CBS "Face the Nation" - Transcript: Mental Health Requirements in Gun Sales and VA Scandal

Interview

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MAJOR GARRETT: We want to go now to Republican Senator John Thune, who is in Minneapolis, and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, who joins us from Stanford, Connecticut. Senator Blumenthal, I'm sure those words and those sentiments and emotions ring in your ears as a dark and grim reminder of the situation in Connecticut, the elementary school, everything about that. What is your reaction, Sir?

SENATOR RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (Veterans' Affairs Committee/D-Connecticut): First of all, my heart and prayers go out to Richard Martinez and the loved ones of all of those victims in Santa Barbara. That gut-wrenching, heart-breaking statement is a reminder of how we felt in the wake of Sandy Hook on December fourteenth a year and a half ago when it seemed like we were on the verge of potentially legislation that would stop the madness and end the insanity that has killed too many young people, thousands, tens of thousands since Sandy Hook, including Erika Robinson and Javier Martinez on the streets of New Haven whose lives we commemorated recently. And I hope I really sincerely hope that this tragedy, this unimaginable, unspeakable tragedy will provide an impetus to bring back measures that would keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people who are severely troubled or deranged like this young man was and provide resource. We need mental health resources and that initiative I hope will provide a common ground, a point of consensus that will bring us together in the Congress and enable the majority. Ninety percent of the American people want background checks to be heard, to be responded to, and to end the madness and insanity.

MAJOR GARRETT: Before we go to Senator Thune, let me follow up with Senator Blumenthal. The sheriff told us that there were no flags that would have prompted a check on the legally purchased weapons that Elliot Rodger had and he didn't seem to have large or larger than normal size magazines for his weapons. Do you believe the legislation the Senate did not pass would have made any difference in this case?

SENATOR RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: The legislation that failed to pass--it got support from fifty-five senators--would have provided a mental health initiative with more resources, greater ability for the Santa Barbara police to intervene--to use the sheriff's word--to have professionals trained in diagnosing and detecting this kind of derangement. Obviously, not every kind of gun violence is going to be prevented by laws out of Washington but at least we can make a start and I am going to urge that we bring back those bills, maybe reconfigure them to center on mental health which is a point where we can agree that we need more resources to make the country healthier and to make sure that these kinds of horrific, insane, mad occurrences are stopped and the Congress will be complicit if we fail to act.

MAJOR GARRETT: Senator Thune, your thoughts?

SENATOR JOHN THUNE (R-South Dakota): Well, Major, let me also say that our thoughts and prayers go out to Richard Martinez and his family and to all those that were impacted. This was a horrific act of violence that involves not only shootings but stabbings. And when we get the specifics of the case we do need to focus on, and I agree with Richard and ensure that we have policies in place that allow people with mental health issues like these to be diagnosed and to be treated. I think that something on which there is agreement and that's where we ought to be focusing our efforts.

MAJOR GARRETT: All right. Let's go to the question of the Veterans Administration, its conduct of the health care system itself, broadly and allegations of either fraud or mismanagement or, possibly, criminal conduct. Senator Blumenthal, I want to start with you. You're former U.S. attorney, former attorney general of the State of Connecticut. You have said that the Justice Department must get involved. Why hasn't it and are you, Sir, outraged that the administration is yet to put Department of Justice investigators on this case?

SENATOR RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: I believe that the Department of Justice has to be involved. I have urged Secretary Shinseki privately and, in fact, publicly to request and involve the Department of Justice. We're talking now about evidence, credible and specific evidence of criminal wrongdoing across the country in more than thirty places. The inspector general of the Veterans Administration has only a hundred and sixty-five investigators. Plainly more resources are needed, only the Department of Justice and the FBI have the resources, the expertise, and the authority to do a prompt and effective criminal investigation of the secret waiting lists, potential destruction of documents, falsification of records. In effect the cooking of books and covering up that may have occurred. These are allegations but there's evidence to support them. We're not rushing to judgment, but the Department of Justice can convene a grand jury if necessary, the IG cannot. And reflects and presents an outside independent authority that can offer accountability and the perception of accountability of restored trust and confidence on the part of veterans and that has to be our focus. Accountability is a means to the end of assuring better health care, better delivery of health care, the end to delays and rigid bureaucracy and calcification of rules that have impeded access and blocked many veterans from receiving timely care.

MAJOR GARRETT: Senator Thune your thoughts about the President's press conference earlier this week. And also I'd like to get your thoughts on a dust-up started by one of your Republican colleagues Richard Burr who criticized some of the veterans' service organizations for not being forceful enough in calling for Eric Shinseki, the VA secretary, to resign. Those organizations have accused him of low-ball politics, outrageous conduct over this Memorial Day weekend. I'd like your thoughts on both subjects, Sir.

SENATOR JOHN THUNE: Well, first off, I think the President just waited way too long to get into this, Major. That was the issue that many of us were raising as that you had reports of up to forty people who died on waiting lists. You had these reports of secret lists and falsifying records and all those sorts of things. And it took three weeks for the President to act. I'm glad that he is engaging, the things that were said yesterday about giving veterans access to non-VA facilities to-- if they can't get into VA facilities, I think, is a welcome change. And-- and I think what Senator Burr's letter in the VFW's response to it suggests is there's a high level of frustration with what's going on, which I think gets at the broader issue of what do we do to reform the institutions. We have got a failure-- a basic failure of the institutions. It isn't been associated with funding because we know that funding has been increased by sixty percent over the past five years to the VA. We need a top-to-bottom review by inspector general, system-wide that points out and gives us an idea about how to proceed. And I think one of the things is we've got to have more accountability, more transparency about not only waiting lists but outcomes at the VA. We also have to come up with a better model of delivering care to our veterans so they don't have these--these waits. I mean this is a-- this is a real tragedy. These are the people with whom we have a sacred trust and that's been betrayed. And we need to make sure that it's fixed.

MAJOR GARRETT: Senator Thune, the VFW--Veterans of Foreign Wars it's called--Senator Burr's comments a monumental cheap shot. There are those who have expressed some nervousness about all this becoming hyper politicized in a midterm election year, is that what's going on?

SENATOR JOHN THUNE: Well, I don't know. And I-- look, there's-- there are going to be basic disagreements. Different veterans' service organizations came to different conclusions about whether or not Secretary Shinseki ought to step aside. But, basically, what this-- this ought to transcend politics, Major. This really is an issue that needs to be solved. And we're talking about the men and women who put their lives on the line, who risked everything for us, and we need to have a system of health care that gives them the highest possible quality care in a timely way and do it in the most cost effective way. And that ought to be what we're focused on. And I think right now you're just seeing a high level of frustration. And the only way that we're going to get to the bottom of this is to have that, I think, full-blown investigation and then look at better ways of delivering health care services to America's veterans.

MAJOR GARRETT: Real quickly about fifteen seconds, Senator Blumenthal, have you called the Attorney General Eric Holder about this and what's his response been about putting the DOJ on the case?

SENATOR RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: I've spoken to the director of the FBI about it and, obviously, they are considering what the options are and learning more about it. But here's the really important point, looming right away are more than a million Americans who are going to be leaving the military and becoming veterans placing unforeseen demands on this the system.

MAJOR GARRETT: Mm-Hm. Right.

SENATOR RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: It's a system under stress. There need to be reforms and accountability and we owe our veterans--

MAJOR GARRETT: Exactly. Right.

SENATOR RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: --better-- I'm impatient and fed up and so are the veterans.

MAJOR GARRETT: Very good. Senator Richard Blumenthal, Senator John Thune, thank you very much.

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