This week, I pressed the Veterans Administration about a long standing problem with an important new clinic in Wilmington that has resulted in more delays for our Veterans needing care. Both Fox Wilmington and WECT reported on the ongoing water problem at the Wilmington VA clinic that has caused VA to postpone major services, like dental, urology, and GI, indefinitely. I want to let you know that Senator Tillis and I are both intervening to make sure VA makes any fixes to clinic quickly and ensures that any veterans who need medical in the meantime receive ready access to non-VA care in the community. Veterans should not have to drive long distances to another VA clinic if it can be taken care of locally. As always, if you need help with VA or would like to share any concerns, please do not hesitate to call or email my office.
Fox Wilmington: Burr and Tillis investigates Wilmington VA clinic’s water woes
The Senate focused on the Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act, also known as the NDAA, this week. The NDAA funds our country’s military and, despite what Senate Democrats have said, is an important piece of legislation that is needed to support our troopsas well as our bases all over North Carolina.
The recent cyber breach at the Office of Personnel Management was a serious attack on our government and we cannot continue to have citizens’ personal information needlessly exposed to foreign adversaries and criminals.As a reminder, I’ve sponsored the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act which would help our companies and government share information about these attacks with each other. In an overwhelmingly bipartisan Committee vote of 14-1, the Intel Committee recognized the extreme threat posed by our adversaries who, in addition to the OPM breach, have stolen hundreds of millions of Americans’ personal information in the last year alone, swiped intellectual property, and conducted attacks on our agencies.
Not only did my cybersecurity bill propose a solution to help address these threats, it did so in a way that works to ensure the personal privacy of all Americans. We can no longer simply watch Americans’ personal information continue to be compromised. Unfortunately, a few in the Senate object to this protective measure, allowing foreign adversaries and international criminals to continue to steal Americans’ personal information and intrude on their privacy.
The American people and their data deserve protection from hackers — perhaps when Senators have their own information stolen, they’ll react differently.
USA Today had a piece on Tuesday, highlighting how my bill “would help thwart hackers.” You can read it here.
On Wednesday, I joined Senator Scott and 21 other Senators in a letter to the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) expressing concern over the security of Americans’ financial information that the CFPB is collecting – information like when you might overdraft from your bank account or information on the cars you own.
From the letter: “While [the IRS and OPM] investigations remain ongoing, we believe that now is a critical time to examine the measures other government agencies take to secure personal data they collect on Americans. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, the CFPB has begun accumulating loan-level data ‘covering approximately 80% of the credit card marketplace’—hundreds of millions of credit card accounts…We are gravely concerned by the CFPB’s inability to confirm that the massive amount of data it collects and stores could not be reverse-engineered and traced back to one of our constituents… Our constituents have an absolute right to the security of their personal information.” Read the letter in full here.
Did you see WBTV’s story on the Social Security Administration paying out millions to people who hadalready passed away? This type of waste of taxpayer’s hard earned money is intolerable. I will be asking serious questions about how this happened and I will keep asking hard questions of our agencies. Read the story here.
Finally, have you ever run into a friend wearing the same outfit? Senator Tillis and I did this week! Please visit his Facebook page and let him know that I clearly wore it better.
Sincerely,
Richard Burr
