Veterans Affairs problems wait for improvement, Congress prime-time hearing will reveal

The troubled VA is still struggling to find its footing and even get a grip on the problems, a congressional committee will hear Monday in a prime-time hearing as lawmakers take stock of the department nearly a year after whistleblowers exposed bureaucratic bungling and veterans dying while waiting for care.

The House Veterans Affairs Committee will look at improving transparency at the Veterans Affairs Department and the department’s inspector general’s office, which prepared reports on troubled facilities such as Phoenix or Tomah, Wisconsin, but never released them, essentially keeping problems hidden, the committee says.

President Obama also is grappling with the issue. He made a visit Friday to the VA facility in Phoenix, where whistleblowers said dozens of veterans were denied the care they needed and died while stuck on secret waiting lists.

The inspector general later concluded that care in Phoenix and in clinics across the country often took a back seat to the VA bureaucracy and to senior executives’ desire for performance bonuses — though investigators said they couldn’t firmly link any deaths to the botched care.

Making his first — and many critics said belated — visit to the facility, Mr. Obama pleaded for veterans to give the VA another chance.

“Just the fact that there have been a few bad apples, mistakes that have been made, systems that aren’t designed to get the job done, I don’t want that to detract from the outstanding work being done by a lot of people inside this organization,” Mr. Obama said after a closed-door meeting with VA managers and other officials.

After firing the VA secretary last summer, Mr. Obama signed legislation creating the Choice Card program, which gives veterans a chance to go to private clinics if they have to wait too long for care or if they live too far from VA health care centers.

However, the Veterans of Foreign Wars released a survey this month showing that nearly 80 percent of veterans eligible for the service had not been offered it, and Mr. Obama, in his budget last month, proposed siphoning money from the program and giving it back to the troubled department and to new Secretary Robert McDonald.

That proposal has been met with derision from Capitol Hill, and Mr. Obama indicated Friday that he would do more to promote the Choice Card program.

“What I’ve committed to is making sure that we implement the choice act promptly and effectively and that some of the concerns that have been raised are addressed,” Mr. Obama said.

Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, emerged from the meeting with Mr. Obama saying he still doesn’t believe the president grasps the situation. The Arizona Republican said the VA was interpreting too narrowly who qualified for a Choice Card and mocked Mr. Obama’s creation of an advisory council to give suggestions.

“The American people — and veterans in particular — should be as unimpressed by the president’s high-profile but empty gesture today as I am,” he said.

Mr. Obama’s advisory council will meet for the first time next month. It includes former members of the military, university leaders, a vice president at Amazon.com, the leader of the Cleveland Clinic, a former U.S. surgeon general and a representative from the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Rep. Jeff Miller, Florida Republican and chairman of the House Veterans Affairs’ Committee, commended the president for visiting the Phoenix facility but said the advisory committee is a “duplicative step that misses the mark.”

Mr. Miller said the reform bill the president signed into law last summer already requires two comprehensive reviews of VA health care by outside parties.

Instead, Mr. Miller urged the president to focus on increasing accountability and get those behind the waitlist scandal off the payroll.

“It’s becoming quite evident that this administration is either unwilling or unable to take accountability at VA seriously,” he said. “There is no way around it: In order for VA reform to succeed, those who caused the department’s massive scandal must be purged from the payroll. If that doesn’t happen, it will only be a matter of time before we’re talking about the next VA scandal.”

The hearing Mr. Miller has called for at 7:30 p.m. EDT Monday will focus heavily on the VA’s disinclination to share information with Congress.

Leigh Bradley, the general counsel at the VA, and Maureen Regan, counselor to the inspector general, will testify at the hearing. They will be joined by two non-administration witnesses: Charles Tiefer, a law professor at the University of Maryland, and Michael Bopp, a partner at the Washington law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

Later hearings became common at the height of the VA scandal last summer, when the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee held about one night hearing a week for months and interrogated witnesses often until midnight or 1 a.m.

An aide with the committee said no other nighttime hearings have been scheduled, but “no timing options are off the table.”