and what the president will do today is convene a task force. i think i will being the co-chair with my partners at the department of defense and other departments of the government. and we will bring out best medicine, the best social science in addition to going to the congress and asking for grants and moneys to give to our states and locations so they can help us in this fight. ainsley: mr. secretaries, is there anything we can do? because when you hear these numbers. these are individuals that have fought or our country. sacrificed so much. these are god s children. these are lives. when you know that someone is at the depths of despair, is there anything we can do as a public? i think there is i will give you an example. i was in alaska a few months ago and i went to see the alaska federation of natives. over half of the veterans in the state of alaska are outside of the department of veterans affairs. and i asked the afn to double the number of veterans tribal
place to start would be getting rid of about 699 of them and hire doctors in their place. although that would be easier said than done, removing shinseki would be easy but making wholesale leadership changes at the v.a. would require the senate to take up a house-passed bill creating that authority. bret? mike, thank you. more on that with the panel. for just the second time as we said at the front of the show, the second time since june of 2009, the economy posted a quarterly decline in the first three months of the year. the gross domestic product contracted at an annual rate of 1%. a big change from the initial estimate of a 0.1 point uptick. rich edison is here to tell us what changed. good evening. the culprit here is american companies imported more products, stocked fewer items on their shelves than first thought. that shrank domestic product,
mostly on their goals, irradical, expanding the government, intruding into people s lives. then you get to a point where you get three factors, as you say, the most important underlying all of it is the economy. the recession lasted 18 months. the so-called recovery has been on for five years. we now have a quarter of contraction. you compare it with the reagan recovery, the average for the six years after his recession was a growth of over 4%. he was between 1% and 2%. so we have high unemployment chronic sort of discontent, and that underlies everything. you add onto that the fiasco of obamacare, self inflicted. they can t even put a web site together for $500,000 million. then you add the v.a. corruption, and there s a moral
under way. chairman jeff miller, who had called three v.a. officials to speak to the committee who have not appeared said he did receive a series of e-mails from the v.a. early this morning but he said his patience is, quote, wearing thin and he s tired of asking for information from the v.a. and not getting it or it taking a long time. paul rieckhoff, have you changed your position on general shinseki? no, but i think the membership is getting more and more outraged by the day. we re going to speak to our people nationwide. it s memorial day. we re going to continue to poll our members, talk to them the events nationwide.
remains to be scene. last night the house veterans affairs committee grilled three v.a. officials and key lawmakers seemed struck by a lack of urgency. responded to over 100,000 requests ma am, ma am, ma am, veterans died. get us the answers, please? there are also attempts to get answers about yesterday s inspector general s report revealing veterans were at risk of being lost or forgotten with at least 1700 being kept off the official list. these secret waiting lists could be at every v.a. facility in the country. is that correct? congressman, don t think they were secret. how did you not find them, dr. lynch? you were there. i dp find them. how many of them were on the list? you told me you didn t look at the list. i told you we didn t document the numbers. a veterans advocate offered a different kind of personnel change at the v.a. they have on staff over 700 attorneys, and i think a good