Norton to File Bill to Repeal Walter Reed Closure - 3/5/2007

Also Seeks to Halt Destabilizing Privatization on Bases
March 5, 2007

 Washington, DC - After hearing from the full range of witnesses--from soldiers and an Army wife to the top brass--Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) said that today's hearing at Walter Reed Hospital "laid bare an administrative system that is so broken that short and long term remedies must be applied at the same time.  Without short term solutions, such as relieving overwhelmed case managers and installing a system of advocates for each veteran, this cohort of injured soldiers will not see the benefits of an improved system." Witnesses testifying today were an Army wife; two soldiers in out-patient care at Walter Reed; Lieutenant General Kevin C. Kiley, M.D., U.S. Army Surgeon General; Major General George W. Weightman, the former Commander of Walter Reed Army Medical Center; General Peter Schoomaker, Chief of Staff of the Army; General Richard A. Cody, Vice Chief of Staff of the Army; and an analyst from the General Accountability Office. 

            Norton said that she will introduce a bill to reverse the closing of the Walter Reed base to help stabilize personnel, who scatter once they believe a base will close.  She believes that the revelations that are coming rapidly about both military facilities and veterans' health needs "make closing Walter Reed, the premier Army hospital, unthinkable." Norton sharply criticized Army brass for putting Walter Reed at risk in the middle of a war. Norton cited "the twin pressures of a Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) planned for the base at the same time that "the Army chose to conduct an unnecessary, wholesale privatization of every job on the post except medical personnel," including staff charged with the renovation and upkeep of the facilities, like controversial the Building 18, where rodents and mold were first discovered and then reported in a Washington Post series a week ago.

            Norton never expected that the Administration or Congress would come forward with the required two or three billion dollars to construct the proposed new Walter Reed in Bethesda in the foreseeable future, given the mounting deficit, and "certainly not in the middle of a war when funds should go to soldiers, their families, veterans, and the war itself."  However, she believes a repeal bill is necessary because, if a BRAC closing remains on the books, it will continue to send a signal to personnel that the base is to be closed, making retaining and hiring vital personnel difficult, including civilian clinical and medical personnel.  "To add insult to injury," Norton said, "the Army decided to privatize skilled administrative and infrastructure jobs "that keep much of the place running."  The Congresswoman asked for a submission of any privatization on-going or planned at any Army facilities.

Norton said that the testimony "emphatically showed that short term solutions are necessary if soldiers home from Iraq and Afghanistan are to obtain any real time benefits from repairs to a system that is so broken that it will take years to do the long term fix that the tangled out-patient administrative system requires.  Soldiers and their families have lost confidence in the out-patient care, and immediate steps must be taken to restore their sense that the system is there for them."  The Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on which Norton serves, heard testimony of soldiers being left without directions around the Walter Reed campus or even any written guidance about the necessary steps they needed to take once they were no longer in the hospital.   

Particularly shocking was a graph that showed "most dramatically the deep harm the bureaucracy inflicts on a soldier," Norton said.  He must choose either VA or DoD disability benefits, which provide very different levels of financial benefits and count medical conditions differently.  The DoD rates only conditions that show a soldier is unfit for service, while the VA counts all service connected impairments.  However, "the key to what is most beneficial to a soldier is buried in a complicated system of many factors," Norton said.