My submission here is not to tell you that these people have no value to add to the system. If you want to follow your bank, and your ombudsman helps you, God bless him or her. The problem is that they're not ombudsmen in the classical sense. Some of them are more classical than others, and they're all very useful in our system, but when you're dealing with an issue involving Veterans Affairs and the pension review board, you want somebody who can dig a little deeper than these kinds of ombudsmen. That's my pitch today.
On November 1st, 2006. See this statement in context.