As the 11th secretary of Veterans Affairs since President
Ronald Reagan established it as a cabinet-level organization in 1988, Secretary
Denis McDonough hardly has big shoes to fill.
Each secretary has made promises, and some have made
changes: Jesse Brown expanded service to all veterans but particularly for
women veterans, and he extended health care through a series of clinics. Edward
Derwinski added some benefits for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Bob
McDonald created the first Veterans Experience Office expressly to improve the
us-against-them feeling so many veterans complain about.
But in the background, scandals arose. Eric Shinseki,
beloved by his staff and by his boss, President Barack Obama, inherited a
benefits backlog issue that went back years. It was first highlighted during
the Walter Reed Scandal in 2007 under Secretary James Nicholson, when soldiers
faced a Defense Department backlog in the military medical retirement system.
After leaving the military and beginning VA's benefits process, they then faced
a second 400,000-plus case backlog at VA. Nicholson had also resigned.
Health benefits were denied to Gulf War veterans, Vietnam
veterans, and veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Veterans killed
themselves at high rates -- and a VA official issued the infamous
"shhh!" memo wondering if VA officials should issue a statement
before someone "stumbled" on the problem. And 13,000 old benefits
cases were found in a filing cabinet.
Most recently, Sec. Robert Wilkie, a President Donald Trump
appointee, chose to discredit a House Veterans Affairs staffer and Navy
reservist after she reported being groped and verbally assaulted at a VA
facility in Washington -- rather than look into the case and work to prevent it
from happening again. Reporting from ProPublica led to a government
investigation.
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