointment.

Thirty-three facilities have kept new patients seeking a mental-health appointments waiting for at least two months. Among those are large hospitals in Martinsburg, W.Va., Amarillo, Texas, and Tuskegee, Ala. And 10 clinics and hospitals kept established patients waiting at least three weeks longer than the patients wanted for mental health appointments.

• Some small locations have big waiting times, too. The Wagner, S.D., clinic near the Nebraska state line, has only 155 total appointments of any type pending — and its new patient wait time is 153 days.

The data looks at nearly 6 million appointments until Oct. 1 and scheduled through Veterans Health Administration.

Members of Congress continue to express dissatisfaction with the delays in disciplining VA employees involved in covering up the long wait times.

“The events of the last year have proven that far too many senior VA leaders have lied, manipulated data, or simply failed to do the job for which they were hired,” said Rep. Jeff Miller, a Florida Republican and chairman of House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, during a hearing Thursday. “It is also clear that VA’s attempt to instill accountability for these leaders has been both nearly non-existent and rife with self-inflicted roadblocks to real reform.”