It looks like someone shook Bob Dole out of a nap. Dole and former secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala have been chosen to lead a panel reviewing health care for wounded vets following the Walter Reed scandal.Both are inspired choices -- Dole is a disabled vet himself and Shalala not only oversaw HHS, but was the president of Hunter College, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, and currently serves as president of the University of Michigan. She has the institutional administrative experience for the job.
But, here's the problem, the Bush administration has a history of putting together blue ribbon panels, then completely ignoring them. Remember the 9/11 commission? Bush made a big deal about putting that together, read the recommendations, then told them, "Yeah, I'm not going to do that." The Iraq Study Group got the same treatment. After submitting the results of their study, Bush ignored it and announce he was going to do this big Hail Mary surge thing. Screw the ISG.
So you could be excused for thinking that this new Dole/Shalala Panel will do a lot of good work that will be ignored. Bush uses these reviews to provide political cover. He probably already knows what he's going to do and, when Dole and Shalala submit their report, he'll scratch out the parts he doesn't agree with and tell everyone that X and Y were recommended by the panel. He doesn't look for new ideas, he looks for points of agreement and ignores everything else...
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Tags: news | politics | bipartisan | Military | veterans | Iraq | Afghanistan | Bush | republican | conservative
