Sen. Ron Johnson
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-W) now has an
excuse for why his office sat on a whistleblower's tip that the Tomah VA Medical Center was seriously overprescribing pain medications. They were just busy. With "stuff."
Johnson made the comments in a radio interview on the Jerry Bader Show.
"You have to understand what happens here, in between Congresses. There's a high level of churn within offices. Actually, two of these people on these email chains voluntarily left for other opportunities, other offices. And so, you've got to understand the reality of the situation," Johnson said. […]
"So, sure, in a perfect world, had this not occurred during an election cycle, when we were in recess, during the lame duck session, when there's an awful lot of turnover in offices, when people maybe are looking at, you know, doing job interviews and stuff," Johnson continued. "In a perfect world, sure, they would have been able to—without having the report, and not, as a result, understanding the severity of the situation—might have divined that hey this is something important that we ought to bring to Senator Johnson's attention."
What Johnson failed to explain was why he and his staff
purposely misled the public about how they had taken action on the report, when in fact they were sitting on it. It's bad enough to ignore a report this critical, on an issue that ended up in a veteran's accidental overdose death. Making excuses for ignoring it is worse, but lying about your negligence is appalling.