Care they deserve
Make VA more accountable Guest writer
In my Washington and Little Rock offices, there hangs an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette story from Veterans Day 2015 titled, “War-injured 3 on Hill’s staff ready to help vets.” The story is a reminder of the pride our office takes in helping veterans.
It is hard to appropriately describe the level of insight that having three combat-wounded veterans on my staff provides in my work in Congress. All three of them have absorbed the personal struggles and navigated through the giant bureaucracy that come with their combat experience, and they now dedicate their professional lives to helping fellow veterans manage similar circumstances.
Since my election to Congress, we have helped over 600 Arkansas veterans receive positive outcomes in their veteran-related casework. However, while we focus very heavily on casework, it is just a small portion of our total interactions with local veterans. My team and I regularly meet with veterans and veterans service organizations, and we host recurring Veterans Advisory Council meetings across all the counties of the 2nd Congressional District.
Often, our conversations with veterans contain a similar theme about the Department of Veterans Affairs: Our veterans like the core benefits and services for which they are eligible, but detest the problems with how the VA delivers those services.
The most egregious and infamous example came from the 2014 whistle-blower claims (substantiated by the VA Office of the Inspector General) of data manipulation that led to patient deaths at the VA hospital in Phoenix. Those revelations were uncovered by Congress, and then Congress initiated specific actions to reform VA. Since that time, Congress has worked on and passed multiple accountability reforms to fix what could only be described as a pervasive lack of accountability among VA’s management and employees.
This has been both a national crisis and a local one. Here is a quick recap of just two recent failures we have experienced in Central Arkansas: First, officials at the VA Regional Office manipulated data related to disability claims for personal gain; then, a 97-year-old World War II veteran living off his VA pension had his wages garnished because a VA employee wasn’t willing to do the investigatory work needed to determine that Jesse Whitely of Mabelvale was not the same Jesse Whitely who had defaulted on a VA home loan in New Jersey.
It took our team all of 60 seconds to compare dates of birth and Social Security numbers to determine that the VA had the wrong guy!
And, my office—one of over 540 congressional offices that deals with VA casework—sees hundreds of cases where VA rates a veteran’s disability claim incorrectly, and then we help the veteran submit appeals to have these reviewed. Unfortunately, I do not think our office is an outlier; this is a national trend. Tens of thousands of veterans have their disability claims (often their major source of income) delayed because of pure bureaucratic incompetence.
What makes the trend of mishaps at the VA so incomprehensible is that from 2008 to 2016, its budget rose from $88.6 billion to $165.5 billion, and the number of employees rose from 278,565 to 377,805. This is a failure on the part of Congress because for too long, the mindset of Congress and the administration has been that if we increase funding and personnel, then we have done our jobs. Writing a blank check and providing no noticeable oversight isn’t responsible governing, and it doesn’t create a culture designed for success. Principally, this isn’t a money problem; this is a management problem.
In late June, I was in Fayetteville with Congressman Steve Womack, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Phil Roe, and VA Secretary Dr. David Shulkin. Chairman Roe, like his predecessor Chairman Jeff Miller, is fully committed to making the VA more accountable to Congress, to the taxpayers, and to our veterans. Dr. Shulkin is committed to the same principles.
Dr. Shulkin is a common-sense leader who will not let mistakes of the past haunt his ability to effectively do his job. That was evident when he decided to scrap the VA’s electronic health record system and to adopt the Department of Defense’s system. Having the two on the same system will create a more seamless transition of veteran records from DoD to VA, making it easier to determine a veteran’s individual needs.
Dr. Shulkin’s leadership is also evident in his support of Senate Bill 1094, the Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act of 2017. S1094 allows the VA secretary to remove or reprimand senior executive service employees, as well as most non-senior executive service employees, for misconduct or performance warranting that action. This bill, while not a silver bullet, is an important step in changing the culture at the VA and ensuring that those serving our veterans are held accountable for their actions and operate in a way that always puts veterans first.
Those who are too incompetent to do the simple work required to think before penalizing a 97-year-old veteran should not be employed by the VA. Those who habitually give veterans the wrong disability rating should not be employed at the VA.
Most importantly, those who intentionally game the system—at the expense of veterans—for their own personal gain should not be employed at the VA. Dr. Shulkin understands this, Congress understands this, and the president understands this. Let’s demand and obtain the management, health care, and client service that our veterans deserve.