{"id":111677,"date":"2014-08-04T14:13:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-04T18:13:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/veterans-access-choice-and-accountability-act-squanders-millions\/"},"modified":"2014-08-04T14:13:24","modified_gmt":"2014-08-04T18:13:24","slug":"veterans-access-choice-and-accountability-act-squanders-millions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/veterans-access-choice-and-accountability-act-squanders-millions\/","title":{"rendered":"Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act Squanders Millions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"s2pred\"><strong>NEWS SOURCE: John Krause Private Investigator<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>PENSACOLA, Fla., Aug. 4, 2014 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) &#8212; The Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act squanders millions on bonuses and &#8220;consultant&#8221; handouts and pushes serious issues off until after elections, says Republican Florida District 1 Congressional candidate John Krause.<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;Poor leadership and nonexistent oversight allowed veterans issues to worsen for years. They won&#8217;t be fixed with election-year patches,&#8221; says Krause. &#8220;From what we&#8217;re seeing, incumbent politicians have done the bare minimum to carry them through election season. They&#8217;re calling this emergency funding. Guess what &#8211; they created this emergency to begin with.<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;What happens when new veterans end up in the same boat next year? How can we trust Congress to do the right thing when they let it slide this long?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> Krause criticized the bill for authorizing millions in Federal employee bonuses and unspecified &#8220;consultant&#8221; contract payouts, including:<\/p>\n<p> * A $360 million PER YEAR authorization for Veterans Administration bonuses.<\/p>\n<p> * A private consultant contract with an unspecified payout ceiling to report on VA processes.<\/p>\n<p> * A paid Committee who will receive Federal executive pay and select their own employees without going through Federal qualification processes; who will also receive Federal executive pay.<\/p>\n<p> * An unpaid study by a specific technology industry advocacy group to gauge whether the VA should buy &#8220;off the shelf&#8221; technology products.<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;Why is any government employee who already gets excellent tax-subsidized benefits getting a bonus to do their job?&#8221; Krause stated. &#8220;People in the private sector aren&#8217;t getting bonuses during a depression.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> Krause questioned the bill&#8217;s hidden, non-care related expenses.<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;This new Committee and the consulting contract &#8211; where&#8217;s the money coming from for those?&#8221; Krause asks. &#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you where &#8211; from regular VA funding.<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;These handouts will cost millions that could be going towards veterans,&#8221; he predicted. &#8220;Why do we employ thousands of Federal Service Resource Management personnel if we&#8217;re going to be contracting studies out?<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;And why do we need another paid committee to oversee the VA? We already have a paid Committee who aren&#8217;t doing their jobs. It&#8217;s called Congress. Now they&#8217;re handing out millions in Executive salaries for yet another layer of bureaucracy to do their work for them? This committee is supposed to last 7 months: what are the odds it&#8217;s extended to a long-term jobs program for special friends and relatives?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> The bill&#8217;s detailed consultant and committee qualification requirements suggest preselected candidates, says Krause.<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;This sounds like they already have political donor friends in mind. That&#8217;s more handouts to cronies cutting into money that could go for medical care. I&#8217;ve seen at least one guy who the VA won&#8217;t pay for a leg replacement. But they have millions for their consultant friends? They&#8217;re letting an industry group decide whether taxpayers need to buy industry products? It&#8217;s deplorable business as usual.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> Private hospital funding should be the priority, says Krause.<\/p>\n<p> &#8220;What happens when they run out of money for private care?&#8221; Krause says. &#8220;That&#8217;s the greatest need and that&#8217;s the most bangs for the buck. Why not just put funding towards care and treatment in private hospitals instead of VA payroll?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> John Krause for Congress website: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.krause4congress.com\/\">http:\/\/www.krause4congress.com\/<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p> *PHOTO: Send2Press.com\/wire\/images\/14-0804-john-krause_300dpi.jpg .<\/p>\n<p>News issued by: John Krause<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/images\/14-0804-john-krause_500x375.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"John Krause\"\/><\/p>\n<p><small>Original Image: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/images\/14-0804-john-krause_500x375.jpg\" class=\"autohyperlink\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/images\/14-0804-john-krause_500x375.jpg<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n<p> # # # <\/p>\n<p><small>Original Story ID: 2014-08-0804-002 (9534) :: Veterans-Access-Choice-and-Accountability-Act-Squanders-Millions_2014-08-0804-002<\/small><\/p>\n<p><small>Original Keywords: VA funding, Florida District 1 Congressional candidate, Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act John Krause Pensacola Florida PENSACOLA, Fla.<\/small><\/p>\n<p><small>Alternate Headline: With VA Funding Crises, Poor Leadership and Nonexistent Oversight Allow Veterans Issues to Worsen<\/small><\/p>\n<p><small><strong>NEWS ARCHIVE NOTE:<\/strong> this archival news content, issued by the news source via Send2Press Newswire, was originally located in the Send2Press&reg; 2004-2015 2.0 news platform and has been permanently converted\/moved (and redirected) into our 3.0 platform. Also note the story &#8220;reads&#8221; counter (bottom of page) does not include any data prior to Oct. 30, 2016. This press release was originally published\/issued: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 14:13:24 +0000<\/p>\n<p><\/small><\/p>\n<p><code><small>Original Shortcode for Story: http:\/\/i.send2press.com\/ISnvz<\/small><\/code><\/p>\n<p class=\"s2pred\"><strong>NEWS SOURCE: John Krause Private Investigator<\/strong> | Published: 2014-08-04 14:13:24<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PENSACOLA, Fla., Aug. 4, 2014 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) &#8212; The Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act squanders millions on bonuses and &#8216;consultant&#8217; handouts and pushes serious issues off until after elections, says Republican Florida District 1 Congressional candidate John Krause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9780,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"singles-wide.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19937],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-releases-archive","has-post-title","has-post-date","no-post-category","no-post-tag","no-post-comment","has-post-author"],"acf":[],"views":454,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9780"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111677\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.send2press.com\/wire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}