Steny Hoyer: We Must Protect The Most Important Clients of the VA-- Democrat-Voting Government Bureaucrats

He says that the GOP is "politicizing" the VA scandal, apparently by refusing to go along with the standard operating Democrat procedure of stonewall, cover-up, distraction, and then saying "That was two years ago dude."

The House's No. 2 Democrat accused Republicans of exploiting the scandal that has enveloped the Veterans Affairs Department for political gain and said he is worried that civil servants could be swept up unfairly in a witch hunt.

Is there anyone in America apart from a union-serving progressive office-holder who sees the main problem with the VA scandal as exposing civil servants to unfair disciplinary measures?

It is incredible. We're only a few weeks of genuine coverage of this scandal and the Democrats are already hitting the Phony Scandal button.

Usually they'd wait for a nothing-to-see-here cook-the-books cover-up report for that.

"I don't think there's any doubt about it... that is essentially the tactic that Republicans are trying to employ," Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters Wednesday.

"In some cases there are huge fishing expeditions which are going on for millions of documents that goes beyond the realm of oversight and politicizes the issue very greatly."

Previous cover-ups have ended with IG's claiming they didn't have any "substantiation" for wrongdoing that was plainly going on.

The only way to get such substantiation is by getting the emails, as the Daily Beast did.

But of course Steny Hoyer doesn't want that -- he wants to protect his real constituents, government workers.

And if that means average wait times of 115 days -- with official, fraudulent records showing average wait times of only twenty four days -- and if that means that 40 veterans died in the government queue in Phoenix alone -- well, so be it.

Here's why time is of the essence here:

The IG also took care to note that, of the 42 VA facilities where his teams are now gathering evidence, none received advance notice that they were coming. Why? Because he's worried about "the risk of destruction of evidence, manipulation of data, and coaching staff on how to respond to our interview questions." That was the key takeaway from the Daily Beast "crime syndicate" story that Ed blogged this morning-- even the higher-ups inside the VA know or should have known that this has been going on, and since everyone's potentially culpable, the chances of a conspiracy to cover it up are unusually high. (The IG notes at one point that the DOJ may eventually be involved here in a civil or criminal manner.) This is what caring for America's soldiers has come to, a race against time to ferret out evidence of egregious negligence towards sick vets before the "caretakers" can sweep it under the rug.

But Steny Hoyer has his eye on the ball, and that ball is named The Party of Government:

...

"I don't think that serving veterans is antithetical to making sure that employees of the federal government have the civil service protections that were adopted as long ago as the Pendleton [Civil Service Reform] Act in the 19th Century," said Hoyer, whose district includes a large number of federal workers.

"Our civil service system is designed not to be a system where people serve at the will of those who win elections. It's a professional civil service [that is] protected."

Note once again, Democrats only want to punish The System, because "The System" isn't unionized, the "The System" doesn't vote or donate to the DNC:

"We need to address this decisively, quickly and hold accountable the people who did that, but, much more importantly … correct the system."

Hoyer is very, very angry about what VA civil servants did:

Hoyer said he spoke last week with embattled VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to urge him to respond the scandal "very vigorously, to express his anger and disappointment, and resolve to get to the bottom of this."

So angry, in fact, that his first, second, and only response is to run interference for the people responsible for this deadly scam.

posted by Ace at 06:08 PM

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