U.S.
President Barack Obama announces the resignation of U.S. Secretary of
Veteran Affairs Eric Shinseki after meeting with Shinseki at the White
House in Washington, May 30, 2014. REUTERS/Larry Downing (UNITED STATES -
Tags: POLITICS MILITARY HEALTH)
A day after calling
Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki “an American hero,” President
Barack Obama on Friday announced he had accepted the retired general’s
resignation amid a political firestorm over his agency’s dramatic and
sometimes deadly failure to care for wounded vets.
The president and the former Army chief of staff had met an hour earlier in the Oval Office to discuss the agency’s widespread lapses and efforts to remedy them.
Shinseki
“does not want to be a distraction, because his priority is to fix the
problem and make sure our vets are getting the care that they need,” the
president said. “That was Ric's judgment on behalf of his fellow
veterans. And I agree. We don't have time for distractions; we need to
fix the problem.”
Obama announced that Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Sloan Gibson,
a former Army infantryman, would take the troubled agency’s reins until
a permanent secretary can be found and confirmed. “I met with Sloan
after I met with Ric [Shinseki] this morning and made it clear that
reforms should not wait. They need to proceed immediately,” the
president said.
And Obama
sidestepped a question about whether misdeeds at the VA rose to the
level of criminal acts. “I will leave it up to the Justice Department to
make determinations in terms of whether there's been criminal
wrongdoing,” he said.
The
news came just hours after Shinseki had declared that he was firing top
officials in the Phoenix, Arizona, VA system — ground zero in an
election-year scandal that has shocked the public and raised fresh
questions about the Obama administration’s competence. Shinseki also
announced that there will be no performance bonuses this year for any
medical directors in the VA’s 150-hospital system.
It
also followed an ABC television interview, taped on Thursday and aired
Friday, in which Obama declared that Shinseki “is an American hero,
wounded vet, somebody who led our troops during very difficult times and
cares about veterans more than just about anybody I know."
Republicans,
who have begun to fundraise off the scandal and called for an
independent investigation, kept their fire trained on Obama himself.
“Personnel
changes aren't an answer to the problem for our veterans. It’s just
musical chairs,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus
said in a statement issued while Obama was still speaking. “Regardless
of who the President wants running his department, it’s past time for
the President to step up and fix this mess.”
Obama,
asked how much blame he should shoulder for the scandal, replied: “In
terms of responsibility, as I've said before, this is my administration;
I always take responsibility for whatever happens, and this is an area
that I have a particular concern with.”
