Fiorina: ‘I’m Going to Start By Firing 400 Senior Executives at the VA’

Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina vowed to fire 400 senior VA executives at the first Fox News Channel GOP debate on Thursday.

Fiorina was asked, “You’ve said you would shrink the federal government by 30% over the next two years, and those jobs will not be filled, and you’ll do it through retirement. Your critics would argue that’s exactly what you did at Hewlett Packard when 30,000 people lost their jobs. If it did not work at HP, why would it work at the federal government?”

She answered, “Well, first of all, I haven’t said that. What I have said is that in the process of examining every dollar, cutting any dollar, and moving every dollar, we happen to know, that in this vast federal bureaucracy, we have about 260,000 federal government employees who are going to retire, and we shouldn’t replace them. Secondly, at Hewlett Packard, as you know, the people of Iowa know this, we went through a tough time, the worst technology recession in 25 years, a great company called Gateway used to be right here in Iowa. But they didn’t make the tough calls necessary to save all those jobs and so they lost every one of those jobs. Yes, I’ve had to make some tough calls. We saved 80,000 jobs. We went on to grow to 160,000 jobs. And, frankly, I think the American people know we need a president who’s going to make some tough calls. So let me tell you where I’m going to start. The American people got a bill passed, through Congress that said we could fire the top 400 senior executives at the VA for dereliction of duty, when we know that 307,000 veterans have died waiting for healthcare, and the VA handed out $142 million worth of bonuses for suburb performance. I’m going to start by firing 400 senior executives at the VA.”

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