Let's not forget about how Obama 'forgot' about the VA - Granite Grok

Let’s not forget about how Obama ‘forgot’ about the VA

VALet’s not forget about how Obama ‘forgot’ about the VA.

Obama knew the VA had issues, campaigned on his commitment to correct it, increased the VA  budget by 78% as proof that he meant it and…matters somehow declined anyway.

“…the problems at the VA were so obvious that they became a campaign issue in 2007-8. Barack Obama pledged the “most transparent administration ever” during his primary and general-election campaigns and attacked the Bush administration’s handling of the VA (as did John McCain, the Republican nominee). The Obama administration received warnings as far back as the 2008-9 post-election transition that wait times were being manipulated to hide poor response, and then warned repeatedly after that to look into the issue, including one internal memo in 2010.

What did Obama do to fulfill his campaign pledge? He demanded more resources, which Congress supplied — increasing the VA budget more on a percentage basis than any other Cabinet agency (78%), with an extra $235 billion over and above the FY2008 budget baseline. Obama also insisted that Eric Shinseki was the man to put discipline into the VA’s bureaucracy. And after that, Obama washed his hands of the VA, rarely meeting with Shinseki on his own; the last such meeting before the scandal broke was in July 2012.”

In such circumstances the smartest man in any room makes grand promises. He writes a big check with other people’s money. He then acts surprised when the government he promised us would make our health care better as a nation cannot manage his rhetoric on such a small-scale?

Mister Obama is so clever, so cerebral, he can throw 235 billion extra dollars (out of other people’s pockets) down the V.A. hole, and still has time for a round of golf before lunch.

This is how Obama leads.

He just assumes the bureaucracy will do what those speeches he reads off the TelePrompTer claim if they get more money. He reads the speech. Gets the money. The problem gets worse. Read another speech. Get more money. Speak, plunder, and repeat.

But nothing ever gets better.  How can that be? Why does it get worse?

It is a simple problem whose lesson history has been teaching for millennia.

You can’t fix what the government tries to do with more money you can only fix it by giving it less.

The private sector knows how to identify need and will use competition to fight to be better at meeting it.  Government has no incentive to do anything but spend more of other people’s money for a decreased return on unsatisfactory results.

If you reward poor results with other people’s money you should expect that trend to continue, and it has.

 

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