Today on the Daily Standard Podcast, Charlie Sykes talks to reporter Andrew Egger about the demise of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, President Trump's new-found feud with Amazon, and Egger's recent profile of Missouri Senate candidate Josh Hawley.
President Trump announced on Twitter Wednesday afternoon that he was firing Veterans Affairs secretary David Shulkin and plans to nominate Admiral Dr. Ronny Jackson to head the department. Shulkin is the third Trump Cabinet official to be fired.
President Donald Trump announced Wednesday on Twitter that he intends to replace Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin, bringing a long-expected end to the embattled secretary's administration post.
An article published on December 6, 2017, claimed that Donald Trump’s administration had cut a Veterans Affairs program for homeless veterans while the number of homeless veterans increased.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin on Tuesday morning defended the Trump administration’s 2018 budget and discussed his department’s plans to increase internal accountability and cooperation with private hospitals.
Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin said Tuesday that legislation President Trump will sign today that makes it easier to fire VA employees represents a step the VA needs to take in order to bring accountability back to the troubled agency.
For years now this magazine has been arguing that civil service reform is a necessary condition for fixing a myriad of America's problems. When the IRS starts politically targeting people and the VA's incompetence is killing veterans, and both are almost entirely resistant to the efforts by…
Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, says she would support the man she defeated in 2012, Scott Brown, if Donald Trump nominates the former Republican senator to head the Department of Veterans Affairs. Politico reports:
Citing an "epidemic level" of veteran suicides, an urgent legislative response moved swiftly through Congress last week. But then it hit a wall.
The New York Times reported this week that the Democratic super PAC American Bridge had discovered plagiarism in a real estate investing publication produced and used by Donald Trump's Trump Institute in 2006. While Alan Garten, Trump's attorney, said that "obviously" Trump was not aware of the…
The secretary of veterans affairs, Bob McDonald, refused to apologize for comparing VA wait times to Disneyland wait times earlier today on MSNBC.
The VA set out to send a stern disciplinary message to some scammers in the higher levels of its bureaucracy but, well you know, things happen. As Kellie Lunney of Government Executive reports:
In its handling of health care for veterans, the VA’s ineptitude and corruption have been widely exposed and condemned. Though, of late, Hillary Clinton has been saying that it wasn’t as bad as all that. In her view, the real problem is not long wait times covered up by falsified records which, in…
It has long been good sport to make fun of the government. Ronald Reagan did it with a fine, almost deft touch. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language,” he would tell an audience, “are I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
A former solider who served most of 2003 in Iraq as a cavalry scout and is now suffering from PTSD was turned away from a VA facility in Georgia. When he went to another VA facility to make the same request, he made a record of the encounter on his smartphone. As Patricia Kime of Military…
This, as Lisa Rein of the Washington Post writes, is how Senator Charles Grassley describes the VA. Which, as Emily Wax-Thibodeaux – also of the Washington Post – reports, is performing no better now than it was a year ago with:
The government doesn’t seem to have many good days, these days. If it isn’t a vast hacking of its employees’ personal information by, presumably, the Chinese, then it is the revelation that the people who are supposed to keep air travel safe, the crack agents of the TSA, missed some 95 percent of…
Lisa Rein and Emily Wax-Thibodeaux of the Washington Post report:
A year after news broke of the waiting list scandal at the Veterans Affairs medical facility in Phoenix, Arizona, President Obama finally visited the facility in March. And while they didn't quite roll out the red carpet for the president, they did clean the floors -- and spent $5,000 to do it.
Kellie Lunney at Government Executive writes, in a report on yesterday’s hearings into mismanagement at the Veterans Affairs Department, that:
Concerned Veterans for America has released this video detailing the Veterans Affairs scandal ahead of President Obama's visit to the Phoenix hospital:
The Veterans Affairs secretary lied about serving in the special forces, a report in the Huffington Post alleges.
There were lots of what they call “takeaways” in the speech. That’s the way that crack speechwriters craft them and the way crack correspondents report them. Most of those lines just roll over the rest of us. But there was one, last night, that jumped out at you. As Government Executive reports,…
President Obama is in Phoenix Thursday, and his motorcade drove past that city's Veterans Affairs hospital without stopping. Politico's White House correspondent reports:
President Obama is kicking off the year with a visit to Phoenix this week, but veterans at the Veterans Affairs hospital there shouldn't expect a visit from the commander in chief.
Meghan Hoyer and Tom Vanden Brook of USA Today report that:
If you work for the government and you don’t stay on the straight and narrow, then you risk being told to go home and take some time off … with pay and benefits. Might be for three months to a year – time enough to catch up on those overdue home improvement project. Could be for one to three…
From Military Times, we learn:
Problems at the VA were largely – but not entirely – in the realm of scheduling. No one argued in favor the current system, which had veterans waiting in line for medical attention for months and even years. Even if the supervisors who cooked the books and paid themselves bonuses were all shown…
Democrat Bruce Braley says those who want to know his commitment to our nation's veterans need only look at the website of his Senate campaign.
The VA’s culture of malfeasance and corruption resulted in a new leader, new legislation, and new money. Still, as Jordain Carney of National Journal reports:
American Crossroads, the pro-Republican super PAC, has a new ad Tuesday running in Iowa that targets Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Braley. The ad focuses on Braley's absence from 75 percent of the House of Representatives' veterans' affairs committee hearings. On the day of one 2012 hearing…
Bruce Braley, the Democratic congressman from Iowa running for the U.S. Senate, was not listed as present at a February 2012 House hearing with then-Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki. On February 15, 2012, Shinseki appeared on a panel before the House Veterans' Affairs committee, which began…
The VA has created a small public relations problem for itself. Which, to say the least, is something it did not need.
Dennis Wagner of the Arizona Republic writes that:
The legislative fix has been passed and signed into law, along with a generous appropriation of new money. Also, a new top person has been named and confirmed. So time to move on from the VA and its woes. But before doing so, consider the magnitude of the problems and their duration. As Brad…
With the overwhelmingly bipartisan vote for the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014, Congress passed the most significant reforms to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in decades. And, right on cue, here come the grumblings from the second-guessers.
The big bill to reform Veterans Affairs will be signed tomorrow. With, no doubt, much ceremony and patting of backs. Washington has done it again. Rescued the rest of us from … Washington.
Agreement has been reached on the particulars of a bill that supporters say will fix the VA’s problem and as Matthew Daly of the AP reports:
Rep. Bruce Braley, the Iowa Democrat running for the U.S. Senate, missed three quarters of committee hearings concerning oversight of the Veterans Affairs administration in 2011 and 2012, including one, the Des Moines Register reports, on the same day Braley attended three fundraisers.
Bureaucrats at the Veterans Affairs are working hard … to keep stonewalling investigations into the slovenly, corrupt, and criminal performance of it responsibilities. As Mark Flatten of the Washington Examiner reports:
Veterans Affairs, following the iron law of institutional self-interest, has been paying its people well – improperly and, possibly, illegally so – at the expense of it supposed “clients” and its mission. As David Wood of the Huffington Post reports:
The ineptitude and corruption at the VA were examined last night at congressional hearings and the revelations were dismaying but not necessarily shocking. It is no longer news that the VA is broken so the details of how bonuses were paid to senior bureaucrats for covering up the problems and…
A Veterans Affairs whistleblower says he experienced "harassment" after he contacted White House aide Rob Nabors about problems at the VA:
Reporting on the Veterans Affairs, its problems, and what Congress might do to solve them, Craig Harris and Michelle Ye Hee Lee of the Arizona Republic are not terribly encouraging. They write that:
Now that Washington has acknowledged cultural malaise and a broad failure to provide timely access to health care at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Congress and the executive branch are competing frantically to show the public how hard they are working to fix that failure.
David Jackson of USA Today reports that President Obama told an audience, yesterday, that Washington is out of touch and obsessed with politics. Or something like that. And that instead of focusing on things that are important to the average citizen, Washington is peddling:
Forty-four years after the legendary May 1970 Life magazine cover story first exposed the disgusting and shameful mistreatment of our nation’s Vietnam-era veterans in government medical facilities, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is once again in desperate need of reform. Courageous…
The events of the last few weeks have been gut wrenching for many active duty members of the military and veterans. We have watched the Veterans Affairs (VA) health care scandal unfold, the absurdly lopsided trade of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for five top-level Taliban commanders, and now…
White House Secretary Jay Carney has said that the president only learned about the secret waiting lists at VA from the news. However, the Daily Caller has unearthed an Inspector General report proving that members of the administration were aware of the problems as far back as 2010:
Jake Tapper has a report of VA officials telling members of Congress to buzz off, more or less, when they came looking for information about the sort of thing that has been in the news lately – lost patients, long waits for this who are not lost, and a clever bookkeeping system for covering it up.…
Veterans Affairs has problems. This, we all know. Among the questions raised since those problems first began making headlines are: how widespread are they? Are we talking outliers? A few rogue operators. Or is the system, itself, dysfunctional. Today’s partial answer to that question is … kind…
Two stories about the problems at the Veterans Affairs. Both come with numbers, if not faces, attached.
A report released this week by the inspector general for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) found that "inappropriate scheduling practices are systemic throughout VHA." But as recently as September 2013, Stephen Warren, the executive in charge for information and technology for the VA, said…
Seven Democratic senators up for reelection in November have said they believe Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki should resign over revelations that his department severely mismanaged treatment of veterans at VA hospitals that may have resulted in the deaths of scores of veterans across the…
One of the more intriguing aspects of the VA health care scandal is the way the paperwork was creatively done to make it appear that the system was operating as it was meant to. This took serious, sustained effort, as the AP reports:
As PBS reports, the last 24 hours has seen the "floodgates open" with calls for Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki to resign. Five Democratic senators--Mark Udall of Colorado, Al Franken of Minnesota, John Walsh of Montana, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Kay Hagan of North Carolina--are…
Steve Hayes, with Mara Liasson and Charles Krauthammer, last night on Fox News:
In October 2013, as the nation was focused on the deeply flawed rollout of the Healthcare.gov Obamacare marketplace, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) awarded $3 million in prizes to three participants in the agency's Medical Appointment Scheduling Contest. The contest was announced in 2012…
Senator Mark Udall of Colorado says Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki should resign amid reports of misconduct in VA hospitals. Udall, a Democrat facing reelection, made the announcement on Twitter:
Senator Mark Pryor of Arkansas is now the second Democratic senator to co-sponsor the VA Management Accountability Act. The legislation, authored by Florida Republican Marco Rubio, would allow the secretary of Veterans Affairs to fire senior staff members based on performance. The bill had the…
The expletives were flying during a ceremony for wounded warriors at the vice president's residence on Memorial Day.
CNN's John King reports that Democrats are privately calling President Obama "detached," "flat footed," and "incompetent."
In a Memorial Day piece for The Hill, Nancy Pelosi writes:
Mark Pryor, the Democratic senator from Arkansas facing reelection this year, hasn't answered questions about whether he thinks Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki should resign amid stories of malfeasance at VA hospitals. While many of his colleagues up for reelection have answered questions…
As is well established, I have been less than impressed by the efforts of media "fact checking" organizations. Of these organizations, however, PolitiFact deserves special consideration. Most recently, they were forced to declare Obama's oft-repeated "If you like your health care plan, you can keep…
The director of the Phoenix VA hospital where 40 veterans died while waiting for care received an $8,500 bonus last month, according to Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
Two Democratic members of the House of Representatives have said Eric Shinseki, the secretary of Veterans Affairs, should resign amid reports of the neglect of sick and injured veterans at VA hospitals around the country.
Drew Griffin, the CNN reporter who has covered the Veterans Affairs hospital scandal from the beginning, said moments after Barack Obama's press briefing on the issue that the president did not say anything that the veterans waiting for care wanted to hear.
President Obama didn't ask his VA secretary to resign. Instead, after meeting with Secretary Eric Shinseki, Obama addressed the press and praised the embattled cabinet member:
The White House just announced that President Obama will deliver a statement directly after meeting with Veterans Affairs chief Eric Shinseki later this morning. Here's the president's schedule, from the White House:
Earlier this morning on national TV, Bill Kristol pointed out that President Obama is meeting with his VA secretary later this morning, as the White House just announced. The boss asked, will Secretary Shinseki use his morning meeting with his boss to resign?
CBS affiliate KMOX reports:
THE WEEKLY STANDARD Podcast with senior writer John McCormack on the growing scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the White House's response.
I did not get to know Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki when we served together in the Obama administration, but in our limited interactions I liked him. He struck me as polite, smart, earnest and hard-working. Over time he resisted the ego-tripping that many agency heads find…
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and its secretary, Eric Shinseki, are under fire as reports surface about negligence at VA hospitals, including the death of around 40 military veterans in Phoenix who were placed on a "secret waiting list" to delay their care. Two administrators have been…
Senior writer Stephen F. Hayes led a discussion last Wednesday with North Carolina senator Richard Burr and Concerned Veterans for America on the need for Congress to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs. Watch the entire event below: