Faith in agency clouded Sanders’ VA response
There were reports of secret waiting lists to hide long delays in care. Whistleblowers said as many as 40 veterans had died waiting for appointments. And Congress was demanding answers.
Despite mounting evidence of trouble at the Department of Veterans Affairs, Sen. Bernie Sanders, then the chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, initially regarded the complaints as overblown, and as a play by conservatives to weaken one of the country’s largest social welfare institutions.
“There is, right now, as we speak, a concerted effort to undermine the VA,” Sanders said two weeks after the story was picked up by national news organizations. “You have folks out there now — Koch brothers and others — who want to radically change the nature of society, and either make major cuts in all of these institutions, or maybe do away with them entirely.”
But the scandal deepened: The secretary of veterans affairs resigned. Reports showed major problems at dozens of VA hospitals. And an Obama administration review revealed “significant and chronic systemic leadership failures” in the hospital system.
Sanders eventually changed course, becoming critical of the agency and ultimately joining with Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and other colleagues to draft a bipartisan bill to try to fix the veterans health care waiting list.
Sanders’ chairmanship of the committee, his most notable leadership post in the Senate, has become a go- to credential in his upstart quest to win the Democratic nomination for president. He routinely boasts of praise from the largest veterans’ organizations, who lauded his fight to expand benefits. And he frequently speaks of how he helped devise the wait time fix and was able to “crack the gridlock” of Washington, as
“HIS IDEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE BLURRED HIS ABILITY TO RECOGNIZE THE OPERATIONAL REALITY OF WHAT WAS HAPPENING
AT THE VA.”
– PAUL RIECKHOFF
one of his campaign mailers put it.
But a review of his record in the job also shows that in a moment of crisis, his deep-seated faith in the fundamental goodness of government blinded him, at least at first, to a dangerous breakdown in the one corner of it he was supposed to police. Despite inspector general reports dating back a decade that documented a growing problem with wait times, Sanders, who had served on the committee for six years before he became its head, was quick to defend the agency and slow to aggressively question VA officials and demand accountability.
His major objective as chairman was to expand the menu of veterans’ benefits. It was an ambitious goal, and as with his proposals today for free public college and universal health care, many viewed it as unrealistic. The cost was so high that even Republicans who normally favor more aid for veterans blanched at the dollars involved — while fearing that more offerings would cause even longer waits at the overburdened VA.
“His ideological perspective blurred his ability to recognize the operational reality of what was happening at the VA,” said Paul Rieckhoff, the founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. “The reality was that he was one of the last people to publicly recognize the gravity of the situation.”
The bill he ultimately helped write included a hard- fought $ 5 billion to hire more medical professionals, a provision Sanders favored.