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CNN NEWSROOM
Soon: Obama, Shinseki Meet On VA Scandal; Interview with Jackie Walorski
Aired May 30, 2014 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Ana Cabrera in for Carol Costello. Thanks for joining me. Let's get right to it as we begin this hour with Eric Shinseki just minutes from now that Veterans Affairs secretary will meet behind closed doors with the president. Now details about this meeting are scarce, but few expect Shinseki to emerge with his job still intact.
A short time ago Shinseki appeared before a Homeless Veterans Coalition Group that he credits or that credits him with greatly reducing the number of vets on the street and you can see he was greeted with a fairly warm reception. Lots of applause.
This group also is particularly vulnerable to the medical abuses and delays that we've learned about and disgrace the VA and may have cost lives. Let's listen to a chunk of what Shinseki had to say this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GENERAL ERIC SHINSEKI, VETERANS AFFAIRS SECRETARY: Let me address the elephant in the room today and you all have been very generous and polite in your welcome. After Wednesday's release of an interim Inspector General Report, we now know that the VA has a systemic totally unacceptable lack of integrity within some of our veteran health facilities. The lack of trust involved the tracking of patient wait times for appointments.
Our initial findings of our ongoing internal review of other large VA health care facilities also show that to be true. The breach of integrity is irresponsible, indefensible and unacceptable to me. I said when this situation began weeks to months ago, that I thought the problem was limited and isolated because I believe that.
I no longer believe it. It is systemic. I was too trusting of some and I accept it as accurate reports that I now know to have been misleading with regard to patient wait times. I can't explain the lack of integrity among some of the leaders of our health care facilities. This is something I rarely encounter during 38 years in uniform.
And so I will not defend it because it is indefensible. But I can take responsibility for it and I do. So given the facts I know now, I apologize at senior leader of the Department of Veterans Affairs and I extend an apology to the people who I care most deeply about and that's the veterans of this great country, to their families and loved ones who I have been honored to serve for over five years now.
It's a call of a lifetime. I also offer that apology to members of Congress who have supported me, to veteran's service organizations who have been my partners for five years and to the American people. All of them deserve better from their VA. But I also know this, leadership and integrity problems can and must be fixed and now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CABRERA: Shinseki's remarks drawing a warmer reception than many expected outlining a sweeping course of action, but will it be enough to save his job? We are covering all of the angles with our team of analysts and correspondents and of course, the CNN investigations team that first broke this story.
Let's begin there with CNN's Drew Griffin whose reporting exposed the abuses, the failures. Drew, let's first run down some of what Shinseki just said. Some of these proposed reforms. He said he initiated removal of the senior leaders at the Phoenix facility. No performance bonuses this year for senior VA executives and he says patient times will no longer factor into employee evaluations. Drew, what's your take?
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: My take is good steps that should have been taken a long time ago. I just listened to that one more time. I'm struck that he's apologizing to members in Congress who have supported him. If he had listened to members in Congress who had pointed this out to him for the last year and a half, he might be in a different position right now.
But these are steps. There's also a hint of what's to come. He says this is systemic and that he has learned that at major hospitals the problem also exists just overnight we learned there are 700 veterans waiting at the Pittsburgh VA, waiting some since 2012 to get a doctor's appointment.
And right now currently today they're racing to try to find these veterans and get them in to see a doctor. As he tries to save his job, I think the president is going to have to look forward to a bunch more headlines, damning headlines coming out in weeks and months to come as to the nature and width of this scandal continues to be exposed.
CABRERA: It kind of sounds from what I'm hearing you say that this may only be a piecemeal solution that Shinseki just laid out.
GRIFFIN: Well, I think it's part of a solution, but you still have all of these people that reading through the lines that lied to Eric Shinseki are still out there running these hospitals. Now, three of them may be gone from Phoenix, but what about the rest of his staff and his headquarter staff telling him don't pay attention to what you are seeing in the newspapers and don't pay attention to what you see on CNN. This is a bunch of B.S. cooked up by the media and by the House Oversight Committee? It's a little disingenuous for me to believe that he didn't look further into this way back when. CABRERA: Again, we are waiting now for this meeting between Shinseki and the president. That's why we continue to keep up this live picture at the White House as he await his arrival. When the scandal first exploded, President Obama, he voiced strong confidence in Secretary Shinseki and his ability to fix any problems.
But that was before this really mushroomed and now the president's support seems to have waned in recent days. The president said Shinseki was on thin ice. Listen to what he said this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I'll have a serious conversation with him about whether he thinks that he is prepared and has the capacity to take on the job of fixing it. I don't want any veteran to not be getting the kind of services that they deserve.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CABRERA: Again minutes away from that serious conversation. Let's bring in senior White House correspondent, Jim Acosta. Jim, what's your sense of what will go down in this meeting between President Obama and Shinseki?
JIM ACOSTA, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the end could be near for Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki on it based on everything we know. In the last 24 hours, we want to point out that we just saw the White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough arrive at the west wing. We tried to get his attention as he walking down West Executive Drive, but he walked right in the White House.
I expect this is going to be a tense meeting with the president based on his comments to the "Live with Kelly and Michael" show earlier this morning that he is going to have a serious discussion with the VA secretary. What we saw yesterday in the White House briefing room was the biggest indication of what's to come.
And that is when White House reporters including myself press the press secretary on several occasions does the president have confidence in Eric Shinseki and Jay Carney just would not answer that question. He said, well, he has confidence in what the secretary has done during his time in office, but not in terms of what needs to take place now at the Veterans Affairs Department which is a lot of reform.
I think what you also heard from Shinseki in that speech earlier this morning was extraordinary. Something I have not heard from a cabinet secretary in a very long time. He said I can't explain the lack of integrity among some of the leaders of our healthcare facilities. This is something I rarely encountered during 38 years in uniform. I was too trusting of some.
I accept it accurate reports that I know now to have been misleading with regard to patient wait times. This is a secretary admitting to the public that he's been lied to and not just by facility officials in Phoenix, but across the board inside the Department of Veterans Affairs from the top down it appears.
So I think the question is being asked inside the White House, can Eric Shinseki continue on in his current job when he doesn't even have people under him giving him the truth, telling him what's going on inside that agency. I had White House officials tell me there's a big difference between the president's loyalty to Kathleen Sebelius for example during the Obamacare web site fiasco where she stayed on the job for several months before she eventually stepped down.
White House officials telling me that they always had confidence that the web site was going to be fixed. They are not as confident that these problems inside the VA can be repaired by Eric Shinseki and all of that I think leads us to the conclusion that Shinseki's days are numbered and it may be just today -- Ana.
CABRERA: Exactly what you said almost speaks to the necessity to really clean house from the top down. He said it himself. There are all kinds of gaffs, mismanagement and lack of leadership, deception, he's been misled if you can't trust people. This is a discussion we'll continue to hash out right here.
We have Barbara Starr still standing by. We got Gloria Borger. We got Chris Frates, people who are in the room there. Jim Acosta, stay with us. We hope you at home will stay with us. We'll take a quick break and be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CABRERA: Continuing to follow new developments this morning in the VA scandal. The failures we've been reporting here on CNN for the past several months. All seeming to come to a head this morning. We heard from Secretary Eric Shinseki just this morning as he spoke to a veterans group of homeless members.
We also know that he's going to be meeting with the president in the closed door meeting in just a matter of minutes scheduled to happen at 10:15. That's 2 minutes from now. We have our guys there ready to report on any developments that come from there. We also have a team covering all of the different angles.
So let's go to the Pentagon, CNN's Barbara Starr. Barbara, I know you have covered General Shinseki for many years. Would you expect him to walk in today and offer his resignation after all this pressure?
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Ana. You know, I have covered him both when he served here at the Pentagon as the army chief of staff and as VA secretary. I spoke this morning to one of his closest, oldest friends who has been in touch with him throughout this crisis. This person says to me don't expect Eric Shinseki to go into the White House and offer his resignation, to tender his resignation to the president.
That's not in his character. That's not what he has planned. He's going to go into this meeting armed with the facts as he sees them, armed with the plan that you saw him lay out a few minutes ago in this public statement. He will have his plan to offer on how he intends to fix the problems.
Will that be enough for the president? Will that be enough for the White House, which certainly is under growing political fire? Shinseki still very much someone who wants to keep his head down, look at the situation very detail orientated, very much task orientated. That's been his management style throughout his career. He does not particularly like the public eye. He doesn't like to be someone out there glad handing around.
He has come under criticism since his army days for having somewhat of an isolated management style. He has a small group around him and that's what he works with. That's what he's comfortable with. That may be part of what has caused his problem now. He may -- people acknowledge he may not have reached out to a broad enough audience within the VA management to help a full understanding of what was going on.
So where it leads him today, he will go in, we are told. He'll lay out his plan of action whether it is enough for President Obama, whether it's enough for the White House to ride out this political storm certainly remains to be seen -- Ana.
CABRERA: All right, we are continuing to monitor this live picture from the White House where we are seeing some activity. We haven't actually seen the secretary arrive there on scene, but we saw some cars arrive there as Barbara was speaking to us. We assume that Shinseki may be in one of those vehicles. We'll continue to watch this.
And as we watch the picture and wait to learn of what happens in that meeting between the president and Shinseki, I want to bring in CNN chief political analyst, Gloria Borger. Gloria, you wrote an interesting op-ed for cnn.com just today.
You write in part, quote, "The president is living his own version of Alice through the looking glass staring down a rabbit hole of government bureaucracy and inefficiency. The government he has tried to grow, manage and change has become his own personal nemesis. Leads one to wonder does the president himself trust government anymore?" So Gloria, what's the president to do?
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, here is the problem for President Obama and that is that this issue really strikes at the core of his presidency. He came into the presidency not only making veterans' affairs and benefits a cornerstone of his presidency, he said I believe in government. I'm going to make it work for you. That's why we have health care reform.
But what instead we've seen is efficiency at the VA. Same thing at the IRS, questions about overreach on NSA surveillance so this president who came in promising to make government smarter and better is suddenly surrounded by a bureaucracy that hasn't been working. The question you have to ask is this his fault or is it possible that nobody can take charge of the bureaucracy?
Is this President Obama management style or is it just the way government doesn't work? I would argue that what the president has not had is a good monitoring and early warning system that would allow him to sort of trouble shoot these kinds of problems so he is not blind-sided.
That's what a chief executive is supposed to do and look at the problems we've had starting with the health care rollout. You know, this has become a very large issue for him because if he doesn't trust the way government works, how can he ask Americans to trust the way government works?
CABRERA: Being safe to say that this VA controversy isn't boosting people's view of the government.
BORGER: No. By the way, only 2 percent of the American public trust government to do the right thing all of the time. The number gets a little bit higher when you say some of the time, but people already don't trust government so he's also up against that. I think the burden now is to prove that it can work and maybe that will happen with the affordable care act.
Maybe the VA is going to get reformed. But right now this is always been the sort of uphill battle for this president who is saying to people, look, I do think it can work for you, but all they've seen are these kinds of problems.
CABRERA: All right, Gloria Borger, thanks to you. We know you'll stick with us throughout the hour and you can read more of Gloria's op-ed on this web site, the cnn.com. It's cnn.com/opinion. We'll be right back after another quick break. Continuing to monitor that meeting with the president.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CABRERA: Welcome back. You're continuing to see live pictures from the White House this morning as we await the rival of Secretary Shinseki set to meet with the president in a last-minute meeting called by the president. It will be behind closed doors. Our CNN White House correspondent, Jim Acosta is there right now monitoring that situation. Jim, has Shinseki arrived?
ACOSTA: Well, he was scheduled to arrive at 10:15 or have this meeting with the president at 10:15 so we have to assume he arrived. We saw several vehicles pull up at the side entrance to the west wing and saw people getting out of that vehicle. Can't say for sure whether it was the secretary of Veterans Affairs. We're trying to get that to you in just a few moments.
One thing we should point out what we heard for the last 24 hours and that is I've been told by one official here at the White House that Secretary Shinseki is on thin ice. That is a quote. And what we heard in the last 24 hours is some of that ice cracking.
When you have a dozen or so Democratic senators up for re-election in the fall in tough races in red states in some cases calling for the secretary to step down, it almost becomes untenable situation for the president. The president as we know is loathed to give Washington in some case which is it gets into this feeding frenzy what it wants. When people around Washington are calling for heads to roll, this president likes to slow down and take his time and do some deep thinking. I talked to one White House official a couple days ago who described it to me this way.
They see this Veterans Affairs scandal as a real authentic problem that has to be addressed and they put it in as this one official described it as a separate bucket from some of the other scandals that we've seen here in Washington. Some of the other controversies that we've seen here in Washington.
They don't see this as a similar situation to say the controversy swirling around Benghazi. They feel like that was over politicized by Republicans on Capitol Hill, but they see what's happening on Capitol Hill, Democrats and Republicans raising deep, deep concerns that the president also shares and so they see this as a very different situation.
So that is why it's being handled the way it is right now. As we mentioned earlier at the top of the hour, when the White House does not say that the president has confidence in a cabinet secretary, it is very difficult to get that confidence back and that's the situation that Eric Shinseki is in right now.
CABRERA: What you mentioned both Republicans and Democrats sort of on the same side for once. That speaks volumes. That's for sure. Jim Acosta, thanks. We know you'll continue to stand by for us.
One lawmaker who called for the inspector general report that has really opened this can of worms just this week, Indiana Congresswoman Jackie Walorski. She had some harsh words for Shinseki earlier this week. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPRESENTATIVE JACKIE WALORSKI (R), INDIANA: The question I would want to ask is on behalf of the families that probably aren't in this room tonight, but we've heard from some of them. I heard from Barry Coats here three weeks ago. They had the death sentence and a death warrant for something was no fault of his own because he couldn't get a simple colonoscopy. People died.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CABRERA: Congressman Walorski joining me now. Thank you so much, Congresswoman. We appreciate your time.
WALORSKI: Appreciate it.
CABRERA: Did have you a chance to hear what Shinseki said this morning?
WALORSKI: I did. I was one of the first people to call for his resignation because I sat on the committee for 18 months as a freshman. I've heard enough. I've seen enough. We researched and learned enough aside from the fact that the Inspector General Report that came out to know that there's valid reasons to call to his resignation. I heard what he to say this morning as well.
CABRERA: What he had to say this morning, he talked about what he wants to do to fix this VA problem talking about, asking Congress, people like you to give him more power to fire people. No bonuses for VA Phoenix staff. He wants to accelerate care for veterans who have been waiting for care both inside and outside. Does any of that resonate and change your opinion about whether Shinseki should resign?
WALORSKI: Here's the thing. On the committee we have oversight and jurisdiction over the VA. All of the information we've asked him for to respond to all of these allegations that have continually come in. We've received no information. The reason we are where we are today is because the VA failed to cooperate. We have a bipartisan committee. This is a non-political issue and it has to stay a non- political issue.
We've come together on the committee to work together to do what's right for the sake of right and it's not that we're talking about little minor things here. When this Inspector General Report came out, this is systemic. When you find out you asked for information for 18 months and not on individual cases here, but trends that were developing.
This report says this is a nationwide problem and there were people that sat around a table and figured out how to manipulate with these numbers and cook these books. This is way bigger than a tiny announcement today from a guy who has been in charge and let me just say, I don't think any of us know what will happen today if he's going to resign and president will take his resignation. We don't know that right now.
Let me just tell you and your viewers, this is step one. There is a long way to go in fixing the issues with the VA. It's going to exceed the issue of what happens right now with Secretary Shinseki. There's lot of layers here that need to be exposed because yesterday another Inspector General Report came out on the whole IT problem protecting veterans personal and private information to make sure identity theft doesn't sweep away what they have.
There are systemic issues that exceed these health issues. When you have debts of our finest Americans that answered the call, this is inexcusable and unacceptable and the American people I believe stand with us in saying it step one has to be the removal of this leadership and bring people in potentially even from the outside that can fix the largest hospital network that we deal with in this country.
CABRERA: We know what you want to see happen inside this White House meeting. Nobody is privy to and we do know that Secretary Shinseki has arrived and is meeting with the president presumably as we speak. We know what you want to see happen. What do you think will happen in this meeting?
WALORSKI: I'm hopeful that we see right done for the sake of right. I'm hopeful there's a resignation today and the president brings someone in with a sense of urgency get right to the heart of this issue and drill down and be honest with the American people. Restore the faith and confidence to the VA they deserve to have there's great workers and employees in the VA.
But you know what? We're in a situation right now where there needs to be an urgency like you would for a five-alarm fire where everybody rushes to the scene to save people and make sure this doesn't happen again. And simply on Wednesday night where we had a hearing that went until midnight, there was no urgency even from the folks that were in there testifying on that night.
