As she tries to silence whistleblowers with a taxpayer-funded settlement for all that she did to VA employees, a devastating Chicago Tribune front-page expose examines all that Tammy Duckworth didn’t do for veterans.
The Tribune‘s long list of Duckworth failures include:
- Averaging fewer than 100 enrollees for the state’s Veterans Care program – far short of the goal to reach "thousands of Illinois veterans," as set by her boss Rod Blagojevich
- Convincing only 12 businesses in her first year – 11 in her second, to take advantage of a tax credit initiative for hiring veterans
- Reaching only 18 nurses at Illinois veterans homes in her first year – 14 in her second, for a program to help them pay off student debt
- Wasting $5.2 million on an ineffective PR rebranding contract for the VA – which included Super Bowl commercials
- Wasting thousands of taxpayer dollars on china with the VA logo and coins engraved with her own name
- Ineffectively serving the people of Illinois’ 8th District as "congressional records show she has not been the main sponsor on any legislation that has become law"
- Assigning blame to anyone not named Tammy Duckworth
Try as she might to spin her effectiveness score of 0% in Washington, The Tribune‘s report makes clear that Duckworth’s failed tenure in Congress isn’t a fluke – it’s yet another testament to the utter incompetence displayed throughout her career in government.
If Illinois voters consistently failed at Duckworth’s rate, they’d receive a pink slip – not a promotion.
Check out this morning’s Chicago Tribune front page and read key excerpts from the column below:
Duckworth’s record: Few legislative successes, some veterans programs sputtered
Chicago Tribune
By John Chase
October 19, 2016
Fresh off a stinging defeat for Congress in 2006, Democrat Tammy Duckworth was asked by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich to head Illinois’ Veterans’ Affairs Department and instantly handed a list of new missions to accomplish.
Her top priority, Blagojevich declared, was to step up efforts to sign people up for the state’s fledgling Veterans Care program, an initiative aimed at providing affordable and comprehensive health coverage to "thousands of Illinois veterans."
At its high-water mark during her tenure, however, the program averaged fewer than 100 veterans enrolled, state records showed.
Now Duckworth is pointing to her work assisting veterans as a big reason voters should promote her from the U.S. House to the Senate as she challenges Republican Sen. Mark Kirk.
A Chicago Tribune examination of Duckworth’s record after a decade in public service shows several of her initiatives at the state VA fell flat, her subsequent post at the federal VA mostly focused on public relations and her two terms in Congress have been marked by only a few legislative successes.
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…Duckworth assigns blame for some of the shortcomings at the state VA, including the Veterans Care program, on the now-imprisoned former governor.
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But even in the initiatives that Duckworth identified as her own priorities, she hasn’t always achieved the desired results. An early plan to provide tax credits for businesses that hire veterans lagged under Duckworth, as did a program aimed at encouraging nurses to work at veterans homes by helping them pay off student debt, state records show.
At the federal VA, Duckworth’s office was criticized in an audit for awarding a $5.2 million contract for outreach campaigns but being unable to demonstrate that the money helped increase awareness of and access to veterans health care, benefits and services.
State VA
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Duckworth lost a November 2006 bid for a suburban congressional seat. Two weeks later, a recently re-elected Blagojevich, looking to blunt increased criticism over his record on veterans issues, appointed Duckworth to head the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs. She took the job two months after the Tribune reported that Blagojevich’s administration skirted hiring rules to give jobs to hundreds of workers, often at the expense of military veterans guaranteed a first-in-line spot for many state job openings.
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"I admire Governor Blagojevich’s unbending commitment to giving every person in Illinois access to health care," Duckworth said in a press release the day she was appointed.
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Blagojevich had promised the program "will help up to 9,000 veterans in Illinois" who fell between the cracks of making not enough money to afford private health insurance and too much money to qualify for a federal health care insurance program.
But the program never helped anywhere near that amount, state records show.
According to figures recently provided by the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, which oversees the program, the average annual enrollment in Veterans Care’s first year was only 27 veterans. The next year, that number increased to 82. During Duckworth’s final year at the agency, average enrollment was 99, the records show.
In an interview, Duckworth said while news releases may have declared the program to be her "first priority," that was a reflection of Blagojevich and his administration’s top concerns, not hers.
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Pressed on why the "thousands" of veterans was a number publicly repeated over and over again, Duckworth said, "You’ve got to remember that those press releases come actually out of the governor’s office."
Another initiative she tackled was a tax credit for businesses designed to encourage companies to hire veterans. For every veteran hired, companies were eligible to receive a $600 tax credit. In Duckworth’s first year, only 12 firms took advantage of the program, state records show. The next year, only 11 received the tax credits.
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Yet another program she started in Illinois was one to help nurses at Illinois veterans homes pay off their student debt.
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At the time, the nursing plan set aside $1.2 million. That money could have helped as many as 240 nurses repay student debt.
But the first year of the program, only 18 nurses took advantage at a cost of $44,000. The next year, only 14 nurses took part, receiving only $36,000 in assistance, according to records from the Illinois Student Assistance Commission.
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Federal VA
In late 2008, Blagojevich was arrested and charged with corruption. Then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama was about to become president. He drafted Duckworth to join his administration as assistant secretary of veterans affairs for public and intergovernmental affairs. The post, one of more than a half-dozen assistant secretary jobs at the federal agency, called for Duckworth to oversee the VA’s public relations efforts, as well as programs for homeless veterans.
One of the public relations programs was criticized in a November 2014 audit. The VA’s inspector general found that during Duckworth’s tenure her office launched a "rebranding and communications campaign" to increase awareness about government services for veterans. The $5.2 million contract with Virginia-based firm Woodpile Studios included TV ads that aired during high-profile televised events, including the Super Bowl and the Country Music Awards.
The agency watchdog found there was little evidence the TV ads and other work done by Woodpile actually resulted in increased awareness of the VA’s programs. Officials with the VA stated that "leadership turnover contributed to ineffective oversight" of the program, according to the audit.
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"I’ve never seen this before. No, I’ve not seen it. Nobody ever sent this to me," Duckworth said of the audit, which came out after she left the federal veterans agency.
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Also during her time at the VA, federal purchase records show she used taxpayer dollars to buy $2,100 in china with the VA logo and $1,875 on so-called "challenge coins" with the VA logo on one side and her name on the other.
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Critics have suggested the coins were overused, and federal agencies reined in spending public money on some of them. In late 2010, after Duckworth already had purchased her challenge coins with her name on them, the VA implemented a policy against personalizing the challenge coins.
"Coins may not be engraved with an individual’s name," the policy reads.
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Congress
By mid-2011, Duckworth left her post with the VA and soon launched her bid for a northwest and west suburban congressional seat that Democrats had drawn to elect a Democratic candidate.
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Republicans have criticized Duckworth for being ineffective, and congressional records show she has not been the main sponsor on any legislation that has become law.
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