It will injure vets if it’s under DOD.
Dang....looks like FR was down for a couple of hours?
Why?
I am a retired Army officer (some active, some reserve) and can see some merit in Dr. Carson’s idea. I also understand something about how the budget works. If there was a separate line item under the Defense budget that gave them funds for Veterans care, the rest of the DoD could not touch that money. In essence, what Dr. Carson is proposing is to cut the head off of the Veterans Department and move the structure under the DoD top civilian leadership. That could work, if it were structured correctly.
If we are going to do something like that, I would rather take the rest of Dr. Carson’s idea of providing the bulk of Veterans’ non-specialized care through the civilian world. Keep the VA structure for certain specialized care and research.
Of course the easiest fix would be to put people in charge of the VA who are more interested in the Veterans and less interested in the bureaucracy, then give them free reign to hire people without regard to the Federal hiring system and fire anyone at will.