Former Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin was fired because he was "incompetent," not because he stood in the way of President Donald Trump's plans to privatize the agency, Rep. Mike Coffman said Saturday, offering a harsh criticism of the ousted official.
"That's simply not true," the Colorado Republican told Fox News of Shulkin's claims. "Secretary Shulkin was removed, or now, I can say former Secretary Shulkin was removed, because he was an incompetent leader. He did nothing to change the culture, the culture of bureaucratic incompetence that permeates senior levels of leadership at the Veterans Administration."
Further, said Coffman, Shulkin lost his job because of "his own failings in terms of ethics, in lying to investigators about his travel issues at taxpayers' expense."
He also said Shulkin is blaming his expulsion as a "red herring to draw attention away from himself and his own failures."
After Shulkin was fired on Wednesday, he has given several television interviews, and wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times in which he blamed his dismissal on advocates in the VA who were pushing for privatization.
"They saw me as an obstacle to privatization who had to be removed," he wrote for The Times. "That is because I am convinced that privatization is a political issue aimed at rewarding select people and companies with profits, even if it undermines care for veterans."
Coffman noted that Shulkin came to the post from within the VA, and was a holdover from former President Barack Obama's administration.
"I think that the VA can only be cleaned up by somebody coming in from the outside," said Coffman. "There's a classified layer at the top, a director layer of all the different programs...these are senior executive service employees that we gave the authority to the prior administration to remove expeditiously. They never took advantage of that."
Trump has tapped White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson for Shulkin's job, but Coffman said whoever comes in needs to be ready to "look at the failures year after year after year that are documented by the Office of Inspector General for the VA."
Over the years, Coffman added, the VA's problems remain because "these same people have been left in charge of these failed programs that are not serving our nation's veterans. These people need to be removed."
Jackson's appointment has been met with critics who say he does not have experience to run the VA, but Coffman said the agency's other secretaries failed because they failed to get rid of "the deadwood at the top of this organization, the bureaucratic deadwood."
Coffman said Jackson needs to do just that, and he plans to sit with him before he's confirmed by the Senate to make sure he knows what needs to happen so the VA can serve the nation's veterans.
He also said he believes Jackson will go along with a program that's before Congress that will allow veterans their choice for healthcare providers.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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