In the News

It started as a $600 million project to create a VA hospital in Aurora, but now it has turned into a financial mess for Colorado. After years of delays, the VA is now asking for more money and more time. The final bill could total nearly $1.3 billion. Senator Cory Gardner and Representative Mike Coffman have introduced identical bills to get the ball rolling for the hospital. They have asked for additional funding to complete the hospital, but more notably, they’re coming down hard on the VA. T... Read more

Congressman Mike Coffman has been studying Spanish for less than two years, but he launches into it with the seeming comfort and ability of a veteran speaker. The Colorado Republican, who won re-election in 2014 in what was considered the most competitive House race in the country, drew some skepticism when he began taking Spanish and going to Latino neighborhoods and adopting a more moderate view of issues such as comprehensive immigration reform. His district’s boundaries were redrawn in 2011... Read more

Support is growing among veterans service organizations to consolidate commissary and exchange stores on military bases. Groups including the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States all expressed support for the recommendation -- if savings on groceries and other items can still be passed on to troops and their families. “The VFW does not oppose the reform and, in fact, we support it so much as we can ret... Read more

Darrell Myers praises his Department of Veterans Affairs doctors and relies exclusively on the VA for medical care. But last month, a routine colonoscopy at the VA's aging Denver medical center morphed into a massive bleeding episode, a four-day hospital admission and a blood test mix-up. While he was there, an electrical fire erupted on his floor, and his bathroom door was taped shut. Ralph Bozella arrived early at the Denver hospital last month for a cancer test. He and other patients ended u... Read more

After years of delays and more than a billion dollars over budget, Rep. Mike Coffman believes he has a reason to suspect corruption with the VA hospital in Aurora. “I’m shocked that as a member of Congress I was consistently lied to when I tried to get the facts,” said Coffman, a Republican representing Aurora. Last year the head of construction for the VA, Glenn Haggstrom, told Coffman, under oath, that the hospital was on budget and on schedule. This, despite a letter by a senior manager a ye... Read more

Beyond the outrage over the $1.73 billion cost estimate for the new Veterans Affairs hospital in Aurora, there is the reality that it still must be built. So how to pay for it? It may be politically untenable to expect Congress to appropriate an extra $930 million needed to finish the facility, which officials don't expect to open before 2017, and just add to the federal deficit. Credit Rep. Mike Coffman, the Aurora Republican, for his plan to both pay for the overage while holding the VA accou... Read more

Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman (R) and Sen. Cory Gardner (R) are introducing legislation to stop the Veterans Affairs from awarding any more bonuses until the Aurora VA hospital is fully operational. The VA Hospital Construction, Accountability, and Reform Act, being introduced in Coffman and Gardner's respective chambers, authorizes amount of funding necessary to complete the hospital, transfers construction authority for the project from the VA to the Army Corps of Engineers, provides for an inde... Read more

Congress should cancel all VA employee bonuses and use the money to finish the budget-busting Denver veterans hospital, Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman said Thursday. Coffman and other lawmakers are angry that the Department of Veterans Affairs awarded thousands of dollars in bonuses to its top construction official, Glenn Haggstrom, even though hospitals in Denver, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Orlando, Florida, racked up huge cost overruns and fell far behind schedule. Haggstrom retired Wednesday ami... Read more

Members of Congress do not have a detailed line-by-line accounting of costs in the over-budget VA Hospital project in Aurora. The newest estimate for the completion of construction is $1.7 billion. On Thursday at 6 a.m. Denver time, Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colorado, will present a bill to a Veteran's Affairs subcommittee, asking for Congress to increase the limit on how much money the VA is allowed to spend. Right now, Congress has only given the VA permission to spend $880 million, even though th... Read more

A Veterans Affairs official told members of Congress overseeing construction of the hospital in Aurora, now estimated to cost $1.73 billion, that the department ignored the warnings of its contractors and listened instead to its designers. "The VA owns this. We own this fiasco," said Dennis Milsten, VA director of the Office of Construction and Facilities. But others were involved, he said, in creating runaway costs at a construction project begun more than a decade ago. The designer was suppos... Read more