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Obama: Any misconduct at VA will be punished

WASHINGTON — Seeking to head off a growing furor over veterans’ health care, President Barack Obama declared Wednesday that allegations of misconduct at Veterans Affairs hospitals are “dishonorable” and will be not be tolerated by his administration.

“I will not stand for it — not as commander in chief but also not as an American,” Obama said following an Oval Office meeting with embattled VA Secretary Eric Shinseki.

“We are going to fix whatever is wrong and so long as I have the privilege of serving as commander in chief, I’m going to keep on fighting to deliver the care and the benefits and the opportunities that you and your families deserve, now and for decades to come,” Obama said.

Obama’s statement marked his first public comments on the matter in more than two weeks. Last week, he dispatched his deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors to the VA to oversee a review of department policies and ordered him to report back to the White House next month.

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Nabors first joined the Office of Management and Budget, straight out of graduate school, as a program examiner in 1996. Assigned to the Bureau’s commerce branch, he was given responsibility for the decennial census, and while he was working on that task, he was recognized as a “budding wunderkind” by OMB Director Jacob Lew, who promoted him to special assistant to the director in 1998. In 2000, he was further promoted to assistant director for administration and executive secretary.

In February 2010 Nabors, became senior advisor to then-White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, who is now the Mayor of Chicago.

In November 2011, Nabors was included on The New Republic’s list of Washington’s most powerful, least famous people.