administration. i always take responsibility for whatever happens and this is an area i have a particular concern with. this predates my presidency when i was in the senate. i was on the veterans affairs committee. i heard first hand veterans who were not getting the kinds of services and benefits that they earned. i pledged that if i had privilege of serving as commander in chief and president, that we would fix it. the va is a big organization that has had problems for a very long time and in some cases management problems and in some cases funding problems. and so what we tried to do is systemically go after problems that we were aware of and fix them. and where we have seen our veterans not being properly served whether it was too many homeless veterans or a disability claims process taking too long, we would go at it and chip away at it and fix it.
in your opinion of secretary shinseki in the last few days? you said you had confidence in him, even him coming in today saying it was, time for him to resign? what made the difference in your mind? rick s judgment. i think his belief that he would be a distraction from the task at hand. which is to make sure that what s broken gets fixed so that his fellow veterans are getting services that they need. i want to reiterate. he is a very good man. i just don t mean he is accomplished man. i just don t mean he has been an outstanding soldier. he is a good person who s done ex-semimary work on our exemplary work under our behalf and under his leadership we have seen more progress on more fronts at the va and bigger
investment in the va than just about any other va secretary. he cut veterans homelessness by 24%. brought in folks who had been exposed to agent orange who had been waiting for decades to get the services an benefits that they had earned. making sure that posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury was dealt with in a serious way. making sure we had facilities for our womens vets who all too often were not receiving the kind of specialized services that they needed. so he has been a champion of our veterans and where there s props he has been ready and willing to bet in there and fix them. so, with the disability backlog, that had shot up, as a consequence of the admission of the agent orange veterans as
reporter: mr. president, what changed in your opinion on secretary shinseki in the last few days? you said you had confidence in him and coming in today saying it was time to resign. what made the difference in your mind? rick s judgment. i think his belief that he would be a distraction from the task at hand, which is to make sure that what s broken gets fixed so that his fellow veterans are getting the services that they need. i want to reiterate, he is a very good man. i don t just mean he s an accomplished man. i don t mean he s been an outstanding soldier. he s a good person who has done exemplary work on our behalf and under his leadership we have seen more progress on more
when it came to funding, we have increased funding for va services in unprecedented fashion, because we understood that it s not enough to give lip service to our veterans, but not be willing to put our money where our mouth is. and so, what i can say confidentially, this has been a priority. it has been a priority reflected in my budget and in terms of managing the va where we have seen a problem, where we have been aware of a problem, we have gone after it and fixed it and have been able to make significant progress, but, what is absolutely clear this one, this issue of scheduling, is one that the reporting systems inside of the vha did not surface to the level where rick was aware of it or we were able to see it. this was not something that we were hearing, when i was