bipartisan

The entire Colorado delegation is working together to bring the Aurora VA hospital construction mess to Washington’s attention in order to find a financial fix.

It’s a nice change, isn’t it, working together? We probably won’t even mock it.

The first letter from U.S. Sens. Cory Gardner and Michael Bennet asked the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee to organize the visit and site hearing. The senators said leading lawmakers needed to view first-hand how the Denver Replacement Facility construction has been plagued by management and financial issues that has run up a $400 million tab.

A second letter was issued last week with signatures from the entire delegation in the House and Senate, urging lawmakers to hold the hearing. Since the VA and Obama administration appear to have no intention of asking Congress for money to complete the project, it would be up to lawmakers to issue an edict that the facility be finalized along with the necessary nudge of funding.

We hope the Committee examines the issues at the Denver Replacement Facility to develop a fuller understanding of the project’s ongoing challenges and to help us identify a long-term solution to complete the work. Our delegation continues to work in a collaborative and bi-cameral manner on this issue and is unified behind the goal of finding a way forward that is acceptable to taxpayers and that provides the 700,000 veterans in the Rocky Mountain Region the world-class facility they deserve.

We hope so too. It’s very rare these days to see Republicans and Democrats on the same political page.

By the way, we took the liberty of checking the VA committee’s hearing schedule, it’s wide open.