When Even the Watchdog Needs a
Watchdog, it is Time for Change in DC            

            Senate report reveals VA Inspector General
      overlooked rather than uncovered wrong doing


The findings of a Senate investigation released yesterday show that the Dept. of Veterans Affairs “is incapable of policing itself via its own Inspector General or assuring that all our Veterans receive prompt and appropriate health care services,” said Clay Cope, First Selectman for the Town of Sherman and the Republican candidate for Congress in the 5th District.

“These most recent news reports about VA indifference – coming just a day after the nation observed Memorial Day -- are shocking and offer further evidence that the bureaucratic, self-serving status quo that engulfs Washington must be changed.”

The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which investigated the charges of improper care at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Tomah, Wisconsin, reported it found a troubling pattern of systemic failures on the part of the VA Inspector General.

The 350-page report specifically criticized the VA Inspector General for employing a narrow, tunnel-view of the investigation at Tomah, which excluded key related issues, discounted evidence and testimony of witnesses, and failed to utilize an agreed-upon-in-advance standard for determining if wrong-doing occurred.

Especially egregious, according to the Senate report, was the VA Inspector General’s decision not to release the findings of its two-year study via a formal report, which would have required VA officials to address the issues of improper care at the Tomah facility, and forced the VA Inspector General to follow up and assure that proper remedial action was taken.  

Instead, the VA Inspector General briefed local officials and closed the case without public scrutiny, presumably to save the community and those local VA officials from either anger or embarrassment.

“It is mind-boggling that the VA Inspector General could find no wrong doing in two years of investigation on Tomah, and yet a subsequent probe found two practitioners failed to meet standards of care in more than 80 percent of the cases they handled,” said Cope.

“The VA is a huge and vital part of the Federal government,” Cope said, “but it is not too big to fail and its managers need to be held accountable to taxpayers.”

“The VA Accountability Act was one such attempt at reform,” he continued.  “This act was a common sense proposal designed to initiate much needed management reforms at the beleaguered agency.  But Democrat Elizabeth Esty voted against the legislation.”

“If I had been in office, and serving the citizens of the 5th District instead of the inside-the-beltway bureaucrats as Mrs. Esty does, I would have voted in favor of the reforms contained in the VA Accountability Act.”


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