{"id":53914,"date":"2014-07-15T11:30:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T15:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=53914"},"modified":"2014-07-15T08:40:23","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T12:40:23","slug":"va-about-its-employees-more-than-vets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=53914","title":{"rendered":"VA all about it’s employees not Vets"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s common to hear that the federal government is nothing more than a jobs program and that is evident at the hearings that are going on in Congress. Whistleblowers tell their supervisors about problems and solutions to those problems at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and those complaints fall on deaf ears. The Washington Times<\/a> reports on the hearings from last night;<\/p>\n

Whistleblowers, meanwhile, described important claims documents set to be shredded, a culture of ignorance and retaliation among managers, and pressure to quickly get through the backlog, which meant some veterans likely got shut out of benefits while others may have scammed the system. All the while, appeals have shot up.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are veterans. I mean, somebody would be asleep at the wheel not to realize these things were going up,\u201d said Ronald Robinson, a senior veterans service representative, former Army first sergeant, and one of three whistleblowers to testify.<\/p>\n

In one dramatic moment, committee Chairman Jeff Miller, Florida Republican, posted a handwritten note one of his staffers had seen on a site visit to Philadelphia in which a top regional VA executive had written that committee investigators were to be ignored, and that singled out known whistleblowers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Supervisors were more interested in “making numbers” than caring for veterans. At Stars & Stripes<\/a> they report that their focus on “making numbers” actually made clearing the backlog fall behind further;<\/p>\n

The VA claimed last year it cut the number of disability and pension claims languishing for more than two years to just 1,258, but in reality the department wrote off more than 7,800 cases without making final decisions on granting benefits, the IG found.<\/p>\n

The VA has struggled publicly for years with its benefits backlog, but the manipulation that was disclosed Monday by investigators and heard before the House Veterans Affairs\u2019 Committee suggests new depths of dysfunction and wrongdoing in the Veterans Benefits Administration, which accounts for half of the VA\u2019s total responsibilities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And the VA did such a good job at protect that agency’s employees jobs, they all got bonuses<\/a>;<\/p>\n

The list CBS News obtained from the House Veterans Affairs Committee shows $2.8 million in bonuses going to senior Veteran Affairs executives, with several going to officials in charge while care was delayed for veterans. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Firing Shinseki was a good start, but the whole culture at the Department of Veterans Affairs needs to be changed and they need to clean house.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s common to hear that the federal government is nothing more than a jobs program and … VA all about it’s employees not Vets<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}