WASHINGTON — With only days left to act, negotiations over the troubled VA hospital in Aurora have hit a wall and Colorado lawmakers said they are pessimistic a deal can be reached before work is halted on the $1.73 billion project.
Punctuating that point was a combative floor speech delivered Wednesday by House Speaker John Boehner. Amid a flurry of last-minute meetings on how to pay for cost overruns in Aurora, the Ohio Republican took aim at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Obama administration for failing to do enough.
“The American people are seeing more of the same,” said Boehner, who added that “at this point, the VA can’t even build a hospital.”
Lawmakers said they viewed Boehner’s speech as proof that talks had broken down between the VA and congressional leaders. Without a deal, the VA and the project’s prime contractor, Kiewit-Turner, will run out of money they can spend on the Aurora hospital — which is expected to trigger a work stoppage next week.
“I think the floor speech shut the door on negotiations,” said U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Aurora.
According to one congressional estimate, it would cost $20 million to shutter the site and $2 million a month to keep it safe from the elements — additional expenses that would increase the price tag of a project that has been called the biggest construction failure in VA history.
That’s not all. There are concerns among Colorado legislators that another work stoppage would drive away subcontractors, who already had to live through one shutdown in December. That could further increase the price.
“Shutting down this project should not be part of these discussions,” U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat, said in a statement. “Brinkmanship and political games only hurt our veterans, and shutting the project down only adds more unnecessary costs. That would be an absurd outcome.”
The Beltway standoff is the latest turn in a long, bumpy road for the hospital. In March, the VA announced that the project’s cost had ballooned to $1.73 billion and that it needed $830 million more to complete the facility.
Ever since, Congress and the administration have feuded over the best way to cover the overruns.
The VA has suggested siphoning money from a $5 billion fund that Congress created last year to make the VA more efficient, but that idea has failed to marshal support among non-Colorado lawmakers, largely because of concerns about how that plan would affect VA projects in other states.
Congress countering
Key members of Congress have countered that the VA should reduce the scope of the Aurora project or take money from elsewhere in its budget.
Those ideas, however, largely are opposed by the Obama administration. They have said that slashing the size of the Aurora facility would hurt veterans and that the VA doesn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars at the ready to steer to the Colorado facility.
Both sides have tried to hammer out a short-term deal that would keep workers on the job as they try to salvage a long-term solution. But even that possibility has failed to materialize and a key negotiator said Wednesday that it was unlikely that a compromise would happen before Congress leaves for its Memorial Day recess.
“I see very little light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, I see no light,” said U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., who leads the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “I do not believe there will be a resolution to the issue before the break.”
As Wednesday’s session came to a close, that sentiment was underscored by parting shots fired by Miller and VA Secretary Robert McDonald.
In a three-page letter, Miller told McDonald to “go back to the drawing board.”
“VA has attempted to portray this debacle as a situation in which the project will come to a halt if Congress does not act,” Miller wrote. “This project will come to a halt if VA refuses to put forth a complete and acceptable plan to get the Denver project to the finish line. So far, you have failed to do that.”
Ineffective methods
Miller dissected a memo McDonald sent congressional leaders Monday that sought stop-gap funding to let construction continue through the summer as negotiations for funding continued. Part of the plan, McDonald wrote, was to drop two buildings from the footprint and move about $150 million in VA funding from one budget item to another.
Miller slapped the ideas away as ineffective methods of dealing with problems of the VA’s creation.
“What’s missing from this approach is how to fund the remaining $620 million gap between the total price tag and funds available,” Miller wrote.
Miller offered two options not yet discussed: temporarily stop work while reassessing options to move forward, and consider relying on Denver’s old VA hospital that the new one was to replace.
McDonald fired back in a statement that it’s Congress that has been unreasonable.
“I have provided multiple proposals to the congressional authorizing committee as to how we can complete this campus for veterans. The options were rejected, and the result has been inaction. Our veterans deserve better than that,” he said.
“I have presented a plan,” McDonald wrote. “Congress has not proposed a counter-plan. I am open to reviewing any proposal that would better serve the veterans of Colorado and the American taxpayers.
“If congressional leaders choose not to support VA’s proposals or choose not to offer feasible solutions of their own, then they will be punishing Colorado veterans today for past VA errors.”
Mark K. Matthews: 202-662-8907, mmatthews@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/mkmatthews
