Several hundred Colorado veterans rallied in front of the unfinished Veterans Administration hospital under construction on the Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora last Sunday. At least half arrived on motorcycles, filling the lot alongside Children’s Hospital with rolling thunder just across the street from the troubled project.

Up close it’s easy to realize what a massive undertaking this medical center has become. A central spine that must tower 10 or 12 stories high serves seven or eight wings. Although initially approved in 2003, a groundbreaking did not occur until 2009 and construction only commenced in 2011 after Veterans groups trespassed on the site with their shovels. Designed to replace the post-World War II hospital located on the old University of Colorado Medical School site in central Denver, the new facility is intended to serve vets from across the Rocky Mountain region.

There is no need to recount the runaway financial costs, now approaching nearly a 500 percent increase over the original estimate of $378 million. As government overruns go, a doubling can be embarrassing, a tripling feels disgraceful, but a quintupling is nothing short of stupefying. Colorado veterans wanted to make it clear that the groups with no responsibility for these egregious excesses are our veterans.A T-shirt captured the spirit of the event, “The cost of freedom can be found at your local VA hospital.”

As Sloan Gibson, deputy director of the VA, acknowledged during recent Congressional hearings, “We were not ready for it as an organization. And, we bungled it!” The project received a two week reprieve before Congress left for its Memorial Day recess, but construction could halt as soon as June 15 when funding runs out. It was alleged that a shutdown could add another $250 million in ultimate costs following a restart. Unfortunately, the VA has a half dozen other projects around the country in similar straits. Congressional critics, who would like to trim back the size of the hospital, have run into resistance from the White House which claims that it may not be big enough as it is.

The total unfunded tab runs into many billions of dollars, with the Denver hospital requiring an additional $800 million. U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter exhorted the crowd, “Congress has enough money. America has enough money to do right by our Veterans.” His colleague, Mike Coffman, who chairs one of the House Veteran Affairs sub-committees, echoed that sentiment, “We have a moral obligation to do right by our Veterans – to honor their sacrifices.”

Both Colorado senators, Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner, had returned early to Washington to listen to Rand Paul of Kentucky filibuster against possible privacy violations by the NSA in hopes of passing the USA Freedom Act to replace the original Patriot Act. That, of course, was not to be.

The challenge facing Colorado is that there will be an ugly scrum among the remaining VA projects over whatever dollars are eventually determined to be available. In that struggle the smart money will be on the projects with the largest Congressional delegations: Pennsylvania, Florida and California. As Rep. Phil Roe of Tennessee said to Sloan, “There’s no way to explain this incompetence. You’ve put us in the ultimate Catch-22. We don’t want to move ahead and we can’t quit!” What was originally designed to be a 1.4 million square foot complex in Colorado has been trimmed back to just 945,000 sq. ft. Development on the Anschutz campus has exploded to the point where wags joke it can now be seen from orbit. As for the VA hospital, however, it would be wise to watch for further shrinkage.

– mnhwriter@msn.com