Could incompetence save the Republic? - Millbank WaPo
Doug Collins, the man President Donald Trump put in charge of slashing the Department of Veterans Affairs, controls the fate of some 9 million veterans who receive health care from VA and 6 million who rely on VA for disability benefits.
Yet when he came before the Senate to testify on Tuesday, it quickly became apparent that Collins, a former congressman from Georgia, lacks even a tenuous grasp on what he is doing.
How many clinical trials has the Trump administration stopped?
“I’d have to get that number back to you.”
How much has been saved from staff reductions so far?
“I’d have to get back to you.”
(snip)
Collins, speaking in a drawl and with the rapid-fire cadence of an auctioneer, often ended his thoughts midsentence and positioned his subjects in vehement disagreement with his verbs. He gloated that wait times for VA appointments increased during the Biden administration — but questioning revealed he was unaware that a 2022 change in the way wait times are calculated made the comparison meaningless. At another point, Collins was asked about Medicaid, which is for the poor and near-poor, and he confused it with Medicare, which is for seniors. “I’m not sure where we’re going with this,” Collins said when his error was pointed out.
Clearly.
The Trump administration has thrown VA into absolute chaos. The department announced that it was terminating 875 contracts — then announced that it was terminating the terminations. It fired 2,400 workers — then took 1,400 of them back as the dismissals are challenged in court. Across the country, notices have been taped to the doors of VA clinics announcing closures because of staff shortages. The department has ended clinical trials that provided treatments to veterans for cancers, traumatic brain injuries and other illnesses, ProPublica reported on Tuesday. The department even sacked people who worked on the veterans’ suicide prevention hotline, only to hire them back.
And this is but a fraction of the destruction that’s planned: Collins has announced a goal of eliminating 15 percent of VA staff — some 83,000 jobs — without any word about how he intends to go about it.
(snip)
But the hapless secretary got tangled in his own fury. “There’s not been 83,000 people targeted for firing,” he raged, mocking this as nothing more than “a nice talking point.”
“It’s your talking point,” Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) pointed out. “We’re quoting you saying that’s your goal.”
“It is our goal,” Collins shot back.
Not for the first time, I found myself wondering: As Trump and his appointees try to vandalize the U.S. government, could the Republic be saved by their incompetence?
https://wapo.st/3F4GH67
free
= new reply since forum marked as read
