Senator Coburn wants to pretend he just got to Washington

Senator Coburn is just too funny for words. He has up a video of a phone and a message from the VA saying their office hours are over. OK. The point was what? He showed a woman leaving the office as if that was supposed to mean anything?
I left this comment.

Really odd since Senator Coburn didn't seem to mention how long he has been in the Senate and the job of the Senate along with the House is to insure that the VA had been taking care of veterans. CSPAN still has all the hearings up on their site. He also didn't mention how none of these problems are new since they have been documented for decades and topics of many hearings our elected politicians have held. The House Veterans Affairs Committee was first seated in 1946. Almost 70 years later,,,,,well, here we are. The veterans community has very different discussions than the rest of the population and this dear friends is what we talk about. Nothing new to see and that is the worst part of all.

Senator Tom Coburn forgets he was part of the problem. He should have put up the Hogan's Heroes video on Sgt. Schultz saying "I know nothing. I was not here. I did not even get up this morning."
Isn't that what our elected officials were supposed to be taking care of all these years? My God! Where do these people get the nerve to look veterans in the eye and pretend they are shocked by all of this? Veterans call their offices all the time and complain. It is something they have known all along.

This is the headline over on the Washington Examiner.

New Tom Coburn report describes Veterans Affairs Department wracked by incompetence, corruption, coverups

I'll admit I didn't finishing reading this since it started out with this;

Underworked doctors, crooked contracting officers, criminals, perverts and cheats are all part of the broken culture that rewards failure and punishes honest employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a report released Tuesday by Sen. Tom Coburn.

"This investigation found the problems at the VA are far deeper than just scheduling. Over the past decade, more than 1,000 veterans may have died as a result of VA’s misconduct and the VA has paid out nearly $1 billion to veterans and their families for its medical malpractice," Coburn said in a statement about the report.

The Oklahoma Republican, himself a physician, did not spare his fellow senators, who he said are often more concerned with the good publicity that comes from a ribbon-cutting ceremony than they are about holding VA accountable.

Not even close!

With over 22,000 post on this site, there are far too many over the last 7 years proving Congress had no intentions of fixing anything. I did a top ten countdown just from 2008 of VA scandals and those were just the ones I could think of were at the top of the list.

Senator Tom Coburn has been in all of this up to his eyeballs.

Here's a blast from the past and took place in 2009.

Senator Tom Coburn blocks bill for veterans On the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th month, we honor all of America’s veterans. Today, because of you, we’re calling on one Senator to use today to truly honor veterans by ending his hold on a veterans spending bill.

Earlier in the week, I urged you to sign our petition calling on my Senator Tom Coburn to end his hold of S. 1963, "The Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2009." Within hours, over 10,000 of you signed.

Today, we’re turning over 13,000 signatures to the Senator.

The petition was covered by the Military Times newspapers, which you can read here (Coburn blocking bill).

By blocking this bill Sen. Coburn is denying veterans a myriad of benefits and services: Caregiver assistance to our most wounded veterans, who often need assistance to do some of the smallest tasks; Funding for such issues as mental health care for women who suffered military sexual trauma, women’s health care needs and medical services for newborn children; Aid for rural veteran health care issues; Mental health care; and, Programs to help ease the burden of veteran homelessness.

On this veterans day, I’d urge Senator Coburn to think about the thousands and thousands of veterans he’s hurting by playing politics with veterans care. The best thing he can do to honor veterans today is to release his hold on this bill. Because of you, the pressure is on him to do so. Today, we honor all of America’s veterans. Now it’s time for Senator Coburn to join us.
Sincerely,Miranda Norman
Iraq War Veteran
Oklahoma State Captain, VoteVets.org
And Jon, Peter, Brian, Richard, and the entire VoteVets.org team

This is from his own site. Prepare to have a sick feeling in your stomach.

Dr. Coburn Challenges Senators to Make Sacrifices for Veterans Health Care
November 9, 2009
“Our nation’s veterans have made tremendous sacrifices in defense of our freedoms. The least Senators should do is make the easy sacrifice of eliminating a small amount of wasteful spending to improve veterans’ health care. Leadership, after all, is making sacrifices and hard choices. Veterans and every family in America make hard choices every day between competing financial priorities. It’s time for politicians in Washington to do the same,” Dr. Coburn said.......

“The American people and our veterans understand that our spending problem has become a national security problem. We are borrowing massive sums from potential adversaries and are watching the value of the dollar decline because other nation’s doubt our ability and willingness to pay off our $12 trillion debt. If we don’t start making hard choices we may not have a country left to defend,” Dr. Coburn said.

As for veterans dying waiting for care we have this reminder

Oklahoma veterans and active-duty military personnel are killing themselves at twice the rate of civilians, despite increased efforts to address the problem.

The 2011 suicide rate for soldiers was about 44 per 100,000 population, according to an Oklahoma Watch analysis of Oklahoma State Department of Health data. This rate includes active-duty military as well as veterans from the post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Gulf War, Vietnam, Korea and World War II. The civilian rate for people over the age of 18 was about 22 per 100,000.

In 2011, 141 of the state’s 684 suicides were veterans, according to state health department records.

The veteran suicide rate in Oklahoma is down from a peak of about 46 in 2008, but researchers said that year had increased suicides due to the Great Recession. The rate dropped to about 39 in 2009 and has since climbed back up.

There is also this from 2012

Senators holding up a vote on a veterans jobs bill came under blistering criticism Thursday afternoon during a phone-in press conference with Senate Veterans Affairs Chairwoman Sen. Patty Murray and Sen. Ben Nelson, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The legislation, which is largely made up of provisions originated by or co-sponsored by GOP Senators, is currently being held up by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who says he will filibuster the bill until a doctor jailed in Pakistan for helping the U.S. locate Osama bin Laden is freed.

But other Republicans have offered different reasons for not letting the bill go to a vote, said Murray. Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., justified not voting on the bill because the House of Representatives would block it, according to Murray.

This could go on and on and on since Coburn has been in the seat long enough to know better. Too bad he is just like the rest of them using the Sgt. Schultz excuse.