No one quite knows the exact fate of David Shulkin. The former Veterans Affairs secretary says he was quietly fired. The White House says he was “given the opportunity to resign.” Politically correct semantics aside, the Shulkin exit was entirely too lenient.
The administration should have run Shulkin out of town months ago when they had the chance, ending the national humiliation early and preventing the bureaucrat from starting his current sniveling cable news cycle.
By now everyone knows how Shulkin used VA money to surprise his wife with a 10-day intercontinental getaway complete with sightseeing in Denmark and shopping in London. Not only did the bureaucrat and his staff mislead agency ethics officers to make it seem like taxpayers didn’t pick up his wife’s tab, the VA inspector general reported in February he also accepted tickets to watch tennis at Wimbledon. Per that federal watchdog, the trip cost $122,334.
It should also be common knowledge that Shulkin was such a poor manager at the VA that public servants were on the verge of breaking down. He sowed so much suspicion and distrust among the ranks of his staff that toward the end of his time at the agency, an armed guard was stationed outside his door.
Both are pathetic and both were reason enough for this president, the one famous for making dramatic personnel decisions during a prime time reality TV show, to fire Shulkin. Still, they pale in comparison to the real reason that VA secretary needed to go long ago: He didn’t care enough to get the job done right.
He was appointed to help clean up the agency. He failed.
The public was angry to discover in 2014 that thousands of veterans were secretly backlogged at a Phoenix veterans hospital. When they discovered two years later that the abuse spread to 40 different facilities, they were furious. Shulkin was supposed to fix this. His reputation as a medical, academic, and administrative professional, and his pedigree as an Obama nominee promoted by Trump, coupled with the urgency to fix a festering and embarrassing problem, helped him breeze through Senate confirmation, 100-0.
But two weeks ago, the inspector general reported that problems persisted. The wait time for as many as 13,000 veterans were being “zeroed out.” While Shulkin was shopping with the wife overseas, and then while Shulkin was cowering in his office afraid of his own staff, those veterans were still desperate to get VA-funded care in the private sector they were entitled to after waiting for more than 30 days.
Apparently there are parliamentary concerns for why the president didn’t remove Shulkin earlier. But the deterrence effect of making an example of Shulkin would have been more than enough to justify whatever the political cost. That bureaucrat failed to do his job. He let down veterans, and for that, Shulkin should’ve been fired. Obviously, it’s too late to overcome the damage caused by his incompetence or carelessness. It is also too late to properly drum him out of office.
At the very least, Trump should end the fired/resigned drama and publicly condemn Shulkin’s malfeasance once and for all.
