Advertisement
VA officials Getting smoaked
Exposed!
It’s no surprise to anyone that has paid attention to the news that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has been one of the worst attended to departments under the Obama Administration. It’s a disgusting that this happened, considering that they are putting our military veterans in danger.
Military veterans deserve some of the best care in the world and yet they are left with unbearable waiting times, leaving some of them to die without being seen. It’s something that started under former President Obama, and continued throughout his tenure.
Finally, Republicans have had enough and they thoroughly blasted VA officials on Thursday. They started with the fact that the department has allowed hundreds of employees to spend 100 percent of their work time on union activities instead of actually caring for veterans. That led to some in the GOP debating whether they should eliminate taxpayer-funded union time completely.
Advertisement
They were not alone, as some Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (HOGR) Subcommittee on Government Operations joined the GOP members in demanding something from the VA officials. They demanded a full accounting of the taxpayer-funded hours that VA employees have devoted to conducting union work.
These comments came after a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report showed that the VA doesn’t track official time accurately. That led some VA managers to worry that such activities are distracting the workers from patient care. It’s disturbing that some people would rather spend more time working on a union than helping out military veterans.
Ohio Republican Representative Jim Jordan was visibly irritated at the meeting. “Something’s gotta change. I appreciate y’all having the hearing, but look, this is unbelievable, unbelievable what we have here. So let’s hope we can change it and get rid of all these folks on official time.”
Again, it’s downright infuriating that these people would rather focus on union time rather than helping the veterans that deserve the best care. They don’t deserve to have this crisis affect them.
Advertisement
veterans-waiting-hospital-cdp
They Didn’t Spend Time Working On Them!
“I love the way government works – a fancy name, official time. It sounds like they’re actually working for the taxpayers, working for the veterans, when in fact it’s just the opposite,” Jordan continued.
Records from the VA have shown that roughly 290,000 employees spent about 1.1 million hours in fiscal year 2015 on union activities. Almost 350 of those employees devoted 100 percent of their efforts to official time. The GAO doesn’t have a lot of confidence in those figures thought. That’s because VA facilities use diverse methods for tracking official time, making the numbers unreliable as a result.
Union officials claim that the official time does improve service quality. However, North Carolina Republican Representative Mark Meadows questioned the impact that some VA workers have if they’re devoting all their time to union work while the veterans are put on long wait-lists or suffer lack of care.
Advertisement
Meadows gave VA officials 60 days to provide evidence that prove a direct correlation between the hours spent on official time for unions and the quality of service given to veterans. He doesn’t believe that a correlation like that exists.
Democrats, while also demanding more accurate figures, defended the use of official time as a good, even necessary tool. Texas Democratic Representative Beto O’Rourke, even feared that Republicans were pushing official time as “shameful.”
“If we agree official time has value, then we can move on to the other questions. If we don’t believe in the value of official time, if we think it’s a scam and a fraud, well that’s a decision we can make as well.”
Meanwhile William Lawrence Kovacs, a labor policy analyst for the Competitive Enterprise Institute and witness, put up the argument that Congress should eliminate official time.
“Union official time is an unwise use of limited tax dollars and serves the private interest of unions. The public does not directly benefit from the use of official time. Congress should eliminate the use of official time,” Kovacs testified.
Advertisement
It’s simple. If the union time isn’t providing accurate service to veterans, then it needs to be eliminated. People don’t need to be spending all of their time on union activities when the VA is in such bad shape. Look at all the scandals that they have had, and then determine if the time is being spent wisely.
America's Veterans Have Suffered Under 8 Years of Obama
If It Doesn’t Help The Veterans, Then Why Should It Continue?
The VA has had plenty of scandals under Obama. One of the more disgusting and disturbing scandals to come out was the fact that a veteran didn’t receive proper care and was found dead with maggots crawling all over him. To make things worse, these maggots were NOT the cause of his death, but they were on him when he was still alive.
Even worse, there was another case days later that had another veteran that was found dead in a shower. Even worse, the veteran was left in that shower, dead, for NINE hours! The people that were responsible for that attempted to cover up the crime.
Share this article to show that Republicans officially blasted the VA due to them putting unions ahead of veterans care. Despite the fact that the veterans have sacrificed so much and should be rewarded, the VA thinks that their time would be spent working