Why the blame-Bush effort on VA will backfire

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Ed Morrissey:

Prior to Barack Obama finally taking some executive action in the face of incompetence and scandal, Mother Jones attempted to let him off the hook for it. Mariah Blake offered a “scoop” on wait lists and backlogs by noting what no one denies — that they got out of hand during the Bush administration:

President Barack Obama and his administration have come under fire following a string of revelations about the huge backlogs of patients at Department of Veterans Affairs clinics and the underhanded tactics many of them used to hide the long wait times for medical care. As of Thursday evening, more than 100 lawmakers were calling on Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki to step down. But according to VA inspector general reports and other documents that have gone overlooked in the current firestorm, federal officials knew about the scheme at the heart of the scandal—falsifying VA records to cover up treatment delays—years before Obama became president. VA officials first learned of the problems in 2005, when George W. Bush was entering his second term, and the problems went unfixed for the duration of his presidency.

Er … yeah. We actually knew about it at the time, too, and so did the major candidates running for office in the 2008 presidential cycle. John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama — who reminded everyone today that he sat on the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee at the time — all criticized the Bush administration for the problems of long wait times, the lack of accountability, and the poor service provided to veterans. McCain proposed a reform of the VA, while Obama proposed spending a lot more money and putting a lot more focus on it.

That was almost six years ago, and Obama has been in charge for more than five years, as was Eric Shinseki. Congress provided an avalanche of new funding to the VA, an increase in annual budgets of 78% during Obama’s term, amounting to $235 billion in additional spending over the FY2008 baseline budget of $84.7 billion. Obama appointed Shinseki because of those problems and the former 4-star general’s reputation for bucking authority to get things done.

Five years and four months later, Obama offered this excuse for failure today:

You know, he described to me the fact that when he was in theater, he might have to order an attack just based on a phone call from some 20-something-year-old corporal, and he’s got to trust that he’s getting good information, and it’s life or death. And I think he is deeply disappointed in the fact that bad news did not get to him and that the structures weren’t in place for him to identify this problem quickly and fix it. …

[A]s Ric Shinseki himself indicated, there is a need for a change in culture within the VHA and perhaps the VHA as a whole — or the VA as a whole that makes sure that bad news gets surfaced quickly, so that things can be fixed.

Ahem. Obama was talking about the “bad news” in 2007. Nor was that the only warninginternal to the administration:

Let’s not forget, too, that VA executives in the Obama administration have been repeatedly warned – in the transition in 2008, and in writing in 2010, and 2012 – of wait-list fraud, and did nothing about it.

In 2013, there were more questions arising about wait-list fraud that made it into the media. The Washington Examner ran a five-part series on the atrocious levels of service at the VA in February, including one specific story on VA cooking the books on wait times.

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At this point, if Bronco Didn’t Blame Bush I’d suspect that an imposter had taken over and was pretending to be the Precedent of the United States.
Yesterday on ‘the five’ someone suggested letting DoD take over the VA and staff them with Military Personnel.
Sounds like a good idea to me,which is why .gov won’t do it. that and they hate the military and vets.

USA 73-76