few deeply traumatic stories that affect veterans across the country. my question, how much can one person do? how much political will do you think there is on both sides of the aisle to truly fix what s wrong here? the president listed a number of his nominees that have yet to be confirmed because republicans in congress are dragging their feet. those people could be all actors in helping resolve what is a massive crisis at the va. that new york times piece was referencing active duty military hospitals and bob mcdonald will oversee the veterans hospitals which is separate and larger. i will say, alex, and i agree with sam, where the rubber meets the road is the budgets. lelgts be clear, the military budget the va budget went from $90 billion a year to $154 billion. that s a 58% increase. now the bill is going to conference is about $35 billion
it s not set upright, efficiently to have so many government workers that get paid the same, do a great job, poor job, doesn t matter. they need to change the lock. it s knot a monnot a money i. there was about 54 billion to the va and 2013, it was 154 billion. we almost doubled over the last five years or so. it s not a money issue, it s an accountability issue. you re absolutely right, eric. it s not money. they have plenty of money to do their job. it s mentally. there is no sense of urgency and i think they are not performing. it s not a money issue. it s cultural. i think that having this great large government, this government gone wild type mentality in the va is really hurting our veterans and not fair. our veterans deserve better than this. we ll have to leave it there. thank you very much. as an american marine sits in a mexican jail cell at this
ones who are not doing their job. it has to change the way we do business. it s not set up efficiently to have so many government workers who do a great job or a poor job. can t get rid of you. it s not a money issue. 2008, their outlays were about $45 billion. in 2013, the outlay became 154 billion. you re saying it s not a money issue. it s an accountability issue. you re absolutely right. it s not a money issue. they have plenty of money to do their job. it s a mentality issue. there s no sense of urgency at the va. they re just not performing. so it s not a money issue. it s a cultural issue. i think that having this great large government, this government gone wild type men l mentality in the va is hurting our veterans. coming up, as an american
be true, it is dishonorable. it is disgraceful and i will not tolerate it, period. can i take this one? sure. okay. fine. i will not tolerate it, i won t stand for it, but you stopped short. or else what? or who s going to get fired? is anyone going to get fired? i listened to the whole press conference. he never said that. yeah. he never said, heads will roll, these people will be fired. they ll be removed. by the way, wait till we find out how many people are stealing money from the v.a. wait till we find out how many people are purchasing managers and what not. and they re lining their own pockets. this thing is just beginning to break open, bob. you can t say it s a few isolated you re not suggesting that obama knew? i m suggesting if you spend $154 billion, there s a lot of waste, fraud and abuse. but the taxpayers bailed out
something before they react. the president is scheduled to make remarks on monday. i m assuming this is where he s going to weigh in on this issue. a little too late on this. i predict he s going to say this is an outrage i m very mad. he s very angry about this and he s going to say that we need to invest in our veterans and he s going to propose even more spending. the problem with this, eric, is that it s not a spending problem. they have been spending money at the va. it s an incentive issue. there s nowhere else to go for this care just like medicaid, so you can pile all the money that you want, this is not a problem that s going away. in 2008, the $85 billion. the estimated for 2014, $154 billion. almost doubling. it ought to be because it s that kind of problem. by the way, one thing i m really