CRITIC: OBAMA MUST ACT
He said the president has been silent for too long about the Aurora hospital.
The House veterans committee chief says the president needs to do something about the Aurora hospital project.
The leading congressional critic of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs called on the president Monday to become personally involved in finding money to finish the overbudget and delayed VA hospital project in Aurora.
Jeff Miller, the Florida Republican who leads the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, cast doubt on the future of the project during an interview with The Denver Post before a Disabled American Veterans forum in Denver.
If Congress voted on a completion plan that took money from other veterans’ programs, “I think it would go down solidly,” he said.
He called on President Barack Obama to get involved by reaching into a $3 trillion federal budget to find $600 million for the hospital.
“The president has been silent on this issue,” Miller told The Post. “The president has to get involved.”
In any case, Miller favors a single appropriation for the project. “None of us wants to do these fits and starts,” he said.
The project’s cost, budgeted at $604 million in 2011, has risen to $1.67 billion. Completion had been set for 2014, but officials now say it will not be finished before late 2017.
At the Sheraton Denver Downtown Hotel, Miller and VA Secretary Robert McDonald greeted each other amicably in a panel discussion with nearly 4,000 veterans and guests in attendance.
Miller jokingly told the audience not to expect a Donald Trump-style rumble. He praised McDonald, saying, “I could not have a better
feeling about where the VA is going in the future.”
The crowd cheered Miller when he criticized VA’s historic lack of accountability. “I think the secretary needs to have the ability to fire an individual,” he said.
But many booed when he estimated a VA doctor sees eight to 10 patients a day. “Try 20!” one woman called out.
McDonald defended the VA’s accountability record. He said all but one of the senior officials involved with the unfinished hospital in Aurora is gone, except for a project executive who was transferred to a non-supervisory job.
Because of VA’s problems, “nobody is getting a performance bonus in 2014,” he said.
The convention also demonstrated how much work the VA has to do to clear a backlog in benefit decisions.
Dozens of disabled veterans raised their hands when asked if they’re awaiting a decision, including one man who said it’s been 15 years.
McDonald, an engineer, called the Aurora project essential to a region seeing a 31 percent increase in veterans.
But he also characterized the 12-building campus as over-designed.
When he first saw it, his reaction was, “Oh, my goodness, the architects went nuts,” he said.
He and Miller agreed that giant hospitals are likely to give way to more community-based health care settings in the future.
In the private sector as well as the VA, “by the time you get the thing built, the demographics are outdated,” McDonald said.
During a news conference with McDonald after the forum, Miller struck a more optimistic tone about the Aurora project.
“I believe we will find a path forward,” he said.
In turn, McDonald reacted positively to Miller’s suggestion of presidential money-hunting outside the VA budget to pay for the hospital’s completion. “It’s a new idea,” he said.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office reported in 2013 that all four of VA’s major medical centers, in Aurora, Las Vegas, New Orleans and Orlando, Fla., were behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over original cost estimates.
Miller told The Post that VA’s seeming attitude of invulnerability, simply because it represents war veterans, is unacceptable.
“It’s just ridiculous,” he said, “that VA would spend that kind of money with the attitude that Congress will always fill the coffer for the veterans. Veterans don’t want their money wasted.”
In a story Sunday, The Post examined the troubled history of the Aurora VA hospital project, tracing its construction start to a hastily drafted 70-word agreement.
Miller complimented that effort. “You rooted it out,” he said.