U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman has fired another salvo at the incompetence of the Obama administration while the embattled VA Chief Robert McDonald was caught telling a whopper of a fib.
McDonald appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday to defend his childish behavior during a recent House VA hearing where he lashed out at Coffman, and told host Chuck Todd that he had fired 900 employees for scandalous mismanagement of the agency.
However, the Daily Caller reported that according to the VA’s own statement to Congress, “only eight people have been fired for actions related to patient scheduling, record manipulation, appointment delays and/or patient deaths.”
We think we see where the problem lays – simple mathematics.
When 10,000 veterans say they were denied medical services, the agency thinks that really meant nine. And when three veterans congratulate them on a job well done, the bureaucracy counts that as 12 million.
In the interview, Todd also didn’t let McDonald off the hook without playing the tape of his confrontation earlier this week with Republican Rep. Mike Coffman from Colorado. McDonald lashed out with a personal attack at Coffman, saying, “I’ve run a large company, sir. What have you done?”
McDonald’s response to Todd was just weird and completely Orwellian. The fiery exchange, he explained, showed “tremendous unanimity.”
Meanwhile, Coffman didn’t mince words during a Fox News interview Saturday morning and blamed Obama for the continued mismanagement of the agency.
“I don’t think (McDonald) has the support of the president to make the kind of tough decisions that need to be made. This is an organization in crisis, it is mired in bureaucratic incompetence and corruption, it needs to be shaken up,” Coffman said.
Coffman pointed out that Obama only included one sentence in his State of the Union Address about the VA, suggesting it had hit a few bumps in the road:
“I think those bumps in the road are IEDs,” Coffman concluded.
See? Discord equals harmony, six firings equal 900 held accountable, and everyone is still singing Kumbaya over at Veterans Affairs.