[wzslider info=”true” lightbox=”true”]
Representative Bruce Braley, the Iowa Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, is again under fire over revelations he skipped Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearings. Yet, what has already been a bad week for the once-favored Iowa Senate candidate, has just gotten worse.
Not only did Braley attend just 4 out of 19 hearings of the full Veterans’ Affairs Committee from 2011 to 2012, according to minutes from the U.S. Government Printing Office, but subsequent explanations for why he missed a whopping 78 percent of those hearings are turning out to be false.
A report from the Des Moines Register claimed Braley attended three fundraisers for his own campaign on Sept. 20, 2012, a day the committee was slated to address VA backlogs and a gross lack of oversight at the Veterans Administration.
Braley’s campaign spokesman Jeff Giertz told Jennifer Jacobs at DMR that Braley missed the 10 AM ET. Veterans Affairs Committee meeting because he was at a 9:36 AM ET Oversight and Government Reform Committee meeting. Technically, the House Veterans Affairs Committee started at 10:19 AM ET and ended at 11:54 AM ET. However, a transcript of the hearing shows he didn’t say a word if he did attend and, an attached CSPAN video viewable below clearly shows an empty chair behind the nameplate indicating where Braley should have been sitting.
Now, the Iowa Republican Party is asking, “Does Bruce Braley really attend his committee hearings in Washington or does he check some box to fool voters back in Iowa that he’s doing his job?”
The topic of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing may give some insight as to why Braley didn’t show up for that hearing, either. That was the day Michael Horowitz testified on the findings from the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on the FBI’s “Fast and Furious” operation, a gun-walking operation that resulted in the death of Arizona Border Patrol agent Brian Terry in December, 2010. The weapon used to kill Terry was traced back to Fast and Furious, an operation Attorney General Eric Holder outrageously claimed he first learned about from Congress.
If providing political cover for President Obama and Eric Holder was Braley’s motive for missing that hearing, then was Braley choosing politics over veterans, as well?
Over the last decade, nearly two dozen reports from the agency’s inspector general and the Government Accountability Office found veterans were dying because of long wait times for health care. Worse still, the reports found that they were covered up by bogus and corrupt record-keeping bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals.
These revelations first forced the resignation of Robert Petzel, the undersecretary for veterans’ health care, and shortly after the resignation of former head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki. Yet, it is precisely the Washington D.C. culture exemplified by Bruce Braley that drains the American people of confidence in their government. Rather than doing his job, which is to protect the taxpayer and provide oversight, Bruce Braley instead decided to spend the day fundraising.
From 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., Braley was attending a $2,500 breakfast at Johnny’s Half Shell, a fresh from the Chesapeake Bay seafood restaurant. Still, the restaurant is roughly 10 minutes away from the location of the hearing, giving Braley plenty of time to attend. However, as shown in the slideshow above, time-stamped images from the CSPAN video show another empty chair, a picture that is too-often available to take.
“If the Republican Party of Iowa had said Braley missed 74 percent of full committee hearings, the claim would be true. In fact, we found Braley missed 78 percent of the full hearings in 2011 and 2012,” The Gazette recently reported.
PPD’s 2014 Senate Map Predictions model currently rates the Iowa Senate race a “Toss-Up” for a number of reasons, including several that PPD Senior Political Analyst Richard D. Baris says are “demons of Braley’s own design.” Braley, a trial lawyer and an establishment-picked nominee, “suffers from a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease,” Baris said.
“The media tends to focus on primary battles in the GOP, but Braley is a perfect example of how dangerous it can sometimes be to shut down intra-party debate,” Baris said. “The Democratic Party bosses picked Braley and admonished potential challengers, which denies candidates and their campaigns the opportunity to smooth out any rough edges before the general election.”
A video shared with the Des Moines Register showed Braley claiming to be a farmer during a Fourth of July parade at Iowa Falls. Of course, Braley is not a farmer, and was misleading a voter to her face in a terrible attempt to rectify another, more politically damaging mistake.
Braley was first caught on video back in March trashing Iowa’s most popular senator, Republican Chuck Grassley, and he did so in full elitist fashion, belittling Iowa farmers. Braley was clearly insinuating that Iowans shouldn’t send a less intelligent farmer over a trial lawyer to the U.S. Senate.
Joni Ernst, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate and potentially the first woman senator ever from the Hawkeye State, has a new ad out highlighting her record of service to Iowa and the nation. The ad represents a new direction for the self-described “mother, soldier, conservative,” who will soon return from a two-week deployment with the Iowa National Guard.
(Remember “Where’s Waldo?” Let’s play “Where’s Bruce Braley?” during the hearing his campaign said he attended in lieu of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing.)
The most damning journalistic sin committed by the media during the era of Russia collusion…
The first ecological study finds mask mandates were not effective at slowing the spread of…
On "What Are the Odds?" Monday, Robert Barnes and Rich Baris note how big tech…
On "What Are the Odds?" Monday, Robert Barnes and Rich Baris discuss why America First…
Personal income fell $1,516.6 billion (7.1%) in February, roughly the consensus forecast, while consumer spending…
Research finds those previously infected by or vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2 are not at risk of…
This website uses cookies.
View Comments
Sen. Bernie Sanders told Conservatives: “If you can’t afford to take care of your veterans, than don’t go war. These people are bearing the brunt of what war is about, We have a moral obligation to support them.” February, 26th, 2014
July 12 2014 - House balks at cost of vet health bill
July 14 2014 - Lawmakers Seek Lower Price For Bill On Vets’ Care
These present wars, Afghanistan and Iraq, after abandoning the missions and those sent to accomplish so quickly after 9/11 to invade another, have yet to be paid for!!
ProPublica and The Seattle Times Nov. 9, 2012 - Lost to History: Missing War Records Complicate Benefit Claims by Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans
DeLara's case is part of a much larger problem that has plagued the U.S. military since the 1990 Gulf War: a failure to create and maintain the types of field records that have documented American conflicts since the Revolutionary War.
July 12, 2013 - Army Says War Records Gap Is Real, Launches Recovery Effort
Congress, they who control the Countries purse, have not only contributed to the problems, present included, that have plagued the VA, then compound in creating other problems, as the conservatives seek to privatize for corporate profit off the Countries purse and then help the bottom line with bigger budgets,they've known full well about and did nothing after even holding hearings back in 2008, neither have the Country, Poser Patriots All!!
Gen Shinseki, with a target on him since speaking Military truth and bush fired him, with help from the Executive branches Cabinet and personal, had finally started doing what the Congress and the people they represent had refused to do, addressing the long ignored and denied issues from the previous decades and wars from while working to address this generations Veterans issues, not done under the previous, especially recent, VA administrations and bush Executive branch!! Here's hoping that continues, and that the Country served decides to uphold it's responsibility and sacrifice themselves as they demand the Military personal and their families do!!
Oct 16, 2008 - VA claims found in piles to be shredded
Oct. 31, 2008 - Military Veterans' Benefit Claims Records Wrongly Headed for VA Shredders
October 31, 2008 - House panel will target VA shredding
“We are dealing with veterans, not procedures—with their problems, not ours.” —General Omar Bradley, First Administrator of the Veterans Administration
Memorial Honoring Injured Veterans Under Way in DC
"If military action is worth our troops’ blood, it should be worth our treasure, too" "not just in the abstract, but in the form of a specific ante by every American." -Andrew Rosenthal 10 Feb. 2013
USN All Shore '67-'71 GMG3 Vietnam In Country '70-'71 - Independent**