Retired Brig. Gen. Donald Bolduc, 57, who announced his Senate candidacy in New Hampshire, said he knows a thing or two about the problems that plague the Department of Veterans Affairs, pushing back on defenders of the agency, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The New York Democrat defended the VA in April, saying its main problem is the lack of funding and that the department is a blueprint to implement a “Medicare for All” plan.
During his campaign launch on Monday, the five-time Bronze Star medal recipient said veterans needed to be treated better by the VA because “they have earned it.”
Bolduc told the Washington Examiner he still gets his care through the VA because he believes its existence is necessary and to stay connected with the experiences veterans face with the department.
“People that work in the VA are good people and want to do the right thing,” said Bolduc. “They are caught in a bureaucracy that prevents them from being effective, and that’s the number one thing that needs to be changed.”
“The VA gets plenty of money,” he said, adding “it’s just the bureaucracy that wastes a lot of that money.”
The VA’s budget is around $200 billion. The department has requested a total of $220.2 billion for the 2020 fiscal year, a 9.6% increase from the previous fiscal year.
Pointing to the VA’s leadership and bureaucracy problem, Bolduc said the suicide rate shows how the department is failing the nation’s veterans.
Bolduc said the “bureaucracies need to be streamlined and the leadership needs to be less controlling, more facilitating, and we need to drive that down to the communities” so they can be empowered to put programs in place that best suits their veterans.
Bolduc said his past work with host nations and their people, while he was in charge of Special Operations Command-Africa, has provided him a template to work with people in Washington, D.C., to solve difficult challenges, such as the VA.
“In most of my military career, I could not strong-arm people into doing anything, even as a general officer,” he explained. “Bossing and bullying people around is only going to go so far.”
Bolduc is challenging Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, who is running for a third term.
