Veterans Response To Tampa Bay Jeff Miller Report

Jeff Miller forgets that he has been head of the House Veterans Affairs Committee since 2011.

United States Representative Jeff Miller serves as Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. The Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is responsible for authorization and oversight of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA.) VA is the second largest department in the federal government with over 300,000 employees and a budget of over $150 billion.

But Miller has also been on the Committee since 2001! Yep! So who does he blame? He blames the VA.

After taking the oath of office in 2001, Congressman Miller was appointed to the House Armed Services Committee and the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. He quickly established himself within Washington as a strong advocate for veterans' concerns and immediately supported changes to concurrent receipt and policy changes such as a greater co-sharing between the military and veterans' clinics.

In that video Miller asked for Veterans to give their thoughts,,,,,,Here's some thoughts from veterans right here in Florida. "We're not gonna take it anymore!"

A year after VA scandal, House veterans committee chairman wants more progress
Tampa Bay Times
William R. Levesque
Times Staff Writer
Monday, May 25, 2015

The scandal has lifted Mil­ler's profile as he has become a sought-after quote by journalists reporting on the agency's deficiencies. And Miller, 55, is considering a 2016 Senate run for the seat expected to open as Marco Rubio seeks the presidency.

SEMINOLE — Whenever U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller attends a public event, veterans and Department of Veterans Affairs employees find him for short, intense conversations about one VA issue after another.

It happened after his Memorial Day speech at the Bay Pines Veterans Cemetery, where a short line of people waited to get a minute with the chairman of the House Veterans Affairs committee.

This is life for one of the VA's biggest Capitol Hill critics, who told the Tampa Bay Times on Monday he remains frustrated by the slow pace of reform at an agency hit in the past year by the worst scandal in its history.

"The VA did not get into the situation that exists today overnight," Miller said. "And it's not going to be resolved in a year's time. It is going to take an entire culture change within the department. There has to be transparency and accountability."

And too often, he said, those two qualities are still lacking.

The Pensacola Republican has been in the forefront of debate since the VA scandal erupted in April 2014 when a doctor at a Phoenix VA hospital said that 40 veterans there had died after delays in care and that the hospital kept a secret patient waiting list to hide its shortcomings. What followed was a series of revelations about the VA's widespread tactic of manipulating hospital performance measures nationally, its retaliation against whistle-blowers and patients lost in VA red tape.
read more here

There is absolutely nothing that has happened at the VA that should have surprised Miller since all the reports have come out repeatedly since 2001....actually even before that, but admitting that would assume members of Congress have a conscience.