Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald: Disney doesn't measure wait times, so why should VA?

Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald on Monday compared the length of time veterans wait to receive health care at the VA to the length of time people wait for rides at Disneyland, and said his agency shouldn't use wait times as a measure of success because Disney doesn't either.

"When you got to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? Or what's important? What's important is, what's your satisfaction with the experience?" McDonald said Monday during a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters. "And what I would like to move to, eventually, is that kind of measure."

McDonald's comments angered House Speaker Paul Ryan, who tweeted out Monday afternoon, "This is not make-believe, Mr. Secretary. Veterans have died waiting in those lines."

This is not make-believe, Mr. Secretary. Veterans have died waiting in those lines. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/va-secretary-disney-doesnt-measure-wait-times-so-why-should-va/article/2592021 …

MORE ABOUT  Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald

Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald admits he lied about serving in the military’s elite Special Forces in a January TV broadcast.


With a CBS-TV news crew in tow, McDonald encountered a homeless veteran who told him he had served in the Special Forces.

“Special Forces? What years? I was in Special Forces!” McDonald falsely claimed in the report broadcast on Jan. 30.

The former CEO of Procter & Gamble graduated from West Point in 1975 and completed Army Ranger training, but never became a member of the Special Forces, which includes the Rangers, Navy SEALs, Green Berets and Delta Force.

McDonald served five years in the military, nearly all of it with the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division as a senior parachutist and jumpmaster.

“What I said was wrong,” McDonald told the website, adding that he “wanted to clear up the confusion I probably created — I did create.”

His disclosure comes in the wake of NBC News anchor Brian Williams’ six-month, no-pay suspension for lying about riding in a military helicopter that was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during outbreak of the 2003 Iraq war.

Members of the 82nd Airborne are seen setting up after parachuting in troops and equipment near Cairo West Air Base on Nov. 14, 1981.

(Foley/AP)

“I reacted spontaneously and I reacted wrongly, (with) no intent in any way to describe my record any different than it is,” McDonald said.

Retired Army Col. Gary Bloomberg, a former Special Forces commander, called McDonald’s fabrication “a boneheaded statement.”

“Is this what we want from our senior government officials?” Bloomberg told The Huffington Post.

The White House said Monday that it accepted McDonald’s explanation.

“Secretary McDonald has apologized for the misstatement and noted that he never intended to misrepresent his military service,” the White House said in a statement. “We take him at his word and expect that this will not impact the important work he’s doing to promote the health and well-being of our nation’s veterans.”

Obama appointed McDonald to the cabinet post after Eric Shinseki, a retired four-star general, resigned amid a firestorm over mismanagement that caused long delays for veterans seeking medical treatment at the VA hospital in Phoenix.

 WATCH THE VIDEO HERE.

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Monday, February 23, 2015, 10:01 PM

The man President Obama picked to clean up the Veterans Administration scandal conceded Monday that he lied about serving in the military’s elite Special Forces.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald, 61, admitted that he told the fib in a TV news report.

“I have no excuse. I was not in special forces,” McDonald told The Huffington Post when confronted about his military resume.

He boasted of his bogus armed services record in January — to a homeless veteran. His lofty claim occurred while he was touring a rundown Los Angeles neighborhood at part of a nationwide count of homeless vets.