Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said he thinks Dr. Ronny Jackson will likely be tasked with privatizing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs due to his lack of experience manning a large organization.
Sanders said on CNN’s “State of the Union” Jackson, the White House physician and a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, doesn’t know much about heading a large bureaucracy. If he’s the one Trump picked to replace David Shulkin, ousted on Wednesday, Sanders said, then he must be in favor of privatization.
“He has no experience in this area but I would strongly suspect that if you get rid of Shulkin, who opposed privatization, and you put in Dr. Jackson, that is what his mission will be,” Sanders said.
Sanders, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, said one only needs to look at the past decisions of the Trump administration to know what the end result will be.
Sanders said the Koch brothers, powerful Republican donors, are going to push for privatization and the administration will likely accede.
“What the Koch brothers believe is not just that we have to privatize the Veterans administration, they want to privatize Medicare, and the Trump administration had a $500 billion cut in Medicare,” he said. “They want to privatize Medicaid. They had a trillion-dollar cut in Medicaid. They’re beginning to go after Social Security.”
“We have a secretary of education who does not believe in public education. A secretary of the environment, EPA, who does not believe in environmental protection. So, what you’re looking at under the leadership of the Koch brothers is a massive effort to privatize agency of the U.S. government and give them over to private corporations.”
