Not sure if it’s the outright theft of taxpayer dollars intended for our veterans or the lame excuses coming from VA officials…
At one VA hospital in the Bronx it appears that more than $54 million in charges were run up on the government equivalent of credit cards in a two year period and the details look more than suspicious.
Employees in the purchasing department of a VA hospital in the Bronx, N.Y., had used government purchase cards like credit cards at least 2,000 times to buy prosthetic legs and arms for veterans.
Each time they swiped the cards, it was for $24,999. That was precisely one dollar below VA’s charging limit for purchase cards.
I know we’ve got a lot of seriously injured veterans to take care of and there should be no question about paying for their special needs. But one hospital had to handle two thousand prosthetic limbs for amputees in two years? Does that seem a bit high?
But not to worry, I’m sure this can all be cleared up. Let’s just have a look at the purchasing records. What’s that you say? You lost them in a flood? Well damn the bad luck.
When word reached Congress about the $54,435,743 worth of prosthetics bought under such odd circumstances over two years — the subject of an inspector general investigation announced Monday — lawmakers demanded details. But they were told there was no documentation.
VA officials had prepared to tell Congress that the records had been destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, according to previously undisclosed records, until a senior adviser in the Secretary’s office pointed out that the timing was wrong and the excuse wouldn’t hold up.
That’s right, the date when the records would have supposedly been irretrievably lost didn’t actually match the date of the big storm.
Furthermore, to accept that excuse (even if the dates did coincide) you’d have to believe that the documents only existed on paper stored somewhere vulnerable to flooding and that there were no backup copies in digital form safely archived in the vast government cloud.
WHO’S MINDING THE STORE??? THIS IS INSANE!!!
Read more: Hot Air
