Congressman Miller starting at wrong end of VA firing

Miller: VA can fire bad workers right now
By LEO SHANE III
Published: March 8, 2013
C.J. LIN
STARS AND STRIPES

WASHINGTON -- In an address before the American Legion last week, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., blamed at least part of the benefits backlog problem on “problematic employees” within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

He said he wants more accountability -- and firings -- of claims specialists and supervisors failing at their jobs, saying he believes those workers are often simply reassigned to other offices.
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Feb 13, 2013 Chairman Jeff Miller (R-FL) delivers remarks during a House Veterans Affairs Committee meeting "Honoring the Commitment: Overcoming Barriers to Quality Mental Health Care for Veterans."

In the 112th Congress, Florida was represented by Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, along with others from Florida, Gus Bilirakis, Cliff Stevens and Corrine Brown. In the 113th Miller resumed the position along with Gus Bilirakis and Corrine Brown. Ronald DeSantis replaced Cliff Stevens.

In 2007, Lt. DeSantis reported to the Naval Special Warfare Command Group in Coronado, California, where he was assigned to SEAL Team One and deployed to Iraq with the troop surge as the Legal Advisor to the SEAL Commander, Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah.

There you have some background on what I am about to say. For all of these people in position to do something about everything going on we ended up with Jeff Miller finally talking about accountability by going after the VA workers. Amazing!

The issue here is, yes, things have to change and while it is a good thing to look at people not doing their jobs it would have been smarter to figure out what jobs they were given, how they were told to do them and above all, getting accountability from the top down, not starting at the bottom.

They don't make the rules. They don't establish programs. They don't control research or publications or even have the ability to talk to the media. Members of Congress do.

Accountability has to start with Congress, the groups receiving the grants yet providing deplorable results and everyone else at the top of the chain. Figure out what does not and has not worked because if they don't we will see more and more suffer after they come home.