GOP’s Ben Carson eyes end to Veterans Administration

[DonViejo]

By Steve Benen

Republican presidential candidates often like to talk about the cabinet agencies they’re eager to destroy. Just this week, for example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) dismissed the federal Department of Education as unnecessary. In the last presidential election, then-Gov. Rick Perry (R) said he intended to scrap three cabinet agencies, though he famously forgot the third.

But when GOP candidates go after these agencies, they usually stick to departments like Commerce, Education, and occasionally Energy. Ben Carson, a leading 2016 contender, actually has a very different idea in mind. The Military Times reported:

Presidential hopeful Ben Carson’s comments suggesting the Veterans Affairs Department should be eliminated drew quick condemnation from multiple veterans groups, who called the idea short-sighted and ill-informed.

On a national radio show (on Aug. 27), Carson said that the country need to re-examine how it cares for veterans but also how to cut back on government bureaucracy.

The retired neurosurgeon said, “We don’t need a Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans Affairs should be folded in under the Department of Defense.”

As regular readers probably know, plenty of Republican presidential candidates support incorporating a voucher system into the VA, effectively privatizing parts of veterans’ care, but Carson is the first national candidate, at least in recent memory, to suggest eliminating the cabinet agency altogether.

John Biedrzyck, head of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, isn’t impressed. “To suggest that disabled veterans could be sent out into the economy with a health savings account card overlooks the fact that civilian health care has waiting lists of their own … and presupposes that civilian doctors have the same skill sets as VA doctors, who see veterans of every age and malady every day,” Biedrzyck said in a statement.

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http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/gops-ben-carson-eyes-end-veterans-administration?

[immoderate]

1. Ben Carson is a wacko. Don't be fooled by anything that seems rational.

--imm

[randys1]

2. To be air all GOP candidates would brush veterans completely under the rug if they could

Maybe not Graham, but all the rest could care less about veterans.

This has been proven over and over.

[SummerSnow]

3. another job killer rethug

[TwilightGardener]

4. The idea is to fold it in under the Pentagon budget, and then the Pentagon starts proclaiming

it can't afford active duty benefits AND veteran's benefits AND weapons systems, etc. and then active/VA benefits are gutted and turned over to unaccountable private charities and organizations--just another way for government to duck its responsibilities and break its promises. Fuck you, you sorry-ass clown, who told you you were Presidential material?

[Volaris]

9. I'll take Bill Clinton for 500 Alex..

If he trolled Trump into this, no telling who else he talked to
=)

[msongs]

5. provide VA health care via Medicare and/or Obamacare. Put all gov't employees on Obamacare

and/or medicare. If it's good enough for one, it's good enough for all.

[CharlotteVale]

8. WTF?!? And just what if they don't want to change? I certainly don't.

Congressional republicans forced their staffs onto Obamacare to make some kind of twisted point. So it's bizarre to see a poster here advocating the exact same thing Republicans did.

[0rganism]

6. he's got a point: folding the VA into the DoD would be one way to get adequate funding

the VA is scraping for clean bedsheets, while the DoD spends billions on stupid shit. fine, let the DoD handle the VA, make the weapons merchants compete for defense contracts versus support services for the people who got hurt using their dangerous products in dangerous ways.

as long as the GOP holds the pursestrings in DC, the best way to get money to any project will be rolling it up under the defense budget.

[Skittles]

7. in which branch of the military did he serve?

do I even need to ask?