A dissipation of dollars, that should have gone to vets in need and to correct the under staffing issue at the VA, went to making the buildings aesthetically appealing. $6.3 million was spent by the VA on art.
A $483,000 rock sculpture that’s layered into cubes outside the mental health center at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Palo Alto, Calif. It’s part of a renovated $1.3 million courtyard.
An art installation on the side of a parking garage that displays quotes by Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt in Morse code, at a cost of $285,000. It lights up.
Altogether, VA Palo Alto Health Care System has spent at least $6.3 million on art and consulting services. The costs come to $4,190,356 at the Palo Alto Medical Center, $1,879,521 at the Monterey Health Care Center and $280,000 in other budgeted projects.
The VA says it is understaffed and budget-strapped to serve the aging veteran population, as well as those who have in recent years returned from Middle East wars. Yet they blow the resources they have on rock sculptures!
The Republican Congress has put the VA under great scrutiny due to the various scandals and wasteful spending that is a pattern of negligence.
Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, called the rock sculpture “wanton and abusive spending practices” by the agency.
More of your tax dollars, meant to help those who have given it all for our freedom, squandered by bureaucrats.
Source: Washington Post
Where’s the accountability and over-sight??
every time you go the the va they build a nice wing only tho tear it down and rebuild it all over funding lost if its not used .
Shameful example of the abuse and waste of our taxes not to mention the deaths and heartache caused for our most worthy, our VETERANS. We must get this agency abolished or making gigantic leaps forward ASAP in caring for our veterans.
Image is more important than substance WHEN YOU ARE DEFRAUDING PEOPLE!!!
Rocks and art works. Why not spen it on veterans.
These people should be fired for missappropriation of funds !
I have had a VA worker tell me of the WAST of money. This money should be spent for additional workers. People who IS PRO-American, and can speak ENGLISH that a US veteran can UNDERSTANB, and NOT in such broken ENGLISH they can not be understood.
I am so sorry Timothy.
idiots