David Shulkin, 60, former Veterans Affairs secretary, was
President Trump's only Cabinet member confirmed 100-0 by the Senate. He was
fired in 2018.
The title of your book is “It Shouldn’t Be This Hard to
Serve Your Country.” Can you talk a little about what drew you to serve your
country in the VA?
You know, the title actually, interestingly, has a double
meaning. First of all, the book is really for veterans and about veterans. And
so I believe when you raise your hand to defend the country, you go off and you
come back and you need our help, that it shouldn’t be this hard to get the help
that you need. And so the bureaucracy that veterans in the past have
experienced — the wait times; the trouble accessing services; the continued
issues they’re having with getting the benefits that they deserve, including
[some] Vietnam veterans who are now waiting more than 50 years [and] still
can’t get the benefits from exposure to Agent Orange — it just shouldn’t be
that hard. But of course, then the second meaning has to do with when you go
into public service, whether you’re a career employee or whether you’re a
political appointee going in to serve your government, that this should not be
the experience that people are exposed to, the environment of personal attacks,
the underhandedness and the sabotage of people trying to do their jobs. And
we’re still seeing the same thing happening today.
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