Who says our two political parties can't agree on anything in Washington? The other day lawmakers both Democratic and Republican noted that the Department of Veterans Affairs had been hiding details about the imminent shortfall in its budget, details that should have been shared with Congress much earlier. And that now threaten to shut down some VA hospitals as early as this month.
The chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs says he's shocked by the size of the VA's too long neglected problems. But the administrative rot at the VA scarcely shocks by now. It's become routine.
How long is the country going to tolerate this continuing scandal? Probably as long as the bureaucrats at the VA think they can get away with it. Bureaucratic inertia is one of the constants of any large organization, and it's going to take a real leader to shake things up at the VA the way a Kenesaw Mountain Landis shook up baseball after the Black Sox scandals, or a Ronald Reagan finally got the attention of the country's air traffic controllers. By firing most of them after they'd walked off the job--despite a law against such strikes.
Where is a Patton or Billy Mitchell who will take the VA in hand? And shake it up from top to bottom.
Lots of us look forward to that day. Eagerly.
Editorial on 08/01/2015