Chronic Indifference at Veterans Affairs A year and a half after vowing to ‘transform’ the agency, the VA’s leadership has shown little progress. By Jerry Moran And Jeff Miller see note please
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chronic-indifference-at-veterans-affairs-1452729105
There are currently 80 veterans serving in Congress. It is appalling that the VA continues with chicanery and there has been no serious challenge from the US Representatives. Go to the site http://www.openthebooks.com/openthebooks_oversight_report_-_us_department_of_veterans_affairs/ to see how this rogue bureaucracy spends its money and abandons the needs of veterans….rsk
During his Senate confirmation hearing in July 2014 to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, Robert McDonald pledged to “transform” the vast agency. After horrific reports of wait-time manipulation, coverups and even deaths at VA medical facilities across the country, veterans and the American people were calling for honest leadership to restore their trust in the department created to serve them.
Transformation wouldn’t be easy, Mr. McDonald said, but it was “essential.” And “those employees that have violated the trust of the nation and of veterans must be, and will be, held accountable.”
Sixteen months have passed but the VA’s culture of indifference persists, and the climate of accountability Mr. McDonald promised is nowhere in sight.
“Veterans still facing major medical delays at VA hospitals,” read an Oct. 20 CNN article; “VA execs demoted, but get to keep their jobs and fraud money,” reported a Nov. 23 Daily Caller piece. “VA’s own internal probe finds impunity of agency leaders at scandal-ridden hospital,” said a Dec. 16 Washington Post report.
It is now clear that the VA’s most-serious problems are rooted in its leaders’ routine and pervasive refusal to seriously discipline those who have engaged in proven incompetence, corruption and malfeasance. Consider:
• After the biggest scandal in VA history, in which 110 VA medical facilities across the country maintained secret lists to hide long waits for care, only three low-level VA employees have been fired for wait-time manipulation. Not one senior-level executive has been fired for the same violation.
• In September the VA’s Office of Inspector General revealed that two VA senior executives inappropriately used their authority to game the agency’s hiring system, allowing them to benefit from more than $400,000 in taxpayer-funded relocation expenses. Instead of recovering the money and firing the two individuals, the VA is planning to give them assistant-director jobs paying more than $100,000 and ignoring calls from Congress and veterans service organizations to recoup the funds on behalf of veterans and taxpayers.
• In December the public learned of two internal VA investigations that found whistleblowers at the Phoenix VA Hospital were retaliated against by two senior managers for reporting dangers to patient care and financial mismanagement. More than a year after investigators recommended to Secretary McDonald that the managers be disciplined, the VA has refused to hold them accountable.
The overwhelming majority of VA employees are honest and hardworking. But by repeatedly declining to take serious action against those engaged in proven mismanagement and corruption, VA leaders are only further eroding the department’s credibility with the veterans it serves.
What’s more, the White House and VA are actively opposing congressional efforts to give Secretary McDonald the tools and flexibility he needs to tackle the agency’s accountability crisis head-on. Mr. McDonald refuses to support, and President Obama has issued a veto threat on, the House-passed VA Accountability Act (H.R. 1994). This legislation would give the VA secretary the authority to swiftly fire or demote any employee for poor performance or misconduct while protecting whistleblowers and limiting the agency’s ability to place misbehaving employees on paid leave.
Nearly every major veterans service organization, including Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion, Vietnam Veterans of America and Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, supports making it easier for the VA to fire corrupt or incompetent employees. It’s an open question as to why Messrs. McDonald and Obama refuse to stand with these groups in their quest to reform VA’s broken culture.
Congress also wants to give the VA the authority it needs to recover questionable bonuses (H.R. 280) and annuities on pensions of VA employees convicted of felonies committed on the job (H.R. 1994 and S. 290). The money these bills are intended to recover could go toward filling the nearly 41,000 open positions for doctors, nurses and other health care professionals at the VA, helping improve the quality and timeliness of care for veterans across the country. The VA has refused to support these bills, which enjoy strong bipartisan support.
Sixteen months into Secretary McDonald’s tenure, the VA remains an agency under a specter of scandal—a place where, all too often, employees who have demonstrated incompetence or corruption are let off with a free pass. Until VA leadership makes good on its promise to support real accountability, efforts to reform the department are doomed to fail, and the VA will never be transformed into an organization truly worthy of the veterans it is charged with serving.
Mr. Moran, a Republican from Kansas, is a member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. Mr. Miller, a Republican from Florida, is chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
Comments are closed.
