On May 31st, President Joe Biden is required, by law, to submit the names of his candidates for a nine-member commission that will decide the fate of many Veterans Health Administration (VHA) facilities and services across the country. This commission, similar to the Defense Department’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process for the shuttering of U.S. military bases, was the brainchild of right-wing proponents of VA privatization, like the Koch brothers–funded Concerned Veterans for America. During the Trump administration, CVA staffer Darin Selnick helped craft the VA MISSION Act of 2018, which established an Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission that would provide a list of VA facilities to close, consolidate, repurpose, or improve. The list would have to be approved by the president and voted on—up or down—by Congress, denying legislators effective input into decisions on the future of almost 1,300 facilities and hundreds of programs upon which veterans’ lives depend.
Trump and his supporters clearly hoped that he, not a Democrat, would be in charge of appointing the members of this critical commission, as well as determining the criteria that would be used to evaluate which VA programs and facilities would continue, and which would be sold off to real estate developers or other hospitals. Rather than addressing the long-standing congressional failure to allocate enough funds (currently estimated between $70 and $80 billion) to maintain, renovate, or construct new VHA facilities to meet current and future needs, the privatizers’ solution is to, well, privatize care.
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