House votes 390-30in favor - Senate Dems block

[kent]

I'd love to hear the far left spin on this one.....jerks!

There’s no green light from Congress for firing authority for the head of the VA.

There’s no green light from Congress for firing authority for the head of the VA.

Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked a Republican attempt to take up a bipartisan House bill that would give the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs the authority to fire senior VA executives without the benefit of standard administrative procedures. A companion bill had already passed the House with a strong bipartisan majority of 390-30.

With the revelation in recent weeks that a number of VA hospitals have had extremely long waiting lists for veterans seeking appointments — and that in some cases, senior executives have worked to hide the excessive patient backlogs from the public — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) sought unanimous consent to bypass the regular committee process and bring the House bill to the floor of the Senate for an immediate vote.

“People need to be held accountable,” Rubio said.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who chairs the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, refused unanimous consent, effectively blocking a vote. Sanders said that while he agrees with some provisions of the bill,...............

[Tennesseer]

This may be from your link (it's not working, at least for me).

The below makes sense to me.

"In Sanders’ defense, there may be a number of good reasons not to give the VA Secretary expansive power to fire executives. The civil service system has a number of checks and balances to protect government employees. Many people view them as excessively biased in favor of government workers, and the result of unionization.

In fact, though, they are designed to prevent a de facto return to the spoils system, in which an incoming president’s administration would purge senior officials from the opposite party and install members of their own party.

Making it easy to fire senior federal executives, who are expected to be non-partisan in their work, would make it possible for future VA heads to remake the agency in their own ideological mode."

See more at: www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/05/22/Senate-Dems-Block-Bill-Make-Firing-VA-Execs-Easier#sthash.aHIrPhaT.dpuf

[djAdvocate]

i am not sure they should fire him.

my reasoning is twofold:

1) he didn't actually do anything wrong.
2) firing him won't fix the problem.

you want to fire him?  go ahead.  but you had better come up with a REAL solution BEFORE you do.