Keep Him! VA Problems Not On Shinseki, Says Sanders

Un­equi­voc­ally, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., now be­lieves that Vet­er­ans Af­fairs Sec­ret­ary Eric Shin­seki should not lose his job fol­low­ing al­leg­a­tions that VA health care work­ers fals­i­fied re­cords of wait times for med­ic­al care in the fed­er­al sys­tem.

Re­pub­lic­ans have pounced on the scan­dal, say­ing the VA’s linger­ing prob­lems and Shin­seki’s job sur­viv­al are ex­amples of Pres­id­ent Barack Obama’s feck­less lead­er­ship style. But Sanders dis­missed Re­pub­lic­ans who “sud­denly care about vet­er­ans.” The cur­rent scan­dal, he ar­gued, should not over­shad­ow the re­tired gen­er­al’s less talked about suc­cesses since tak­ing over the agency from the Bush ad­min­is­tra­tion. In an ex­tens­ive in­ter­view, the chair­man of the Sen­ate Vet­er­an Af­fairs Com­mit­tee de­fen­ded Shin­seki without pause, ar­guing that the re­tired gen­er­al has presided over a gen­er­ally pos­it­ive era in an enorm­ous bur­eau­cracy bound to be rife with mis­takes, es­pe­cially when com­pared to the private sec­tor health care sys­tem.

“No,” he said flatly, when asked if Shin­seki should quit. “The truth is that that the VA is a huge in­sti­tu­tion. It does a whole lot of very im­port­ant work. In many ways, Shin­seki has done a very good job,” Sanders said, in an in­ter­view taped Thursday for CSPAN’s ‘News­maker’ roundtable with re­port­ers from De­fense One and the New York Daily News.

Sanders said that Shin­seki gets too little pub­lic cred­it for tak­ing the VA health sys­tem from pa­per to di­git­al re­cords. The VA now logs roughly 6 mil­lion vet­er­ans seek­ing health care per year. Also in that time, Sanders ar­gued, VA case back­logs had been cut in half and vet­er­an home­less­ness had fallen 24 per­cent, all on Shin­seki’s watch.

The sen­at­or con­ceded that no one denies there are prob­lems with the VA sys­tem, but said that most vet­er­ans’ or­gan­iz­a­tions say “without ex­cep­tion”¦in some ways it’s get­ting bet­ter.”

“I think there are prob­lems, and I have cri­ti­cism of Shin­seki. I think there have been prob­lems there for a num­ber years, that he has not been as ag­gress­ive as he should be in ad­dress­ing, and I hope we’re go­ing to deal with that. But no, I don’t think he should resign.”

With con­ser­vat­ives want­ing to open the VA to privat­iz­a­tion, Sanders put the gov­ern­ment-run heath care sys­tem in the con­text of the private sys­tem, with­in which 200,000 to 400,000 people die an­nu­ally be­cause of med­ic­al mis­takes. “The point is we are a big coun­try. The VA sees six and a half mil­lion people a year. Are people go­ing to be treated badly? Are some people go­ing to die be­cause of poor treat­ment in the VA? Yes, that is a tragedy and we have to get to the root of it. But it has to be, I think, put in­to a broad­er con­text.”

Sanders said of the “cook­ing the books” al­leg­a­tion, “that is out­rageous and any­one who does that has got to be pun­ished and pun­ished severely. End of dis­cus­sion.” But Sanders, echo­ing Obama, said he is wait­ing to see facts from the on­go­ing in­vest­ig­a­tion. On Thursday, Sanders blocked a move by Sen. Marco Ru­bio, R-Fla., to pass a bill that would make it easi­er for the VA sec­ret­ary to fire seni­or ex­ec­ut­ives. The House passed its meas­ure on Wed­nes­day, over Shin­seki’s ob­jec­tions. Sanders, however, said he felt that any le­gis­lat­ive fix should not get a vote without a hear­ing and he sought Ru­bio’s sup­port for a more com­pre­hens­ive bill. Ru­bio, a GOP star but just the ju­ni­or sen­at­or here, was in­censed by Sanders’ move.

“He said we may one day pass it, it’s a really good idea, but he wants to have a hear­ing on it first. And I just don’t un­der­stand that,” Ru­bio later said, fum­ing on Fox News. “They blocked it. And un­for­tu­nately mem­bers of Con­gress will head home for Me­mori­al Day and vet­er­ans will keep wait­ing for ac­count­ab­il­ity, and that’s out­rageous.”

“We could have sent this bill to the pres­id­ent, and next week when the pre­lim­in­ary in­vest­ig­a­tion re­turns Shin­seki could have star­ted fir­ing people that wer­en’t do­ing their jobs,” said Ru­bio.

“We’re go­ing to do a hear­ing on that as soon as the re­cess is over,” Sanders said. “Clearly nobody wants in­com­pet­ent people run­ning hos­pit­als. That may be the case; they should be fired. On the oth­er hand, what you don’t want to do is cre­ate a situ­ation where any sec­ret­ary can come in and say, ‘Well, it’s a new ad­min­is­tra­tion, lets’ fire all the hos­pit­al ad­min­is­trat­ors and make them in­to polit­ic­al tools.’ That’s not a good idea. So, we’re go­ing to work out something on that is­sue.”

Con­ser­vat­ives see­ing an­oth­er op­por­tun­ity, in­clud­ing Fox News an­chor Greta Van Suster­en dur­ing her in­ter­view with Ru­bio on Thursday, called for the Sen­ate bill to ex­pand fir­ing power across the en­tire fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Ru­bio said he agrees with that idea but de­lib­er­ately lim­ited his bill to the VA is­sue to speed its chances.

Shin­seki’s sup­port is show­ing some signs of strain. Obama on Wed­nes­day said the fact of the in­spect­or gen­er­al in­vest­ig­a­tion could dic­tate the con­sequences, po­ten­tially leav­ing Shin­seki on the hook for re­spons­ib­il­ity. On Thursday, House Speak­er John Boehner said he was lean­ing closer to­ward call­ing for Shin­seki’s resig­na­tion, but real­ized the enorm­ity of theVA’s prob­lems.

“This isn’t about one per­son. This isn’t about the sec­ret­ary. It’s about the en­tire sys­tem un­der­neath him. And you know, the gen­er­al can leave and we can wait around for months to go through a nom­in­a­tion pro­cess and we get a new per­son. But the dis­aster con­tin­ues. And so I don’t want — I don’t want people to get con­fused about what the shiny ball is here. The shiny ball is a sys­tem­ic fail­ure of this agency.”

Sanders was less en­thu­si­ast­ic to ar­gue, as has been Sen. Lind­sey Gra­ham, R-S.C., that the al­leged mis­con­duct with hos­pit­al wait times rises to the level of a crime de­serving pro­sec­u­tion.

The un­der­ly­ing prob­lem, for Sanders, is in­suf­fi­cient and mis­al­loc­ated fund­ing for a sys­tem see­ing 1.5 mil­lion new people en­ter­ing each year. He ar­gued that al­low­ing vet­er­ans to be re­im­bursed for private care could be a tem­por­ary fix for wait lists, but that privat­iz­ing vet­er­ans’ health care would be more ex­pens­ive than the VA sys­tem over the long term.

Sanders be­moaned “the polit­ics of this,” while ar­guing that Re­pub­lic­ans wrongly failed to mod­ern­ize the vet­er­an sys­tem after launch­ing the Ir­aq and Afgh­anistan wars long ago.

“This is Me­mori­al Day. Let’s take a deep breath be­fore get­ting the is­sues out there and re­mem­ber the sac­ri­fices of so many fam­il­ies,” he said.