The two senators arrived together for a Senate vote. | AP Photos Sanders, McCain strike VA deal

Sens. Bernie Sanders and John McCain have struck a deal on legislation to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs to expand veterans’ access to health care and make it easier to fire VA officials for misconduct.

The compromise measure, announced Thursday on the Senate floor, includes pieces of three VA bills that have been introduced in the Senate.


The legislation would allow veterans to see private doctors outside the VA system if they experience long wait times or live more than 40 miles from a VA facility. And it incorporates provisions from legislation introduced in the Senate by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) making it easier to fire VA officials.

( Earlier on POLITICO: Senators seek bipartisan VA deal)

Similar legislation overwhelmingly passed the House last month and is included in the Sanders-McCain deal with the addition of an appellate process.

The bill also includes the construction of 26 new VA medical facilities in 18 states and uses $500 million in unobligated VA funds to hire additional VA doctors and nurses.

The agreement struck between Sanders, an independent from Vermont who chairs the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and McCain, a Republican from Arizona, could salvage VA reform in the Senate. The two senators began negotiations after it looked as though VA reform might become another victim of the chamber’s gridlock with the competing Democratic and Republican bills — which would have been an embarrassing failure for both parties amid the national attention focused on the VA’s troubles.

( Also on POLITICO: McCain: Justice Department should investigate VA)

Sanders said that the measure includes some provisions that both sides will object to, but the bill was an important step forward to responding to the VA wait list scandal that led to the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, a retired four-star Army general.

“I would have written a very, very different bill,” Sanders said. “Right now we have a crisis on our hands, and its imperative that we will deal with that crisis.”

Before Thursday’s agreement, Sanders had been criticizing the Republican VA bills, which he said did not address the core of the VA’s problems. Republicans, meanwhile, had called Sanders’ legislation a “Christmas tree bill” that would cost too much.

Earlier this year, Sanders’ omnibus VA bill was filibustered by Republicans, who complained that it was too expensive and that amendments would be limited.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is eager to put the bill on the floor as soon as possible, and McCain said it could come up as soon as next week.

The two senators also said they were hopeful the Senate could follow regular order and allow amendments to the bill. That’s no sure thing in the Senate, as a smooth amendment process has been next to impossible with fights over amendments repeatedly killing legislation over the past year.

Both McCain and Sanders urged senators only to offer germane amendments.

“If you want to make it better, we welcome your input,” McCain said on the floor. “But let’s not get hung up on certain other aspects of our differences that have characterized what most people would view as gridlock in this body.”

The legislation, estimated to cost a little less than $2 billion, would be paid for through emergency appropriations, Sanders said.

The provisions that would allow veterans to seek care from non-VA facilities stems from legislation McCain and other Republican senators introduced this week.

That bill had drawn criticism from Sanders, who said he was concerned that allowing veterans to receive care in non-VA facilities risked eroding the larger VA system. But he said he was satisfied with the two-year trial period included in the measure.

The senators said that the exact time period of “long wait times” still had to be determined by the VA, as they expected the agency would not stick with its 14-day goal that led to the systemic manipulation of wait times. The length of time would also be dependent on the type of care that a veteran was seeking.

Under the agreement, veterans would be able to use providers participating in Medicare or federally qualified health centers, as well as Defense Department medical facilities.

Sanders said that agreement reached Thursday still left out many of the priorities he has been advocating for, and he hoped to return to them later.

The bill would also provide in-state tuition for all veterans at public colleges and universities, GI Bill tuition benefits to the spouses of troops killed in the line of duty and increased access to health care for sexual assault victims.

In addition, the measure calls for an independent commission and task force to examine scheduling issues.

If the Sanders-McCain bill passes the Senate, it would also still have to go through the House, which last week approved its own legislation, the VA Management Accountability Act, that focused on making it easier to fire VA executives for misconduct.

McCain told reporters that it was likely the House would make changes to the Senate’s bill. “The House is certainly not going to rubber-stamp it,” he said.

At first blush, House Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) said the Senate compromise seemed “promising.”

But, he cautioned, “without seeing complete details of a bill in its final form, I can’t make any further judgments.”