US politicians behind Veterans Affairs corruption

… by Jim W. Dean, VT Editor …with Press TV, Tehran

An American political commentator says the corruption at the Veterans Affairs is partly pressured by politicians who want to see good reports.

You can listen to the 3:30 minute phone interview on PressTV here.

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“You have corruption, but also political pressure of ‘show us…we want to hear good reports’, and because it’s a mess, the managers start having to look for ways where they can hide the problems,” said Jim W. Dean of Veterans Today in a phone interview with Press TV on Tuesday.

Dean said that Bob McDonald, President Barack Obama’s pick to head up the troubled Department of Veterans Affairs, faces great challenges in fixing the VA on both sides.

“There is two key parts here,” said Dean. “We have the obvious situation of VA that is swamped with demands of not enough money and there is supposed to be miracle workers who give everybody everything they want when they don’t have resources to do it.”
“And yet they are under a lot of pressure to generate statistics that they are doing a good job,” he added. “The politicians want those good statistics… so they want something to show the people that they are doing a good job.”
“The politicians are playing a game that they really care, but they really want to fake it. So now they are stuck. They have to basically pretend that they are doing a wonderful job, so they start cooking the books and they have to hide backlogs and things like this, which should have been reported for years and years and years,” he continued.

Dean called for an investigation of the corruption as to “why they allowed it to go on” because they are “just as guilty as any white-collar managers in the VA or possibly more guilty.”

Problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs came to light this past spring when more than 40 veterans allegedly died while waiting for care after being kept off the books at a VA facility in Phoenix.

The incident led to the resignation of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

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