Responding to the ever-widening Veterans Affairs (VA) scandal with its infamous “secret death list,” one of the Senate’s leading liberals has not only blocked legislation aimed at fixing fundamental problems within the VA’s health care system. He’s also let it be known exactly how he feels about the accusation that scores of vets have died due to administrative cover-ups, which resulted in medical care being needlessly withheld.
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Vermont’s junior Senator, Bernie Sanders, has effectively frozen in committee the Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act (VAMAA), which was aimed at giving the Secretary of Veterans Affairs a broom to sweep clean any bureaucratic dead wood.
Adding insult to injury, Sanders said in a CNN interview (via News Busters) that “people die every day,” seemingly excusing the 40 patient deaths unearthed in the VA’s Phoenix facility.
The whole 3-page document…
Sen. Sanders is a self-described Democratic Socialist, but within the halls of Congress, he’s officially tagged an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats. Despite never serving in the military himself and ostensibly because of his past and present support of the Democrat Party’s liberal platform, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev) has rewarded Sanders with the chairmanship of the Senate’s Committee on Veterans Affairs. As chairman, Sanders was presented all three pages of the VAMAA after it flew through the House of Representatives with overwhelming bi-partisan support. Reportedly, a mere 30 House Democrats voted against it.
Nonetheless, Sanders has elected to hold off on passing the proposal to Reid for a Senate vote. Instead of the VA Secretary’s having the authority to dump department personnel with a history of poor performance, the hoped-for legislation will have to wait weeks or months for Sanders to hold committee meetings to consider it. Despite both Republicans and Democrats agreeing that the VA is in dire need of reform, Reid was quoted at stating Sanders’ delay is “not unreasonable.”
