President Biden’s nominee to handle military veterans’ issues was handled with kid gloves by senators on Wednesday, but advocacy groups are split as to whether a nonveteran without healthcare experience can advance the needs of former service members.
The new commander in chief raised eyebrows when he tapped Denis McDonough, a former White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama, to be his Veterans Affairs secretary. Biden’s argument was McDonough knows Washington as well as anyone, and he has seen his nominee’s passion for the many challenges military veterans face. If Senate Veterans Affairs Committee members have major concerns, they opted against voicing them with McDonough in the hot seat.
“All signs are that the Biden-Harris policy on veterans and military issues is going to even be worse than in the Obama-Biden administration,” said Steve Beren, spokesman for the conservative PAC Coalition for American Veterans.
Beren said his organization lobbied hard against Biden in the presidential election and that veterans who support his PAC fear a return to Obama-era Department of Veterans Affairs failures.
“There was so much neglect and mistreatment and disrespect of veterans,” he said, citing a scandal of overprescribing opioids at the Tomah VA facility in Wisconsin between 2004 and 2012. “The Democratic Party agenda is far to the left on all military- and veteran-related issues.”
Beren believes the return of Obama-era officials like McDonough could mean a return to long lines, overprescriptions, suicides, and deaths.
He also worries about McDonough’s lack of a military record and healthcare experience.
“That’s definitely a negative,” he said. “We’re worried that it would lead to what happened under Obama, where people are not really close to the veterans’ issues, not really close to the drug problems and the psychological problems.”
McDonough acknowledged at Wednesday’s hearing that he is not a veteran but contended his experience managing bureaucracy will help him cut through red tape to get vets the care they need.
“I’m not telling you that I’m a vet,” McDonough said. “But I am telling you that I have come to understand the massive sacrifices that they’ve made, and I’ve come to witness the amazing skill with which they’ve done it.”
He continued: “There is no higher calling than to use my skills to ensure that we make good on our promises to them, to serve them as well as they have served us.”
McDonough noted he had visited service members in Iraq and Afghanistan, at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and he had witnessed the return of deceased service members to Dover Air Force Base.
Tom Porter, executive vice president of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told the Washington Examiner his group’s members had called for Biden to nominate a veteran but said McDonough would bring a useful set of skills.
“It’s always important to be a veteran to be working on veterans policy because it means that you’ve stood in my shoes when I deployed around the world,” he said.
“You can’t just make that up,” he added. “But you can offset that with your own experiences and your willingness to do good stuff and be partners with the veterans community.”
Porter said the IAVA had spoken to McDonough by phone prior to the hearing and heard his commitment to listen to the veterans associations in contrast to the “one-way conversation” under former President Donald Trump’s last Veteran Secretary Robert Wilkie.
“Mr. McDonough has already indicated to us that he intends on doing the opposite of that,” Porter said.
Porter also cited McDonough’s high-level government experience and having the ear of the president.
“We know that he’s close to President Biden, which is something special in and of itself,” he added.
McDonough promised to do right by veterans on a range of issues from tackling sexual harassment and sexual misconduct on day one to improving mental healthcare, addressing veteran suicides, homelessness, and Biden’s priority, COVID-19 vaccines and care for veterans.
McDonough, who is expected to receive a vote in the coming days, also guaranteed timely answers from the VA to congressional inquiries and a prowess for speeding government sluggishness.
“I know and understand the federal government from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue,” he told North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis. “I can unstick problems inside agencies and across agencies and especially an agency as large as VA. That’s an important skill.”
