How Bush supports the troops

Trying to pick the most dysfunctional federal agency in the Bush administration is like trying to pick Bush's most vile idea. Where do you start? Since I've had some inside experience with it, I'll volunteer the Department of Veterans Affairs (the VA).

I need to cut them a little slack, of course. They are underfunded. There are two reasons for this. One is that the Bush neocons don't really care about soldiers after they have served their purpose, so they don't ask for enough money, by design. The other reason is that they also don't ask for enough money by virtue of stupidity. It seems that they have a $3 billion dollar shortfall, accrued since 2005, because they didn't take account of the fact that the country was waging wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes, that's right. Their budget estimates were based on prewar data for caring for veterans.

But that's not all:

Investigators also said the VA failed to estimate correctly the costs for these war veterans partly because the agency could not get accurate information from the Defense Department.
In addition, the VA agency failed to tell Congress in a timely way that it was struggling to meet its expenses. The problems led officials to make requests for an extra $3 billion last year, according to the GAO.

Department officials said they agreed with the findings and were working to improve. Secretary Jim Nicholson said in a statement that the VA uses "highly reliable actuarial projections of health care demand" but that the agency continues to "refine" its modeling. (AP)

Yes, budgets are tight, and costs have to be controlled:

One plan called for the VA to reduce the average daily patient workload in its nursing homes. But the proposal would have required the agency to cut staff and discharge or transfer in a short time potentially thousands of veterans with severe, chronic physical or mental disabilities.

The plan also would have forced the veterans to dip into Medicaid, private insurance or their own savings to pay for care, the GAO found.

Mission Accomplished.