Discussion for article #223339
Kind of expected that, right or wrong.
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What were the findings of the investigation?
I’m sorry to see this. Sadly, I think it’s going to do a lot more harm than keeping him on to work on the issues, which don’t disappear with his resignation and certainly existed LONG before he was involved.
And now the VA is left without a head. With no obvious or immediate nominee to replace Shinseki…and as we all well know, the nomination hearing process on THIS one will become as big of a circus act as the Benghazi hearings. The GOP have no intentions now to replace.
So who suffers? Again, the vets.
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Now…will the GOP give adequate funding???
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Does the VA Secretary require Senate confirmation?
The investigation isn’t complete that I’m aware of.
This was giving in to the wolves howling at the door, nothing more.
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Yes. The Senate has to confirm all appointments. It’s in the Constitution.
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Yes, according to everything I’ve read, and Shinseki went through a nomination hearing (there are transcripts of it).
So there would have to be a new nominee, another vetting process, and another hearing to replace them. And we all know full well there is no chance the GOP will let the President appoint an interim Secretary (if that’s even allowed). This is the exact reason I was hoping he wouldn’t bow to the pressure.
They’re going to milk this for all its worth. Mark my words.
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And THIS is what I’ve been harping on. This whole fiasco is going to hurt vets EVEN MORE. Because right now, time is not on their side. The problems are too systemic. We’re now at the beginning of summer and Congress will be wholly unavailable to dal with this situation because of midterms. Oh, and then 2016.
That WON’T help any vets anytime soon.
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So now the GOP and the witless Dems running in the mid-terms who called for his resignation have a scalp to crow about. And now the VA has no leader at the top, the GOP will grandstand the hell out of any nomination and demagogue it to the nth degree for months and right into the mid-terms (and beyond) while the problems are not addressed or fixed within the VA and the vets are the ones paying the price yet again.
Well done people.
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This is payback for his brave and honest stance on the Iraq war, pure and simple. You never go against the village.
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I think watching the Presidents press conference would help
There’s nothing requiring the existence of any of the President’s Cabinet in the Constitution. President Washington proposed the idea of the cabinet because he felt the President had too much to do for one man to handle.
What we normally don’t get to see is that the cabinet is a huge bureauracy with under secretaries to the cabinet members that are appointed as well, so effectively the President will have an under secretary take Shinseki’s role until he finds a replacement and has them approved by the Senate. There won’t be a void in the wake of this resignation.
My question was only half-serious, as I suspected as much.
The sad part about all this, as you’ve pointed out, is that the vets are again the ones getting the shaft. The fact that so many politicians were calling for heads to roll before any investigation was allowed to get to the bottom of the matter only proves where their selfish priorities lie. To the lawmakers who instantly started screaming for resignation, the problem wasn’t that our vets are receiving substandard care. The problem was that there was a problem. And how do you deal with a problem? You call for heads to roll. And then the problem is taken care of.
#Nailed it!
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There’s another issue to this that we really need to keep in mind. And that’s the core concept of healthcare in America today.
I’ve heard that some in the military are opening up to the idea that vets need to be able to see private medical care. OK - that sounds good. Up to a point. Keeping in mind that the ACA has just brought in a whole slew of people who formerly did not have health insurance. Veterans seeking care privately are in back of those people. If the military community thinks that’s going to be some kind of “fix” I think they’re going to find out the hard way, it’s not going to work out.
In addition, going down that particular route only hastens the privatization of the VA. I’d be willing to bet on it.
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Exactly.
The systemic infrastructure issues existed before Shinseki, LONG before Shinseki. And now all you have is a leaderless VA and no clear path forward that whomever is going to step into this role (either interim or permanently) has the authority or the facility to fix the problems.
All this resignation does is soothe the baying wolves. It solves no problems and from everything I see, actually creates the bigger one of pushing the priority - veterans - further aside while the politicians fight, squabble, pontificate and yell about what a disaster this is and how nothing is getting done…while they’re doing nothing at all to fix it.
I’m with you, I’m not happy with Dems right now who called for his head as equally as I’m pissed at the GOP who did it. A plague on their GD houses…
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Best thing that could happen for the people responsible for this disaster in the VA.
Be a year (at least) before a new Secretary will be appointed, then 2 years minimum before that appointee discerns where the bodies are buried and who to rightly punish, rather than blindly punish.
The responsible people will stay in place, or evade accounting by obscuring the blame and trying to foist it on others. Poo will be flung, the mess will get worse, and nobody will be noticing because Shinseki is gone, problem solved!
As I say, the most desirable outcome for the people we least desire to still be working there.
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How about McCain and Flake resigning as well, or everyone who voted against the VA bill.
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Yeah, they’ll get right on that. As soon as they appoint someone at ATF.
Any day now.
Any day now.
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