After months of mockery from Trump, the Bush campaign seems determined to highlight the alleged idea theft. “It’s pretty clear that Trump has been trying to look over Jeb’s shoulder in class to cheat on the test,” says Tim Miller, Bush’s communications director.
It certainly appears that Trump aped Bush’s plan to fix the scandal-plagued VA. The Republican front-runner released his VA-reform paper on October 31, several months after Bush’s rollout of his own VA plan. One of the main planks in Bush’s proposal was to “Modernize the Department of Veterans Affairs.” Trump’s plan promises to “Modernize the VA.” Bush emphasizes “improving practices so that we eliminate billions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.” Trump wants to “End waste, fraud, and abuse at the VA.” Like Bush, Trump wants to give the department authority to fire VA employees. And like Bush, he wants to increase federal funding for business loans to veterans. Trump even includes “Better support for women veterans” as a plank in his plan, something that makes his plagiarism particularly obvious, according to one Bush adviser who says few policy wonks were talking about the challenges posed by a rapid growth in female veterans before the Bush campaign made it a top issue in its VA plan. “We had an experienced adviser who worked for years in the VA system,” the Bush adviser says. “He’s been very focused on the issue, and made a persuasive case to elevate it in the policy plan.”
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