Thu, 08 Mar 2007 21:29

Guest Column
By Larry Scott

The old adage states: If you want the real story, follow the money.

The stories we’ve read about the appalling conditions at Walter Reed Army Hospital all have money at the bottom line. That is, lack of money. With proper staff and oversight, the Walter Reed scandal would not have happened. But, proper staff means an adequate budget. In this case, proper staff to care for the troops and to maintain the facilities.

The story of Jonathan Schulze, the veteran who went to the St. Cloud, Minnesota Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) facility seeking mental health care because he was suicidal, should only have been a bad dream. But, Schulze was told he was #26 on a waiting list and he hanged himself. The Schulze story is also about money. If the St. Cloud VA had received an adequate budget, they would have had the staff in place to offer Schulze immediate counseling.

Why don’t we hear about the money problems facing the military and VA healthcare systems? Newspaper, TV and radio editors know there is one word that is guaranteed to cost them their readers, viewers or listeners: Budget! So, who would read or view or listen? More importantly, who would care? In the slang of the press, budget stories aren’t “sexy” and don’t “have legs” and don’t “bleed.”

But, veterans do bleed. And, veterans die. Every day. Veterans die while on waiting lists for healthcare at VA facilities. These deaths are not caused by the deliberate deeds of evil people. These deaths occur because the VA is critically and chronically underfunded. These are the deeds of people who speak of “fiscal restraint” and “balanced budgets.” These are the deeds of people who refuse to fully-fund the VA while adamantly declaring their dedication to veterans. These are the deeds of Representatives and Senators.

And, these are the deeds of the political appointees who run the VA. The VA Secretary is Jim Nicholson, whose only qualification to run the second-largest department in the federal government is being the former Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Nicholson has become fodder for every political commentator in the country. When confronted with a long list of wounds and injuries sustained by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans seeking care at the VA, Nicholson said, “A lot of them come in for dental problems.” Columnist Mark Shields quipped, “He ought not to make any more public appearances.”

But, Nicholson’s complicity goes far beyond his blunder-filled public appearances. In 2006, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found, in a series of reports, that Nicholson was not delivering monies in the mental health budget to the VA’s hospitals and clinics. The amount was over $50 million.

The GAO also found that Nicholson truly cooked the books at the VA by requesting less money from the White House than the VA truly needed for healthcare. Nicholson had ginned-up non-existent savings to make it look like less money was needed.

And, Nicholson has deliberately misled Congress. The GAO caught him here too and said he based VA budget requests on “unrealistic assumptions, errors in estimation, and insufficient data” which caused massive budget shortfalls.

Adding to the confusion is the deliberate misrepresentation of VA budget figures bandied about by the administration. You will hear the President or Secretary Nicholson say the VA budget has increased anywhere from 77% to 87% in the last six years. On the surface, that is true. What you won’t hear them say is that when general inflation, inflation in the healthcare sector and government employee pay hikes are factored in, the increases disappear. And, when you calculate the increased number of qualified veterans seeking healthcare from the VA and the monies needed to treat them, those budget figures rapidly turn into negatives. In fact, the VA budget, based on need in the veteran community, is going backwards.

None of this is “sexy” and it doesn’t “bleed.” You won’t read about it on page A-1 above the fold. It’s political maneuvering, bureaucratic blundering and budget-rigging at its finest. But, the math is simple. VA under funding leads to understaffing which leads to the denial of necessary services. Veterans wait. Veterans die. Will this change? That’s doubtful. The President, Congress and the American people have not displayed a willingness to dig into their pockets and pay for military and veterans’ healthcare.

The events in stories we read in The Washington Post or The New York Times or Newsweek Magazine didn’t have to happen. But, it is much more interesting to read about pain and suffering than it is to read about budget figures and editors know this. People stories sell more papers and make more exciting TV. However, it is not the real story. It’s the budget, stupid!

In a commentary on the CBS News web site, correspondent Bob Schieffer opined, “Everyone is to blame for the Walter Reed scandal, except those who got the story.” Schieffer got it wrong. Those who got the story, the members of the media, are guilty also because they’ve had this story for years. They knew of the budget shortfalls. They knew of the political deals to limit budgets. But, it wasn’t “sexy” and it didn’t “bleed.” It was just numbers; even though they knew those numbers would have very real human consequences.

If the editors had paid more attention to boring budget figures and held Congress and political appointees accountable for the well-being of the veterans in their charge, we would not have had to read about Walter Reed and Jonathan Schulze.
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Larry Scott is editor of VAWatchdog.org.