When President Obama visits the Phoenix Veterans Affairs hospital that has been at the center of a scandal about secret waiting lists and severe appointment delays, he undoubtedly will cite progress in trying to fix the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The trip will highlight steps new VA Secretary Bob McDonald has taken to improve care at VA hospitals across the country and shorten wait times for patients, White House aides said.
Obama also plans to announce the creation of a new advisory panel to weigh in on other ways the agency can improve veterans’ health services.
One glaring step the White House has not taken, however, is to appoint a permanent inspector general for the VA 437 days after the previous inspector general retired.
The president bears the sole responsibility for nominating inspectors general, internal agency watchdogs who serve as the first line of defense against malfeasance and corruption.
But Obama has not made the appointment a priority, even last year during the height of the secret waitlists scandal when former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was forced to resign.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in late January sent a letter to Obama calling on him to name a permanent inspector general.
“The VA Office of Inspector General has gone far too long without a permanent inspector general,” Johnson wrote. “Former VA inspector general Opfer made known his intentions to leave the post in November 2013. Now over a year later this post remains empty and that is unacceptable.”
Michael Smallberg, an investigator at the Project on Government Oversight, a good government group that tracks IG vacancies, said the vacancy is particularly troubling considering the Washington Examiner‘s story last year that the acting inspector general was pressured at the behest of top VA officials to change a report to undermine a key whistleblower’s claim that dozens of veterans may have died awaiting treatment at a VA hospital.
“For an agency that’s grappling with such serious problems, 400-plus days without a permanent watchdog is simply too long,” said Smallberg. “If the president is serious about holding the VA accountable, he owes it to veterans and taxpayers to find a permanent Inspector General whose independence and objectivity are beyond reproach.”
When asked Thursday about the more than year long IG vacancy, White House spokesman Eric Shultz said he doesn’t have a specific announcement regarding an inspector general and backed the administration’s decision to allow acting inspector generals to remain in the top spot despite multiple examples that deputies lack the independence of fully Senate-confirmed permanent IGs.
“I would say it’s my understanding that the administration profoundly respects and admires the work of inspector generals across the administration and throughout various agencies, whether they are Senate-confirmed or not,” Schultz said.
The VA is one of 10 inspectors general vacancies that Obama has left vacant for months, if not years, at a time, according to the Project on Government Oversight. The Department of Interior has not had an inspector general nearly the entire time Obama has been in office and the Agency for International Development’s IG vacancy has continued for more than three years.
