VA streamlining, on several levels
Most of the news concerning the Department of Veterans Affairs in the post-9/11 decade and a half has not been good, to put it mildly. It has mostly been about hideous conditions at VA medical facilities, long (and sometimes fatal) delays, impenetrable bureaucracies, and beyond-shoddy treatment of those who have been willing to put their lives on the line for our country.
Not only has the veteran population inevitably aged, but demands on the VA have grown with the influx and needs of younger vets after deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Two news items this week are of particular interest, in different ways, with regard to the future of this important agency — the federal government’s second largest — and the Americans it serves.
One involves Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chair of the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs and one of the most vigorous Capitol Hill activists for VA reform, who introduced bipartisan legislation Thursday to streamline the department’s disability claims process.
The other involves a different kind of streamlining, one that, unlike Isakson’s bill, might stir some real debate.
VA Secretary David Shulkin is proposing what in effect could be a BRAC (base alignment and closure) process for redundant and underused VA facilities across the country.
Part of the idea, according to an Associated Press report, has to do with increased partnership with private medical professionals for veterans’ cases. But it also has to do with cost – and, like BRAC, with politics.
Shulkin told a House committee Wednesday that taxpayers are spending more than $25 million a year on more than 430 VA buildings that are vacant and more than 700 that are underused and could easily be sold or consolidated. He suggested that the agency could work with Congress to decide how to proceed.
That’s where the politics could get interesting. The central idea behind BRAC (in principle, and mostly in practice, a good one) is that the process minimizes turf politics by having analysts come up with a list of installations to be closed, moved or consolidated, which is then submitted to Congress for an up-or-down vote.
The alternative, of course, is lawmakers fighting to keep installations open in their districts for economic (and political) reasons that might or might not serve a national defense need.
However Congress and the VA proceed on this, that $25 million a year should definitely be spent taking care of veterans, not obsolete buildings.
An ‘F’ … in cheating
Too dumb for “Animal House” — you’ve gotta love it. Bluto and D-Day might have stolen the wrong test, but even those bozos didn’t get caught.
Two doofuses trying to steal a statistics exam from a University of Kentucky teacher’s office by climbing through the ceiling ducts got busted … by the teacher. The matter is now reportedly in the hands of the university’s Office of Student Conduct.
This might call for a really futile and stupid gesture to be done on somebody’s part.
This story was originally published May 4, 2017 at 5:53 PM with the headline "VA streamlining, on several levels."