VA nominee told to fix agency’s morale crisis
Senate lawmakers WASHINGTON — told Robert Wilkie on Wednesday that he will face a workforce beset by poor morale if he is confirmed to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, and that he must fix the problem if he is to stabilize the troubled agency.
“Of all the challenges we have at VA, morale may be the biggest problem,” Veter- ans Affairs Committee Chair- man Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., told Wilkie during the 90-minute confirmation hearing, where the senior Pentagon official pledged to “shake up complacency” at the second-largest federal department and implement a healthcare overhaul that will expand private care for veterans.
“You are getting an agency that has problems, that’s in need of help,” Isakson said.
Isakson’s Democratic counterpart, Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, was more blunt, telling Wilkie that under the Trump administration, internal politics have undermined VA’s mission of serving veterans.
“We are seeing VA leadership — none of whom have been confirmed — lash out at anyone seeking true transparency,” Tester said, describing an agency so politicized that career senior leaders are departing in droves.
“Recently we have seen VA political appointees work actively and publicly to undermine a secretary and deputy secretary who were unanimously confirmed by the Senate,” Tester told Wilkie, referring to President Donald Trump’s firing in March of former secretary David Shulkin and the ouster last month of the agency’s No. 2, Thomas Bowman. Shulkin had accused political operatives at VA of undermining him and plotting to oust him.
Many of the departing career employees “are concerned that sound policies and ideas are being increasingly marginalized at the expense of political interests,” Tester told Wilkie. “I hope you agree that that type of behavior undermines the VA’s mission.”
Wilkie, 55, tried to reassure the committee that he would stand up to the White House and VA’s political leadership to improve veterans’ care even if it meant disagreeing with President Trump on occasion.
“I have been privileged to work for some of the most high-powered people in town,” said Wilkie, who started his career as an aide to the divisive former Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., and served former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
“They pay me for their opinions, and I give those to them.”
Wilkie also promised not to interfere with the work of the agency’s inspector general, who has said that acting VA Secretary Peter O’Rourke has denied him records for an investigation. O’Rourke has come under fire from lawmakers for inaccurately calling the watchdog someone who “works for him,” according to internal correspondence released in recent weeks by Democrats.
Wilkie, an Air Force reserve officer and son of an Army artillery commander severely wounded in Vietnam, is now in charge of military personnel policy for the Trump administration. He has spent three decades working in Washington on military and national security issues, developing deep connections on Capitol Hill and in the White House.
Wilkie grew up visiting American battlefields with his father and developed a lifelong fascination with military history. His ancestors fought for the Confederacy.
He was pressed by some committee Democrats to explain his past embrace of divisive cultural issues during a long career working for polarizing political figures.
Wilkie counts Helms, the five-term Senate firebrand who denounced Martin Luther King Jr. and once called gay people “weak, morally sick wretches,” as a mentor. He defended Lott, who lost his leadership post after defending Strom Thurmond’s segregationist campaign for president decades earlier.