Pick Your Poison Vol. 7: Will House Democrats choose Clinton or Sanders on the VA scandal?

May 13, 2016

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Hillary Clinton has failed in her quest to unify Democrats behind her, and now faces the prospect of a contested convention that will be decided by party insiders rather than voters. House Democrats now have a choice to make: Will they risk the ire of the liberal base and stand by unpopular FBI target Clinton? Or will they turn to socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and his extreme policies?

In this seventh of a series of pieces highlighting the pair of undesirable choices placed before Democrats, we will examine the Clinton and Sanders positions on the VA scandal.

The Obama administration’s mismanagement of the VA has been a shameful slap in the face to our veterans, and still has not been properly fixed.
Despite overwhelming evidence of widespread problems at the VA that have resulted in the unnecessary deaths of dozens of veterans, Hillary Clinton has repeatedly downplayed the issues and defended VA staff.
- A government employee union praised Clinton in its endorsement of her candidacy saying, “While many candidates have used government employees as political punching bags, Clinton has stood up for employees at the VA and other agencies.”
- In October, Clinton said that the VA Scandal was “not as widespread as it has been made out to be,” and attributed criticism to an ideological agenda.
Bernie Sanders, who was chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee when the VA scandal came to light, was slow to react to the problems at the VA, at first blaming the scandal on the “Koch brothers and others.”
- A story in The New York Times blamed Sanders’ “deep-seated faith in the fundamental goodness of government,” for his slow reaction to the scandal. In other words, Sanders’ blind devotion to government clouded his judgement when he was in a position to act as a watchdog for our veterans.
On the VA scandal, House Democrats will have to choose whether to stand behind a candidate who has downplayed the scandal while currying favor with government employee unions, or the former chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee who allowed his devotion to big government to cloud his judgement and recognition of the issues that threatened the health of our veterans.

NRCC COMMENT: “Whether House Democrats stand with unpopular FBI target Hillary Clinton or socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, they will be forced to defend a candidate with a history of downplaying the serious problems at the VA. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have allowed their personal ideologies to cloud their judgement and turned a blind eye to the VA scandal.” – Bob Salera, NRCC Spokesman

Background:

Sanders: ‘It will be a contested convention.’ “Bernie Sanders predicted Sunday that Hillary Clinton would not win enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination ahead of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia, and he delivered his most forceful call yet for superdelegates in states he’s won to consider throwing their support to him. Speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., the Vermont senator argued that Clinton ‘will need superdelegates to take her over the top at the convention in Philadelphia. In other words, it will be a contested convention.’” (Daniel Strauss, Politico, 5/1/16)

Two Years After VA Scandal, Healthcare System Still Stacked Against Vets. “Two years after various investigations into the medical network at the Veterans Affairs Department sparked one of the worst scandals of the Obama administration, the agency hasn’t fixed the problems that have plagued its healthcare system. A new Government Accountability Office audit found that the Veterans Health Administration, which spent $58 billion in fiscal year 2014 to provide care to 6.6 million veterans, found that it remains vulnerable to manipulation of patient wait times and wait-time data. Falsified records were at the root of the 2014 wait-time scandal that unearthed widespread fraud throughout the department’s medical system and prompted the resignation of then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. At least 40 veterans died while awaiting care.” (Martin Matishak, The Fiscal Times, 5/12/16)

VA hasn’t fixed wait-time problems, GAO finds. “The Department of Veterans Affairs has not done enough to prevent schedulers from manipulating appointment wait times, and wait-time data remains misleading and underestimates how long veterans wait for care, according to a nonpartisan watchdog report released Monday. ‘Ongoing scheduling problems continue to affect the reliability of wait-time data,’ the Government Accountability Office found. The GAO said the VA has taken a ‘piecemeal approach’ to addressing the problems since the wait-time scandal broke in 2014 in Phoenix, where schedulers falsified wait times and at least 40 veterans died awaiting care. But the agency needs to take comprehensive action, the GAO concluded in its audit, which stretched from January 2015 through last month.” (Donovan Slack, USA Today, 4/18/16)

Why AFGE is Supporting Hillary Clinton for President of the United States. “While many candidates have used government employees as political punching bags, Clinton has stood up for employees at the VA and other agencies.” (AFGE Endorsement, 12/10/15)

The Rachel Maddow Show – CLINTON: “Yeah, and I don’t understand that. You know, I don’t understand why we have such a problem, because there have been a number of surveys of veterans, and overall, veterans who do get treated are satisfied with their treatment. Now…” MADDOW: “Much more so than people in the regular system.” CLINTON: “That’s exactly right.” MADDOW: “Yeah. Right.” CLINTON: “Now, nobody would believe that from the coverage that you see, and the constant berating of the VA that comes from the Republicans, in part in pursuit of this ideological agenda that they have.” MADDOW: “But in part because there has been real scandal.” CLINTON: “There has been. And – but it’s not been as widespread as it has been made out to be.” (MSNBC, 10/23/15)

Faith in Agency Clouded Bernie Sanders’s V.A. Response. “Despite mounting evidence of trouble at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Senator Bernie Sanders, then the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, initially regarded the complaints as overblown, and as a play by conservatives to weaken one of the country’s largest social welfare institutions. ‘There is, right now, as we speak, a concerted effort to undermine the V.A.,’ Mr. Sanders said in May 2014, two weeks after the story was picked up by national news organizations. ‘You have folks out there now — Koch brothers and others — who want to radically change the nature of society, and either make major cuts in all of these institutions, or maybe do away with them entirely…’ But a review of his record in the job also shows that in a moment of crisis, his deep-seated faith in the fundamental goodness of government blinded him, at least at first, to a dangerous breakdown in the one corner of it he was supposed to police.” (Steve Eder and Dave Philipps, The New York Times, 2/6/16)