Top Men

There’s a time when the things you see on a day to day basis start to nag at you; a time when the way things work start to break down and you don’t really see a remedy in place. This is one of those times. I’m speaking here as a veteran who happens to see the way the government operates, not as “The Legion”. This is just one man’s view of the frustrations inherent in this town, Washington, the shining city on the hill, the beacon of Democracy. I’m just a dumb old grunt, a field soldier who was horrible at the niceties of garrison life, I’m a guy who was happier out in the field, away from pomp and ceremony out on the pointy end where you just did your job and dang it if it wasn’t by the book. When a teacher assigns you homework, they don’t tell you to get it done when you feel like it. When a boss tells you a report is due your boss doesn’t tell you-when you get around to it. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) consistently falls short of meeting the benchmarks assigned to them by law. Over two years ago, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a report linking hypertension to the same causative standard found for diabetes mellitus type II. VA has a required period for comment…we’re still sitting here waiting for word one. Last fall, VA announced that three new conditions (ischemic heart disease, Parkinson’s disease, and hairy cell leukemia) were to be added to the list of presumptive conditions related to exposure to Agent Orange; the deadline looms for a proposed regulation and VA states that it’s being worked on without any indication of whether they will meet their federally mandated deadlines for such a proposed regulation. Likely we’ll not see a final regulation until sometime this summer. In November of 2008 Congress passed a law, PL 110-389, The Veterans’ Benefits Improvement Act of 2008. In the law, there was a provision to enhance the ability of families of deceased service members to continue the claims of their veteran who has passed. VA has still not published even a proposed regulation 16 months later. They’re “still working on it”. I can’t help but be reminded of the scene at the end of Indiana Jones when our hero is trying desperately to find out what the government is doing about the major artifact he has suffered so much to recover. The government agents look at him stone faced and reply:

We have top men working on it Doctor Jones…Top Men.

The camera pans back on a crate being slowly pushed into an unused corner of a vast government warehouse by an apathetic functionary, one of the greatest artifacts of all time lost in the forgotten mists. We’ve got to do better than that.