WASHINGTON — (CNN) Hillary Clinton’s campaign on Wednesday charged that Republicans were using comments Clinton made last week about the Department of Veterans Affairs to “push an ideological agenda to privatize the VA.”
“At this point, Republicans are trying to exploit the scandal to try to score partisan points and push an ideological agenda to privatize the VA,” Brian Fallon, Clinton’s press secretary, said in a statement to CNN. “Republicans are trying to suggest the only solution to the VA’s problems is to privatize it, but Hillary Clinton will not apologize for insisting on doing the hard work to reform the VA, rather than ending it altogether.”
Fallon, whose statement sharpened what he told CNN on Tuesday, added that Clinton “refuses to believe the VA is beyond fixing.”
The statement comes in response to a conference call organized by the Republican National Committee, where Sen. John McCain, who spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner during the Vietnam War, lambasted Clinton for telling MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Friday that issues within the VA have “not been as widespread as it has been made out to be.”
McCain, who called for Clinton to apologize, said the facts say differently.
“I don’t know what Hillary Clinton’s view of what ‘widespread’ is, but facts are stubborn things,” the 2008 Republican presidential nominee said on a conference call with reporters. “Now Hillary Clinton, in her blind ambition, has injected partisanship into the VA issue and that is disgraceful.”
On Tuesday, Fallon walked back some of the comments Clinton made to MSNBC, acknowledging that wait times and other mismanagement of care by the Department of Veterans Affairs were indeed “systemic” but arguing that Clinton’s “widespread” comment was “misinterpreted” for political gain.
“Even now, too many of our veterans are still waiting an unacceptably long time to see a doctor, or to process disability claims and appeals,” Fallon said, adding that Clinton will roll out her plan to reform the VA in November.
Republicans, Democrats and veteran advocates have blasted Clinton’s original comments.
Paul Rieckhoff, founder and CEO of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, called her comments a “head-scratcher.” “That is not a winning argument — or factually correct,” he tweeted.
And a Tuesday editorial in the Arizona Republic declared, “The last thing vets need? Presidential aspirants playing partisan politics with their predicament.”
A VA inspector general concluded inappropriate scheduling practices at VA medical centers were “systemic” in 2014 after a CNN investigation revealed veterans were dying while waiting for care on “secret” lists at the Phoenix VA. The scandal led to the resignation of then-VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.
A more recent CNN investigation found the problem is actually getting worse — veterans continue to wait months for care at some VA facilities, and a September federally funded report concluded the agency remains “plagued” by problems including growing bureaucracy, staffing challenges and unsustainable costs.
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