Home California Congressman Jerry McNerney Calls for Resignation of VA Secretary Shinseki

Congressman Jerry McNerney Calls for Resignation of VA Secretary Shinseki

by ECT

Eric Shinseki

Washington, D.C. – Today, Congressman Jerry McNerney (CA-09) issued the following statement following the release of the VA Inspector General’s interim report:

“I reviewed today’s preliminary report from the VA Inspector General, and I was deeply troubled by what I read. The unacceptable delays in Phoenix were not an isolated incident, but rather appear to be part of a larger pattern of neglectful actions in certain VA medical facilities. It appears there was even knowledge inside some parts of the VA that standard scheduling practices were not being followed and that veterans were waiting far too long for care. These delays may have even resulted in preventable deaths.”

“I believe the best way to restore the confidence of our veterans is for Secretary Shinseki to step down and allow new leadership to initiate an investigation that will first, get to the bottom of these allegations, second, punish anyone who put our veterans at risk, and most importantly ensure that our veterans are getting the timely health care they deserve. An independent investigation of these accusations is the only appropriate way to ensure transparency and fairness throughout the process.”

“General Shinseki has my respect and I commend him for his distinguished career as a public servant and as a decorated member of the military. That being said, it’s clear that our veterans deserve a new leader at the VA who can restore confidence and make sure that this never happens again.”

“Our veterans and our nation are counting on us to make this right. I intend to do everything in my power to make sure that happens, and I call on the Administration and the VA to devote every necessary resource to fixing this. Those who fought for our nation deserve no less.”

 

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2 comments

joe blow from brentwood May 28, 2014 - 9:01 pm

What a waste of time and showmanship. They need to start firing the incompetent lazy workers from top administrators down to the janitors. If they don’t, they will have the same problem.

Buy a Clue May 29, 2014 - 8:16 am

Not sure who started all the arm waving and false outrage this week, but it’s clear someone is trying to offer up a distraction to the easily duped American public. This is grandstanding by McNerney.

The wait time issue for the VA is not new. In fact, the same IG who wrote the Phoenix report that supposedly got everyone in full-on ass covering mode yesterday is the same IG who has been sounding this alarm going back to 2005.

That’s not my opinion. It’s spelled out in black and white in the appendices of the report released yesterday.

http://www.va.gov/oig/pubs/VAOIG-14-02603-178.pdf

Pay particular attention to Appendix C thru Appendix F

This is another example of Washington using the Veterans as a prop or a cattle prod in their latest partisan bitch-fest. Bagging Gen Shinseki isn’t going to solve a damn thing. People need to stop the BS with claiming they support Vets, then turning right around and voting against appropriations to fix the parts of the system that are broken.

You can’t send 2.5 million Americans into 2 BS wars and not have bad things happen on the back end. Common sense. But something in short supply in Washington DC.

Actual care within the VA is good to excellent by all reports. But when you flood the system with new admissions from 2 wars at the same time you loosen up access to Korean and Vietnam Vets and not have this predictable end result. The VA, just like the private sector, has a MASSIVE shortage of needed doctors.

Which leads to the Doctor shortage overall in the US. We need 50,000 new doctors like yesterday for this aging population. But the “free market” and capitalistic Einsteins decided back in the Reagan era that we should instead turn higher education into profit ventures. So we now saddle medical grads with mid 6 figure education debts for those willing to choose the profession. Result: fewer do.

The partisan nonsense has divided this country so badly that people appear to have lost all basic cause and effect analysis skills. It’s soooooo much easier to repeat some blame game BS you heard on Rush Limbaugh’s show this morning than looking at the problem objectively to find solutions.

When is America going to come out of this stupor?

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