• In VA’s press release dated February 4, 2008, VA once again promised to cut the backlog to 300,000 claims and process claims in an average of 145 days. However, VA's most recent reports confirm the claims backlog of unfinished work stands at more than 400,000, and veterans wait an average of 183 days. Cooper and Nicholson were repeatedly and catastrophically wrong, and our veterans and their families paid a very steep price.
COOPER'S EXIT LONG PAST DUE
Veterans for Common Sense believes Under Secretary Daniel Cooper’s departure was long overdue, just as Nicholson's was. Cooper’s tenure was identical to disgraced former VA Secretary Jim Nicholson: both were incompetent and forced out of office because they failed to provide timely and quality assistance to our nation’s veterans. Their failures reflect on the string of poor choices made by President George W. Bush, who appointed unqualified VA leaders and who chronically under funded VA for years.
In 2006, as the VA claims crisis worsened, Cooper and Nicholson quietly handed out millions of dollars in cash bonuses, up to $33,000 in some cases, to top VA executives - during a time when more and more veterans waited longer and longer for VA benefits. That's right, while veterans couldn't feed their families and pay their bills due to disabilities, top VA executives got huge cash rewards. A reasonble person would conclude VA leaders were rewarded for failure. The bonuses should have gone to hard-working and over-burdened claims processors and other VA staff. Or the bonus cash could have been used to hire more employees.
In another strike against Cooper, in 2007, Veterans for Common Sense and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation filed an ethics complaint about Cooper because he appeared on a video, using his name and government title, to raise money and promote his personal views of religion, which violates our Consitution.
As reported by Aaron Glantz at Inter Press Service, "Cooper has been under fire for using his office to proselytise for evangelical Christianity ever since he appeared in a 2004 fundraising video for Christian Embassy, which carries out missionary work among the Washington elite as part of the Campus Crusade for Christ. In the video, Cooper says of his Bible study, 'It's not really about carving out time, it really is a matter of saying what is important. And since that's more important than doing the job -- the job's going to be there, whether I'm there or not.'"
STARK LESSONS
The lessons from the Nicholson and Cooper resignations are stark and tragic: the Bush Administration failed to monitor and then to plan for the massive tidal wave of hundreds of thousands of unexpected patients and disability claims as a result of the Iraq War fiasco. The end result of Cooper’s and Nicholson’s catastrophic failure is that 400,000 veterans wait an average of more than six months for a VA disability claim decision.
No veteran should ever have to wait more than 30 days for a VA decision. We must put veterans first. As World War II General Omar Bradley said while leading VA, “We are dealing with veterans, not procedures – with their problems, not ours.”
VCS believes Cooper’s departure represents an opportunity for the President and Congress to honor our nation’s commitment to those who protect and defend our Constitution. It is also an opportunity to let VA hard-working dedicated VA employees know that desperatey needed help is on the way.
The future looks tough. VA is expected to spend up to $700 billion dollars providing disability payments and healthcare to 700,000 or more Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans over the next 40 years, according to a Harvard University report.
In 2009, VA expects to treat 333,000 – yes, a third of a million – Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran patients. Older veterans continue pouring into VA as our domestic economy worsens. Plus hundreds of thousands of Vietnam War veterans are flooding into an already overburdened VA with PTSD and serious illnesses related to Agent Orange dioxin poisoning.
WHAT NEXT?
These facts present President Bush and Congress with two simple choices for VA:
• They can either ignore VA’s claims crisis and the urgent need for substantial overhaul, and then watch helplessly as hundreds of thousands more veterans slip through the cracks into despair.
• Or, they can name an aggressive veterans’ advocate who will reform and modernize VA’s broken and obsolete claims system following the recommendations of the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission, VA union employees, veterans’ groups, and veterans’ advocates.
An "Old Army Vet" and liberal, qua liberal, with a passion for open inquiry in a neverending quest for truth unpoisoned by religious superstitions. Per Voltaire: "He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity."
