Sometimes it feels like the IRS must be the largest department, given their omnipresence in our lives, but the IRS, which is part of the Treasury Department, is actually quite small compared to the leviathan that is the Veterans Affairs Department.
According to the Department of Labor, the Department of Veterans Affairs employed 280,000 people in the US in 2008 to service the needs of approximately 23.5 million vets (according to InfoPlease). That's one employee for 84 vets. There are only 12 companies in the US that employ more people than Veterans Affairs.
Now don't get me wrong, I believe we owe a tremendous debt to those that committed themselves to protecting our freedoms and liberties. I would even argue that a Vet is far more deserving of our support that a former elected official.
Do we really honor our Vets, though, by creating a beauracracy that slows the delivery of service, and thrives on making the simplest things complicated? Is there a good reason that Vets should be forced to go to seperate facilities for health services? What's next? Will people on Medicare soon be forced into Medicare only facilities?
The larger a government organization gets, the more Common Sense challenged it becomes. Just read this article about how the Veterans Affairs Department saw it as their place to violate the First Ammendment Rights of vets who were commemorating their own. Why would any government employee even see it as their place to get involved?
Common Sense tells me that the needs of our vets would be so much better served by allowing the private sector to deliver top quality services, while being administered by a much smaller organization of a few hundred individuals who ensure that our funds are properly spent and that the services are accessible to those who have served so honorably.
