NYT: Shinseki takes the fall

The New York Times‘ editorial board wrote Friday that poor Eric Shinseki, the former Secretary of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs paid the price for all of the failures of his predecessors.

But the department’s problem was not Mr. Shinseki. It has been broken for years. No one should expect his removal to be anything but the beginning of a much-needed process of change.

Time now to tune out the noise from the lawmakers who lately have been baying for Mr. Shinseki’s head. No doubt they will keep heaping abuse on President Obama, on the campaign trail, and at the hearings for whoever is nominated as Mr. Shinseki’s replacement.

While I’ll admit that the Veterans’ Affairs Department has been largely dysfunctional for decades, probably all the way back to their first day of operation in the 1920s. However, this president during his 2008 campaign, criticized the preceding administration for their own operation of the department and promised to fix it. Shinseki made the same promises when he took the office, he told the Senate committee that consented to his appointment, that he would fix the problems of the VA.

However, within months, they fell flat on their faces implementing the new GI Bill, impoverishing veterans trying to continue their education. There have been investigations into the mishandling of funds for what were supposed to be training sessions for employees at the VA, but they turned into raucous orgies of spending.

The backlog of claims for benefits that we owe injured veterans has been piled higher despite promises to get it under control, and now thousands of veterans were placed on “bad boy” lists of late medical appointments for things that might have been deadly, and may have cost them their lives for a mere bureaucratic slight of hand.

I have no doubts that things aren’t going to get better for veterans anytime soon. I’m sure that nothing much will change at the point where veterans get service, but employees at the VA may have got the message that their jobs aren’t as safe as they thought last week. If the Senate would pass that bill that the House sent them last week, that would go a long way towards putting VA employees on notice, though. But I don’t have much hope in that regard because of the unions’ hold on the Senate.

The New York Times and a lot of other agencies have held up the one time that Shinseki was accidentally right about the number of troops that were initially needed in Iraq as proof that he was competent. But, they disregard all of the things that he’s been consistently wrong about, like the beret thing that was supposed to make up for the lack of training, the constant multiple deployments for meals on wheels operations, the lack of resources that the military had (like dwindling supplies of ammunition and parts).

Shinseki was an incompetent leader who fostered a command climate in the Veterans’ Affairs Department that wasn’t beneficial to the clients the Department was supposed to service, and he needed to make room for someone willing to put veterans ahead of department employees. I have no idea who should replace him, but it needs to be someone with a solid background and someone who has turned around piss-poor performing companies or agencies.

Like I’ve said before, the VA’s problems are largely regional – I have had very few problems with my treatment at the VA. My claim for my disability took 45 days. When I need an appointment with my local clinic, I get the appointment in days, not weeks. But then, I live in a rural area not like the 41 hospitals that are under the IG’s guns. My clinic rides herd on my appoints at the regional hospital and the Paralyzed Veterans of America (a VSO) rides herd on my claims paperwork. So some places are efficient, while others need to take their lessons from the rural folks and come up to the standard.

Category: Veterans' Affairs Department