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| The president essentially put the VA secretary on probation last week. | AP Photo |
But he has reached the point where he doesn’t know if Shinseki will be able to fix the problems at the VA, White House aides said Wednesday.
When the 3president essentially put the VA secretary on probation last week, he said his red line in this situation would be evidence that the misconduct at Veterans Affairs had to be “systemic.”
The VA Inspector General’s report released Wednesday says the evidence is clear: there are “systemic patient safety issues and possible wrongful deaths.”
But while the IG report didn’t help Shinseki’s case, White House aides say the president’s still waiting to make a final decision until he has more information: a report from Shinseki himself due to the White House this week and one from Rob Nabors, the deputy chief of staff he put in charge of a separate review, which is due in June.
More and more Democrats — including Sens. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), John Walsh (D-Mont.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.), all of whom are up for re-election — have joined Republicans in saying that the IG report is all the proof that they need that Shinseki should be fired.
Obama’s decision to hold off, even as that puts him at odds with more people in his own party, risks leaving him in a situation where he seems to respond only well after the outrage has boiled over. He could appear to place loyalty and defensiveness over accountability and response.
When Obama’s stuck by Cabinet secretaries under fire before, he’s done it with the confidence that they would be able to fix the problems that had gotten them into trouble.
That’s not how he’s responded to Shinseki, confronted with mounting evidence of years of widespread misconduct and mismanagement at the VA, aides said.
White House press secretary Jay Carney in a statement said that he was briefed on the findings Wednesday afternoon and found them “extremely troubling.”
And though Obama’s waiting for more information before making a decision on Shinseki, Carney said the call for the VA to act immediately hasn’t changed.
“As the President said last week, the VA must not wait for current investigations of VA operations to conclude before taking steps to improve care,” Carney said.
Troubled as Obama is, he’s not just looking for a scalp, White House aides say, but taking a methodical approach that’s in part rooted in concerns over creating deeper problems at the agency by firing Shinseki, which could in turn result in more delays fixing the misconduct and veterans waiting longer for care.
Long before the allegations of misconduct exploded into public outrage, the White House was deeply engaged on improving VA operations, aides say, with chief of staff Denis McDonough already asking Nabors to work on fixing the backlog of processing veterans claims — and a solution. Cabinet reports that went directly to the president and data provided to senior staff each week showed the backlog down 50 percent, according to the aides, in a demonstration they say of the efforts the White House was taking to hold itself accountable.
Believing themselves aware of the extent of the problem they were tackling, they were satisfied with the pace of reduction of the backlog and the president had confidence in Shinseki.
Until they started seeing the reports out of Phoenix and the possibility that the same problems existed elsewhere, Obama and his aides still believed in Shinseki. He’s a war hero. He’s a disabled veteran himself. He’s never been one of the stars of the Obama cabinet, but the president feels he’s done good work on combating homelessness among veterans and implementing the 9/11 GI Bill.
In the week since Obama met with Shinseki in the Oval Office, he’s been in constant contact with McDonough and Nabors about the investigations and efforts to repair the situation. He hasn’t spoken with the secretary at all, though they were both at the Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery — Shinseki didn’t speak at the ceremony, and wasn’t acknowledged by Obama in his remarks.
Obama’s never fired a Cabinet secretary before, despite many Republican calls for him to do so. But he’s also never faced this level of scandal before amid a midterm year, with a growing number of Democrats bolting.
White House aides say they’re not too caught up by the political concerns, saying their focus remains on trying to fix the problems at the VA — the same sort of troubleshooting they say they successfully undertook with Healthcare.gov, the IRS, the GSA and the Department of Energy in the past.
But while an announcement on Shinseki didn’t come Wednesday, there’s nothing certain about his future past that.
Source: Politico
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