The Department of Veteran’s Affairs is tasked with getting our veterans the care they desperately need. But too often, it’s run like a jobs program for otherwise unemployable people. Just how bad is it?
House Republicans berated the Department of Veterans Affairs on Thursday for allowing hundreds of employees to devote all their taxpayer-funded work hours to union activities instead of helping veterans.
VA records reveal that 290,000 employees spent around 1.1 million hours on union affairs in fiscal year 2015, with 346 of those employees devoting all of their hours to official time, the Daily Caller reported Friday.
Official time is, according to the Office of Personnel Management, “paid time off from assigned government duties to represent a union or its bargaining unit employees,” for which taxpayers foot the bill.
This discovery led Republicans and some Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations to demand that the VA provide a full account of how official time is spent at the VA.
The mission of the VA shouldn’t be to provide these people with jobs, particularly if all they do while on the job is plot means to drive more money away from veteran’s care and into their pockets. Our veterans deserve the best care possible. There is no good reason why they need to receive that care at a veteran’s hospital. Between the long wait times and the pilfering of the budget, there’s more and more good reasons they probably shouldn’t.
AAN Staff
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