Now President Obama has to rebuild the VA system that Bush destroyed.
A report on CBS news the other night reported that 36 new VA locations that were in the planning stages to be built in the next 48 months are now on hold due to the sequestration.
You can thank the Republican party for that . . House Speaker Boehner specifically, who claimed that he got 98% of what he wanted during the negotiations in August 2011!!
The news report went in to quite a bit of detail about how the GAO recently decided that the VA wasn't renting all of the facilities that they have been claiming they were renting for all this time, but instead the GAO said that the VA actually owned those facilities instead.
Well, that's a horse of a different color, isn't it??
So, the VA had to adjust their annual operating budget to account for the way they have calculated their expenses for the last 20 years, and take the cost of "owning" those buildings right off of the top of their operating budget first thing this year!!!
No more new VA facilities, ain't got the money!!!
Surprised?
You shouldn't be, this kind of shit has been going on for more than 40 years, ever since the end of the Vietnam War!!
Reagan was the one that started the decline of the VA by consolidating their facilities and shutting down more than 220 VA centers located across the country during his 8 years in the White House.
Ol' Man Bush continued the trend, shutting down as many as 50 facilities while he was the President in just 4 short years.
George Dubya went even farther than his dad or Reagan, by realigning the VA districts that affect veterans, causing some veterans who only lived 50 miles from the center they were going to for treatment, to be forced to travel more than 300 miles clear across the state to the VA center in the new VA district that they now had been placed in on paper.
The realignment of districts is known as gerrymandering when it is applied to political divisions.
And this is exactly what George Dubya did to the VA system . . he gerrymandered the entire VA system!!!
Why?
So, they could start restricting treatments offered by an individual VA facility so they could shut down services offered by several VA centers in the same district so they could consolidate those services!
Which meant that duplicate health services offered in one town were shut down, and are only offered now in another town located in the same district.
Causing the veterans who were attending the first VA facility to travel as much as 300 miles away for treatment, clear across the state!!
In some cases, those veterans have to travel out of state, to a VA facility located in their district, because those VA districts cover several states, not just one!
Health treatment that those veterans were promised by their federal government.
And taken away by the AWOL President, George Dubya!!!!
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