Obama picks former Procter & Gamble CEO to head VA

Obama picks former Procter &amp;amp; Gamble CEO to head VA

(Image credit: Facebook.com/NBCNews)

last updated 8 January 2015

On Monday, President Obama will nominate Robert A. McDonald, the former CEO of Procter & Gamble, as the next secretary of Veterans Affairs, a White House official said.

The West Point graduate spent 33 years at Procter & Gamble, which "prepares him well for a huge agency with management challenges in servicing more than eight million veterans a year," the unidentified official told the Los Angeles Times.

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Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, said that the new secretary must begin by "solving problems instead of downplaying or hiding them, holding employees accountable for mismanagement and negligence that harms veterans, and understanding that taxpayer-funded organizations such as VA have a responsibility to provide information to Congress and the public rather than stonewalling them."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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