country has to offer. they've done their duty. they ask nothing more than that this country does ours. that we uphold our sacred trust to all who have served. so when i hear allegations of misconduct, any misconduct, whether it's allegations of va staff covering up long wait times or cooking the books, i will not stand for it. not as commander in chief, but also not as an american. none of us should. so if these allegations prove to be true, it is dishonorable, it is disgraceful, and i will not tolerate it, period. here's what i discussed with secretary shinseki this morning. first, anybody found to have manipulated or falsified records at va facilities has to be held

accountable. the inspector general at the va has launched investigations into the phoenix va and other facilities. some individuals have already been put on administrative leave. i know that people are angry and want swift reckoning. i sympathize with that. we have to let the investigators do their job and get to the bottom of what happened. our veterans deserve to know the facts. their families deserve to know the facts. once we know the facts, i assure you, if there is misconduct, it will be punished. second, i want to know the full scope of this problem, and that's why i ordered secretary shinseki to investigate. today he updated me on his review, which is looking not just at the phoenix facility but also va facilities across the nation, and i expect preliminary results from that review next week.

third, i directed ron neighbors to conduct a broader review of the veterans health administration. the part of the va that delivers health care to our veterans, and ron going to phoenix today. keep in mind, though, even if we had not heard reports out of this phoenix facility or other facilities, we all know that it often takes too long for veterans to get the care that they need. that's not a new development. it's been a problem for decades, and it's been compounded by more than a decade of war. that's why when i came into office i said we would systemically work to fix the problem and have worked hard to address them. my attitude is for folks fighting on the battlefield, they should not have to fight a bureaucracy at home to get the care that they've earned.

so the presumption has always been we have to do better, and rob's review will be a comprehensive look at the veterans health administration's approach currently to access to care. i want to know what's working. i want to know what is not working, and i want specific recommendations on how va can up their game. i expect that full report from rob next month. number four. i said that i expect everyone involved to work with congress, which has an important oversight role to play. i welcome congress as a partner in our efforts. not just to address the current controversies, but to make sure we're doing right by our veterans across the board. i served on the veterans affairs committee when i was in the senate, and it was one of the proudest pieces of business that i did in the legislature. i know the folks over there care deeply about our veterans. it is important that our veterans don't become another

political football, especially when some many of them are receiving care right now. this is an area where democrats and republicans should always be working together. that brings me to my final point. even as we get to the bottom of what happened in phoenix and other facilities, all of us, whether here in washington or all across the country, have to stay focused on the larger mission, which is upholding our sacred trust to all of our veterans. bringing the va system into the 21st century, which is not an easy task. we have made progress over the last five years. we've made historic investments in our veterans. we've boosted va funding to record levels, and we created consistency through advanced appropriations so that veterans organizations knew their money would be there regardless of political rangeling in washington. we had va benefits available to more than 2 million veterans who did not have it before

delivering disability pay to more vietnam vets exposed to agent orange. making it easier for veterans with post-traumatic stress and mental health issues and traumatic brain injury to get treatment and improving care for women's veterans. because of these steps and the influx of new veterans requiring services added in many cases to wait times, we launched an all-out war on the disability claims backlog. in just the past year alone, we slashed that backlog by half. of course, we're not going to let up, because it's still too high. we're fw to keep at it until we eliminate the backlog once and for all. meanwhile, we're reducing homelessness among our veterans and helping veterans and their families, more than a million so far, pursue their education under the post-9/11 g.i. bill. we're stepping up our efforts to help the newest veterans get the skills and training to find jobs

when they come home. along with michelle and joe biden in joining forces we helped hundreds of thousands of veterans find a job. more veterans are finding work, and veterans' unemployment, although still way too high, is coming down. the point is caring for our veterans is not an issue that popped up in recent weeks. some of the problems with respect to how veterans are able to access the benefits that they've earned, that's not a new issue. that's an issue i was working on when i was running for the united states senate. taking care of our veterans and their families has been one of the causes of my presidency, and it is something that all of us have to be involved with and have to be paying attention to. we ended the war in iraq, and as our war in afghanistan ends and as our newest veterans are coming home, the demands on the

va are going to grow. so we're going to have to redouble our efforts to get it right as a nation. we have to be honest that there are and will continue to be areas where we've got to do a lot better. so today i want every veteran to know we are going to fix whatever is wrong. as long as i have the privilege as serving as commander in chief, i'm going to keep on fighting to deliver the care and the benefits and the opportunities that your families deserve. now and for decades to come. that is a commitment to which i feel a sacred duty to maintain. with that i'll take two questions. i'm going to take jim cunan at ap, first of all. >> thank you, mr. president. as you said, this is a cause of the presidency you ran on this issue and you mentioned it.

why was it allowed to get to this stage where you actually had potentially 40 veterans who died while waiting for treatment? that's an extreme circumstance. why can it get to that? >> we have to find out, first of all, what exactly happened. i don't want to get ahead of the i.g. report or the other investigations being done. i think it is important to recognize that the wait times generally, what the i.g. indicated so far at least, is the wait times were for folks who may have had chronic conditions who were seeking their next appointment but may have already received service. it wasn't necessarily a situation where they were calling for emergency services. the i.g. indicated that he did not see a link between the wait and them actually dying. that does not excuse the fact that the wait times in general are too long in some facilities. so what we have to do is find

out what exactly happened. we have to find out how can we realistically cut some of these wait times. there has been a large influx of new veterans coming in. we have a population of veterans that is also aging as part of the baby boom population, and we have to make sure that the scheduling system, the access to the system, that they're all in sync. parts of the va have performed well, and what we've seen is, for example, satisfaction rates in many facilities with respect to many providers has been high. but what you -- what we're seeing is that in terms of how folks get scheduled, how they get in the system, there's still too much problems. i'll get a complete report from them. it's not a consequence of people not caring about the problem,

but there are 85 million appointments scheduled among veterans during the course of the year. that's a lot of appointments. that means that we've got to have a system that is built in order to be able to take those folks in in a smooth fashion, that they know what to expect. it's reliable and means that the va has to set standards it can meet. if it can't heat them right now, it has to set realistic goals about how they improve the system overall. >> doesn't the responsibility ultimately rest for secretary shinseki? >> the responsibility of things rests with me as the president and commander in chief. rick shinseki has been a great soldier. he himself is a disabled veteran. nobody cares more about our veterans than rick shinseki.

if you asked me how do i think rick shinseki has performed overall, i would say that on homelessness, on 9/11 g.i. bill, on working with us to reduce the backlog across the board, he's put his heart and soul into this thing, and he's taken it very seriously. i have said to rick and i had it to him today, i want to see, you know, what the results of these reports are. there is going to be accountability, and i'm going to expect even before the reports are done that we are seeing significant improvement in terms of how the admissions process takes place in all of our va health care facilities. so i know he cares about it deeply. you know, he has been a great public servant and a great warrior on behalf of the united states of america. we're going to work with him to solve the problem, but i am

going to make sure that there is accountability throughout the system after i get the full report. steve from reuters. >> thank you, sir. has secretary shinseki offered to resign? were you caught by surprise by the allegations? >> rick shinseki serves this country because he cares deeply about veterans, and he cares deeply about the mission. i know that rick's attitude is if he does not think he can do a good job on this and if he thinks he let our veterans down, then i'm sure that he is not going to be interested in continuing to serve. at this stage rick is committed to solving the problem and working with us to do it. i'm going to do everything in my power using the resources of the white house to help that process

of getting to the bottom of what happened and fixing it. but, i'm also going to be waiting to see what the results of all this review process yields. i don't yet know how systemic this is. i don't know if there are a lot of other facilities cooking the books, or is this just an episodic problem? we know that -- you know, essentially wait times have been a problem for decades in all kinds of circumstances with respect to getting benefits, health care, et cetera. some facilities do better than others. a couple of years ago the veterans affairs set a goal of 14 days for wait times. what's not yet clear to me is

whether enough tools were given to make sure the goals were actually met. and i won't know until the full report is put forward as to whether or not there was enough management follow-up to ensure that those folks on the front lines were doing scheduling, had the capacity to meet those goals, if they were being evaluated for meeting goals that were unrealistic and they couldn't meet because either there weren't enough doctors or the systems weren't in place or what have you. we need to find out who is responsible for setting up the guidelines, too. there's a lot of questions to answer. in the meantime what i said to rick today is let's not wait for the report retrospectively to reach out immediately to veterans who are currently waiting for appointments to make sure that they are getting better service. that's something that we can initiate right now. we don't have to wait to find out if there's misconduct to dig

in and make sure that we're upping our game in all of the various facilities. you know, i do think it is important not just with respect to rick shinseki but with respect to the va generally to say that every single day there are people working in the va who do outstanding work and put everything they've got into making sure that our veterans get the care, benefits and services that they need. and so i do want to close by sending a message out there that there are millions of veterans who are getting really good service from the va, who are getting really good treatment from the va. i know because i get letters from veterans sometimes asking me to write letters of comme

commendation or praise to a doctor or nurse or facility that couldn't have given them better treatment. so this is a big system with a lot of really good people in it who care about our veterans deeply. we have seen the improvements on a whole range of issues like homelessness, like starting to clear the backlog up, like making sure that folks who previously weren't even eligible for disability because it was a mental health issue or because it was an agent orange issue are finally able to get those services. i don't want us to lose sight of the fact that there are a lot of folks in the va doing a really good job and working hard at it. that does not, on the other hand, excuse the possibility that, number one, we weren't just -- we were not doing a good enough job in terms of providing access to folks who need it for chronic conditions. number two, it never excuses the

possibility that somebody was trying to manipulate the data in order to look better or make their facility look better. it is critical to make sure that we have good information in order to make good decisions. i want people on the front lines, if there's a problem, to tell me or tell rick shinseki or tell whoever is their superr that this is a problem. don't cover up a problem. do not pretend the problem doesn't exist. if you can't get wait times down to 14 days right now, i want you to let folks up the chain know so we can solve the problems. do we need more doctors or a new system in order to make sure that the scheduling and coordination is more effective and more smooth? is there more follow-up? that's the thing that right now most disturbs me about the report, the possibility that

folks intentionally withheld information that would have helped us fix a problem. there's not a problem out there that's not fixable. it can't always be fixed as quickly as everyone likes, but typically we can chip away at the problems. we've seen this with the backlog and veterans homelessness and the post-9/11 g.i. bill. initially there were problems with it, and they got fixed and it's operating fairly smoothly. problems can be fixed, but folks have to let the people that they're reporting to know that there is a problem in order for us to fix it. >> what about [ inaudible ]. >> we're going to find out. if somebody has mismanaged or engaged in misconduct, not only do i not want them getting bonuses, i want them punished. that's what we're going to hopefully find out from the i.g.

report as well as the audits that are taking place. all right. thank you very much. thank you. >> you've been listening to the president of the united states addressing the growing controversy at the department of veterans affairs. by some estimates at the phoenix veterans affairs, 40 service members may have died waiting on care. there are some that say that the problem, as the president put it, cooking the books might exist in 26 va centers across the country. the president said i will not stand for it. the chief of staff for the president over the weekend said the president is mad as hell. the secretary for veterans affairs will stay put. mike, as i was listening to the president talking about fixing the system, i remember the image in maryland. thousands of computers that were outdated because the procurement process in washington takes too long. all sit in brand-new wrappers because the technology changed before washington could get their act together. the president is pointing out this is not a quick fix.

>> reporter: he did point out that some problems are chronic. he said it himself. they go back some decades, and, of course, reminded of the scandal during the bush administration at the old walter reed where the folks were living in appalling conditions, the nation's veterans. the president, i thought he was angry and at times defensive about the record he has on working on veterans issues. you heard him say time and time again putting more money at the program, expanding benefits to those eligible for benefits, working on the problem of the homeless and agent orange for vietnam veterans as well. he said if the allegations are true it's dishonorable and disgraceful, and he will not tolerate it. he went on to say that rob neighbors who he dispatched to the va and phoenix, he says he's leaving this evening to go down there and look himself at what's going on. there's a preliminary review going on. the president expects to see

results of a preliminary review as early as next week, but again, the president emphasizing time and time again, this is not a new development. it's been compounded by a decade of war that has seen an influx of veterans plus an aging veterans population as well. part of what precipitated this, stipulating if the allegations are true, it's a terrible scandal for the veterans. but the anatomy of a political scandal here, this has grown each day. the white house has tried to announce that neighbors was going to va and ease up and let air out of the balloon that day. the other day when jay carney his spokesman said he learned about this scandal from news reports, that brought it to a head. part of that precipitated the president's angry appearance in the briefing room today. >> thank you very much. how long has this scandal been going on? there was a time when veterans would die in this country that they would break out a tape

recorder and play taps and that has changed. you're liking live at the white house. the president announced he plans to get to the bottom of the situation involving the department of veterans affairs. we're going to take a break. we will be right back. deeper ae

perspectives on every issue. al jazeera america. we want to get you caught up on other news at this house. republicans fighting off tea party challengers in primaries yesterday. six states holding their primaries. it was the biggest day of the primary season so far. voters from georgia to oregon sending the tea party packing. the top republican is lives to fight another day, mitch mcconnell defeated matt bevin.

how did he do it? >> reporter: with a lot of ads and a lot of money. it all paid off for mish mcconnell. >> make me the majority leader and kentucky will lead america. >> easily beating matt bevin, mitch mcconnell is gearing up for an extensive and far tougher race in the fall. >> a vote for my opponent is a vote for obamacare, and the president who sold it to us on a mountain of lies. >> that opponent is allison lundgren grimes who handily secured her nomination and democrats believe is the best chance to unseat the top republican. >> i'm hear to tell you tonight my fellow kentuckians, i'm not an empty dress or rubber stamp and not a cheerleader. i am a strong kentucky woman who is an independent thinker who when i'm kentucky's next united states senator, the decisions i make will be what's best for the people of the commonwealth of kentucky, not partisan interests.

>> throughout heavily contested states that could decide who controls the senate next year, it was a similar story. tea party candidates took a beating against establishment republicans. in georgia, the candidate backed by the likes of sarah palin, karen handle, came up short against congressman jack kingston. he faces millionaire david purdue in a gop runoff. that winner will meet michelle nunn and another female candidates. >> as i travel across the state of georgia, i've been highlighting what washington can learn from georgia. you know what? i think that washington's going to learn a thing for two from our campaign. >> in arkansas the unon posed republican and democratic candidates won their primaries. they face off in other key race that could sway the balance of power in washington, but oregon could tip the scales, too. political newcomer dr. monica webby won the gop nomination

despite accusations of stalking an exboyfriend. she toppled his tea party challenger and handed a message to democrats. >> the best way to defeat a bully is to stand up to him, and that's exactly what we're going to do. >> it's not all bad news for the tea party. their presence forced a lot of republican candidates to swing to the right and make their message more conservative. you sure didn't hear mitch mcconnell talk about bringing home the bacon or federal dollars to his state. he stayed far away from that line of talking. >> libby, thank you very much. we want to update on the story of a man that came to this country as a refugee and fought in vietnam and lived here thinking because of his service he was a u.s. citizen. he got a rude wake-up call decades later, and robert ray is in jacksonville, florida. what's the latest on this man? >> reporter: good morning, del. earlier in morning in the 8:00 hour, i told you he was heading into the u.s. department of

homeland security here for a hearing where they would decide whether or not he could have a path to naturalization. that hearing began at 10:00 a.m. al jazeera america, myself, and came cameraman derek devoski were inside there. we were the only crew that spoke with mario hernandez where he told us that he and his wife were very nervous as they were about to enter the hearing room. he told us that the last time he was here he was, quote, treated like dirt. this time a different story. he's being rolled out the red carpet. we had a report earlier from the united states citizenship and immigration services. they told us that they thought that everything would go smoothly. they felt badly about the situation, and they were working to rectify it. so at our best guess there has not been an official ruling yet, but based upon what we know so far, we're understanding that he will get the path to citizenship today. derek, if you can look over here at the u.s. department of

homeland security. inside there mario hernandez is in a room. his wife is awaiting patiently in a room outside. mario is with his attorney. we were hoping that they would walk out at some point during this live shot, but we will get them when they come out, and we will bring the news to you, likely good news for hernandez. >> robert ray live in jacksonville, florida today. thank you very much. we'll be watching that story as well. we also remind you if you would like to learn more about the issues of immigration go to our website, aljazeera.com. we ask you to click on the border land story. that gives you an in-depth look at the immigrant experience in the united states. thanks for watching al jazeera america. i'm dell walters in new york. "inside story" is next. morning. he was summoned there for an emergency meeting. emergency meeting.

>> when people used to be arrested and charged with serious crimes against the united states and it's people, the next stop used to be a courtroom in the united states. after this latest terror trial in new york ended in conviction, we asked, why are we trying terror suspects anywhere else? it's the "inside story."