Dona: We’re back with another roundtable on Congress and
Veterans. Participating are Ruth, Wally, Kat, Ava and C.I. And their
most recent reports on Congressional VA hearings were C.I.'s Thursday, May 15th snapshot and Friday, May 16th snapshot, Ruth covered it in "Senator Richard Blumenthal says call in the F.B.I.," Kat covered it in "Shinseki needs to be fired," Ava covered it in "Shineski (Ava)" and Wally covered it in "More talk, no action (Wally)." We’re touching base now not because of a new
hearing but due to the week that was.
Wally, can you give us the back story on the latest VA scandal?
Wally: Sure. The VA
has a problem with some medical centers around the country – how many is not
known but at least 26 are known to be under investigation currently – keeping cooked
books. To make it appear that they are
serving veterans in a timely fashion, a fake set of records is kept which gives
the impression that veterans are getting medical appointments within 14 days of
requesting them. The real records are
kept out of the computer system and show veterans waiting weeks and months for
needed medical appointments.
Dona: Clearly, this is a problem for veterans' health. 40 veterans are said to have died due to the
cooked books in Phoenix. But the
criminal issue is something C.I.’s hit upon and it’s beginning to get
traction. Ruth, could you speak of that?
Ruth: Surely.
Mid-level officials, for example, have received bonuses. The woman over the Phoenix center, for
example, received nearly $9,000 last month as a bonus for the great work she
has been doing. Last week, VA Secretary
Eric Shinseki rescinded that bonus. But
that woman is not alone. Many have used
the cooked books to get bonuses. As C.I.
has pointed out, these cooked books do not just influence bonuses. These false figures also are influencing
salaries because they are being used in performance appraisals. This would be fraud. The two sets of list qualify as fraudulent
but when those lists result in bonuses and higher pay, there is another level
of corruption and criminality, they are defrauding the government and the
taxpayer.
Dona: Ruth, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has spoken of
the criminal aspect last week and two weeks ago your own senator, Richard Blumenthal,
was stating that the issue needed to be turned over to the Justice Department.
Ruth: Correct.
Senator Blumenthal is a former prosecutor. Sitting in that hearing, I was proud of him
for making that point. However, the
response from Mr. Shinseki was that maybe, after the Inspector General’s report
was issued, he, Eric Shinseki, might think about doing that.
Kat: He really is inept.
Dona: In C.I.’s first report on Shinseki testifying before
the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, she included a lengthy exchange between
Shinseki and Senator Richard Burr.
Kat: Right. And that
exchange grew more popular last week with many columnists, Dana Milbank with
The Washington Post being only one, citing it.
Shinseki did not appear to grasp the seriousness of the hearing and
showed up thinking ‘I don’t know’ was an acceptable answer.
Dona: The hearing wasn’t a pop quiz. One of you made that point in your report on
the hearing.
Kat: That was C.I. and the point was that Shinseki knew the
scope of the hearing before he attended and yet he showed up unprepared, unable
to answer the most basic questions. He
did not exhibit any confidence as a leader and he did nothing to convey he felt
any urgency about the problem, about the scandal.
Dona: And that has become the press narrative. Ava, you've been present for numerous
hearings where Shinseki’s testified. A
reader, an Afghanistan War veteran, wondered how much of this might be Shinseki’s
usual dynamics as opposed to the way it’s portrayed by the press.
Ava: I think that’s a fair question. Shinseki can have a flat affect when speaking. I’ve certainly seen that, yes. But, let’s take the October 2009 hearing as
an example. He wasn’t offering testimony
in a louder volume or with firmer vocal sounds.
But he was aware of the facts and did convey them. When he didn't in that hearing, or any
others, he still conveyed concern. That
was absent in the hearing two weeks ago.
This wasn’t an issue of how he spoke or his basic nature, it was an
issue of not caring enough to do the prep required for a topic. It was not a pop quiz. He knew the topic ahead of time and he couldn’t
get through the most basic questions.
Let me note Richard Burr. He’s
the Ranking Member. That means Chair
Bernie Sanders gets to ask the first series of questions, then Ranking Member
Richard Burr goes. This is important
because this wasn’t Shinseki fading as the hearing went on or fading because
the questions got deep into the weeds.
This was the second series of questions, they were basic questions. You wouldn’t even call them compound
questions. Yet repeatedly Shinseki did
not know the answer and didn’t seem too concerned about not knowing the
answer. He was not engaged.
Dona: Now we move to the topic of Senator Bernie Sanders who
is the Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. We heard from a number of veterans that
Sanders needs to step down. We also
heard from one veteran who stated C.I., in last week’s roundtable, was
attempting to “rescue Sanders.” Jim’s
note to the readers dealt with the session -- our writing session -- but it did
not go up until Monday because we were so tired. The veteran e-mailing about C.I. felt “she
was much stronger in her snapshot reports and I know she thinks she’s doing a
big favor to everyone by speaking little in roundtables but I just felt she
kind of tied a pretty bow around it.”
That roundtable was an iffy one.
C.I. called it the worst one we’d done ever. In terms of Ava and C.I., it needs to be
noted that they had pink eye. Their eyes
were running and hurting -- Jim had put this in his note but apparently some
people didn’t see it. C.I. also got
greeted, during the writing edition, with the news that one friend had died,
then two friends had died and then a third call came in about a third death. That all was before we did the
roundtable. So I want to say all that
before I toss to C.I.
C.I.: It wasn’t my intent to rescue Bernie Sanders. I do try to be fair. If the reader feels I went beyond fair and
tried to rescue him, my apologies for that.
As Dona noted, it was not an easy or fun writing edition. That doesn’t excuse my rescuing Sanders if I
did rescue him. I just wanted to get
done with it, sorry.
Dona: Okay, so Bernie Sanders. In the second of the two reports you did two
weeks ago, C.I., you noted that you spoke with five veterans who attended the
hearing and were critical of and gravely disappointed in Bernie Sanders. Last week, some veterans went public with
remarks similar to the ones you’d reported on the week prior. What’s going on with Sanders?
C.I.: I’m going to piss people off with what I’m about to
say, I’m sure. I’m trying to provide an
overview. This is not necessarily how I
feel about, for example, alternative medicine.
I’m referring to Sanders’ image.
Senator Daniel Akaka was Chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee
when Kat, Ava, Wally and I first began attending hearings. Akaka had many issues he pressed on but one
of the main ones would probably be the issue of families who’d lived on bases
and suffered pollution-related illnesses and diseases. That’s a strong issue. That’s one veterans across the country can
relate to. It doesn’t necessarily effect
a large number but a large number will have lived on bases and can relate to
how awful it would be to have your health or your family’s health destroyed
because of the conditions on a military base.
Senator Patty Murray became Chair next.
She also had many issues. Her three
most prominent issues were the VA’s failure to treat Post-Traumatic Stress, the
issue of assault and rape within the ranks and veterans employment. Like Shinseki’s key issues, Murray’s issues
had wide support in the veterans’ community. Now comes Senator Bernie Sanders as
Chair. Bernie is a Socialist. That’s not a bad thing. But it does make some veterans wary. There are veterans of every political stripe
including Socialists – many of them, for example, are in Iraq Veterans Against
the War. But for the broader community,
that did put a question mark on Sanders.
Not a mark against him but a raised eye brow, an attitude of, ‘Okay, let’s
see where this ride goes.’ I’m going
to toss to Ava for Bernie’s issue in part because I’m bored with my own
voice.
Ava: Senator Bernie Sanders has made his key issue: Alternative medicine. He’s for acupuncture and yoga and other forms
of treatment that go beyond just medicating.
He is not opposed to medicating when needed, he’s not trying to deny
veterans medicine – we speak to veterans groups and there are some who wrongly
feel that he is. He sees alternative
medicine as part of total approach to health care. It is not the only aspect, but it is one
aspect and hopefully its use – the VA’s studies are incomplete at this point –
will prevent overmedication. That is a
serious issue and it can turn a veteran into a drug addict, it can allow real
issues and symptoms to be masked and go untreated. C.I.?
C.I.: Thank you.
Sanders was greeted with a raised eyebrow and then, at a time when
veterans need jobs and veterans suicide rates are still a very serious issue,
he’s doing – he’s championing an issue that a number of veterans see as a ‘soft’
issue at best. With all of this going
on, a new scandal breaks and the veteran community looks to see how Sanders
will respond. April 30th,
they held a hearing. Sanders made a
brief remark about the scandal and then stuck to alternative medicine. This pissed a lot of people off. 40 people were said to have died in this
latest scandal and the reaction from veterans we spoke to – veterans groups,
veterans who are friends – was that Sanders made a big mistake there and failed
to show leadership. Then came the
hearing this month on the issue and Sanders faded during the hearing and after,
the same day, goes on CNN and is rescuing the VA to such a point that Chris
Cuomo pointed it out to him on air. In
March, Senator Bernie Sanders had a better image among veterans. This scandal has hurt him because he’s failed
to seriously address it. There’s a
hearing coming up and maybe he can get serious in that but I doubt it due to
its scope. If he doesn’t get serious
about this issue, veterans are going to be calling for someone else to be the
Chair.
Dona: Or possibly the Republicans might take control of the
Senate in the November elections in which case, they’ll have the post of
Chair. I really can’t believe how poorly
the Democrats are handling this scandal because it is going to cost them votes
in the mid-terms. They need to be
calling this out and calling out Shinseki.
The hearing C.I.’s referring to is on proposed legislation, by the way,
and that’s why C.I. said what she did about the scope of the hearing. A Gulf War veteran wrote to say, “The reality
is that veterans need help from everyone and Sanders is too busy serving the
Democratic administration to serve veterans.
I found it very interesting that C.I. wrote a piece defending Senator
John McCain’s right to speak out for veterans and then a day later IAVA meets
with McCain. I’m not a huge fan of
McCain’s but he has been there on the Shinseki issue and I applaud IAVA for not
playing partisan nonsense.” C.I.?
C.I.: I am against the Iraq War. John McCain is for it. Because he was and is for it, he was being
attacked on Twitter with the argument that he could not speak out on behalf of
veterans. I can speak out – I can be
against the war and speak out for veterans.
McCain can be for the war and speak out for veterans. These are not contradictions. McCain believing in a war, believing it is just
and needed, does not preclude him from defending veterans. I was really offended by the Twitter
nonsense. As the Gulf War veteran
pointed out in their e-mail, it can’t be one side fighting for veterans
issues. Everyone has to work together or
it’s just not going to happen. I have
many problems with John McCain but his defending veterans is not one of
them. I applaud him for defending
veterans. Ruth?
Ruth: I would agree with that. And like the Gulf War veteran who e-mailed, I
have a lot more respect for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for their
willingness to talk to both sides.
Dona: Okay then. This
has been a rush transcript. Our e-mail
address is thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.
