The VA is pushing ahead with a haphazard plan in what will likely be a vain attempt to fund nearly $1 billion in cost overruns at the Aurora hospital.
Money is tighter than normal inside the Beltway, where even scientists studying the effects of Shih Tzu ranching on endangered kudzu vines are having a hard time locking down funding.
So imagine how tough it will be for an agency tarnished by scandal to convince dozens of lawmakers that their states should suffer the financial consequences of the VA’s ineptness in Colorado?
A headline in the Denver Post this week said “VA mess in Aurora likely to affect other projects nationwide.”
We would argue that the opposite is true.
Dozens of construction projects nationwide from New York to Hawaii would be delayed in order to pay for the massive cost overruns, the Post reported.
Not only would the VA plan pit lawmakers in other states against the Colorado delegation, the sneaky bastards bureaucrats would divide our own state officials with their threat to cut $4.2 million from the Grand Junction VA facility as well.
Here’s a taste of how this will play out on Capitol Hill:
At a hearing last week in Colorado, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., questioned the VA’s strategy as he waved a list of projects that would be impacted.
“I know in West Haven, Conn., that this project on primary care facility upgrades has been delayed for years and years and years,” he said, “and I don’t want to see any veterans across the country have to sacrifice because of the incompetence or worse on the part of past VA administration.”
He said the VA should find a different path to fund the Aurora medical facility.
The more projects the VA suggests cutting in other congressional districts, the more opposition we can expect to see from Congress to fund Aurora.
U.S. Rep. Michael Coffman’s proposal to redirect millions in bonus money intended for bumbling bureaucrats, to the project they bungled, just keeps looking better and better.