Friday morning, Barack H Obama appeared in a news conference to tell America that the reports of abuses in the Veteran’s Administration are not to be tolerated and that the Secretary, Eric Shinseki, had turned in his resignation. In a meeting prior to the presser, Shinseki told veterans he took responsibility for the debacle and that people in the Phoenix office were being fired. So, the Secretary steps down and several of the managers get fired, but the question remains: what’s next?
During Obama’s speech, he brought up the question of criminal prosecution, saying he’ll leave that decision to the Department of Justice. He’s done that on several occasions before; the Black Panthers voter intimidation, Fast and Furious,Benghazi, IRS, and the AP scandals to name a few. Each time, Eric Holder decided there was nothing to investigate so he wouldn’t waste DoJ funds looking at them. With those episodes fresh in our minds, I don’t hold much hope for much investigating of anything surrounding the fraud (at least), the federal felony of filing false information on a federal form, or much more serious offenses.
The talk of more money has already been brought up, but Obama wants to find out where the money goes and what is needed. Really, the problem isn’t a money problem. Last year’s budget for the VA was approximately $150 Billion. Of that, $57.7 Billion went to medical care fund. Now, that’s seems like a lot of money, but routinely, only 39% of that money goes to actually care for the veteran. The rest goes to administrative purposes. That’s about $22.5 Billion that’s actually going to veterans’ medical attention. Also, there was an unused $450 Million from last year was rolled over for use with this year’s budget. Bureaucracy is like the volume of gas; it expands to fill the allotted space, so, I’m sure none of that money came from the admin side.
The 2015 budget for the Veterans Administration is $163 Billion, an increase over last year. Before we go with the typical liberal solution of throwing more money at the problem, we need to completely revamp the VA. We need to get rid of the government bureaucrats whose only concern is manipulating data to make a bonus.We need to cut those who don’t care about anyone but themselves. We need people at the VA that are genuinely concerned about veterans care. We need to rid ourselves of the pervasive culture that makes employees think what has been going on in the Veteran’s Administration is acceptable.
marjarhead1 