this week on the journal, editorial report. president obama breaks his silence as the va scandal grows, he's promising to fix what is wrong. but can more money and more government solve the problem? plus, what this week's primary results say about the mind set of republicans voters and the prospect this november. and four years after haiti's devastating earthquake, and the role played by bill clinton. >> today i want every veteran to know, we're going to fix whatever is wrong and as 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 your families deserve. >> welcome to the journal editorial report, i'm paul hugo. that was president obama wednesday breaking his silence over the growing veteran's affairs scandals and promising to fix what's wrong. his remarks came a day after the va inspector general says his office is now investigating possible misconduct at 26 facilities around the country, including a phoenix hospital where 40 veterans allegedly died before receiving care. that staff rigged recordkeeping to cover up the long wait times. "wall street journal" columnist and deputy editor, and editorial board member joe rago. joe, the president session we're going to get to the bottom of this, but the truth is we know an awful lot about what happens at the va because there have been numerous reports going to

this which of waiting lines and cover-ups. what do we know? >> right, the truth is, we're already at the bottom of this. there's been reports for years going back to 2005 and even earlier that the va staff were falsifying some of this information, to make care look bu better than it was, and it's part and parcel. >> why the per sis sent in the wait litimes? >> what you have in the va is a global budget. >> a cap on spend. >> they say here's how much money you v go provide care for everyone. >> you must provide this carefree? >> so what you have is a world of fine nigite reesources and controlled costs.

they ration care, they say you need to wait months, in some cases years. >> we'll give you the free care but you're going to have to wait to get it. and when the veterans, the recipients understand that they're having to wait a long time the incentive for the bureaucracy is cover it up, don't report it. >> this is inherent to government controlled health care. this is the future of obama care policy. you want to see where our naturalized health care system is headed, look at the va system, where we have all these perverse incentives in place. a doctor and wait list to earn performance bonuses the pechk has known about this for many, many years, but the problems are inherent to the system and they're not going to be solved by chopping off a few heads, this is a systemic problem.

>> the veteran's administration, can you guess how many employees they have? 314,000, second only to the department of defense. they have 1,700 health care facilities, 150 hospitals. this is just a huge bureaucracy. >> what about this point about spending? which think we're going to hear as defense. if only congress would appropriate the money you wouldn't have the limits and you would haven't the lines. we have a couple of charts that show that spending has increased over 10, 12 years by 100%. even though patients have only increased by another 30%. so is there adequate spending on the va? >> you could double or triple, i mean look at the chart, they have ratcheted the spending up through each funding period and yet the problem persists. the veteran's administration

does not have a reliable and accurate method of determining whether they are providing patients timely access to care, they can't do it, no matter how much money they have. >> i think the short-term fixes as we said the long-term fixes are moving away from the va all together. but the short-term fix is giving these veterans access to civilian hospitals and doctors at no additional cost. that's what they need. the only people wallowing are these wait lists are corps veterans who don't have any access to hospitals. >> there's this case in columbia, south carolina which has turned up in one of the inspector general reports that they were actually given money to lower the wait lines. the va center wouldn't do it. they only spent a couple 00 dre

dre dread thousand to keep it all in house. because they have an incentive to it because the more money they do it. >> and colonoscopies actually go down. the solution here is to priva privatize these hospitals. the vas -- it will improve the private hospitals. as the evidence seems to suggest, veteran also have access to better civilian private care. >> you can can still subsidize veterans to give them the quality care, but you give them the access to -- particularly those who can't afford other private coverage are now denied. >> right, exactly. i think we should point out, there are dedicated people in the veteran's administration who do good work, but they themselves are the victim of a

bureaucracy that they can't solve, unless we do something like this, those people are going to be forced. >> it's the incentive in a government run system. >> when we come back, what this week's primary results tell us about the mood of the republican electorate and the chances for a gop senate take back this november. okay, listen up! i'm re-workin' the menu. mayo? corn dogs? you are so outta here! aah! [ female announcer ] the complete balanced nutrition of great-tasting ensure. 24 vitamins and minerals, antioxidants, and 9 grams of protein. [ bottle ] ensure®. nutrition inharge™.

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reason every hollywood liberal is sending her a check. >> we all know washington is broken, it's not working for kentucky and after 30 years, it is mitch mcconnell, at the center of the gridlock obstruction and extreme partisanship that we seek. >> i'll answer to the people of this state. i won't answer to the president, no matter who he or she might be. >> we're back with dan henninger and jason riley, and kim stra s straussal also joins the panel. >> i think what we're learning, paul is that the voters and the donors on the republican side want to win. the theme here, you have had a lot of outside groups who have been pushing with what's been called the republican civil war, the idea that all of these

primaries so a divide between the quote establishment candidates and the tea party candidates. the voters think it's more important to simply choose the best candidates. even though that supposedly come from the establishment, more in a reform direction. and in fact, a lot of people who started out in the tea party today run a lot of the state and local organizations so the divide isn't really there and they're focused on quality and what's coming out in this primaries are better candidates that the primaries have had in a long time. >> the challengers to the incoupi incumbents. >> mitch mcconnell, john cornyn, down in texas, lindsay graham in south carolina. the problem is not that the

senate, at least is not conservative enough. it's that there aren't enough republicans there and mitch mcconnell isn't running the place, that's the problem and voters get that. what's also interesting here is that voters realize it's very important in these cases, particularly in kentucky and in georgia, to feel, strong state wide candidates because the democrats in those states. the democrats are fielding strong candidates, they're in kentucky, grimes has good name id, secretary of state, plenty of money. and the same down in georgia where michelle nunn is going to be the democratic nominee, again has good name id and can raise money. >> you're saying that mitch mcconnell is the strongest candidate. i think basically he might be a point or two behind grimes, which basically means he's been an incumbent for a long time. >> it's not great, but he's typically had tough re-election

rates. he's a proven conservative, he knows how to win, his name recognition, his tea party opponent would have fared much worse in a state wide election. >> these main stream candidates, they've served in office. will these candidates be able to win, because in 2012, we saw in montana with denny rayburg, these were establishment republicans, remembers of congress who got thumped, they turned out to be really lousy candidates, could we see the same thing happen here? >> i think it's much less likely, politics is not amateur baseball, it is a profession. and you need strong professionals. senators cornyn, mcconnell, graham, roberts, these are guys who know how to do politics, they know how to campaign. and i think as we have been

suggesting here, that the voters have decided that they want the republican circular firing squad disbanded. and secondly, ms. grimes point about gridlock in washington, the fact that nothing has gotten done has allowed republican voters to focus on barack obama and they want him and the democrats out. and i think they have got a really laser like focus on establishing that now which is overcoming a lot of these other concerns. >> kim, what about the next week's primary in mississippi. cochran, who's a long time senator and i think 76 years old is being challenged by a state senator by the name of chris mcdaniel. some people are describing that as the tea party's last stand here. how is that race going? >> i think that is the one that, you know, the republican party is most concerned about in terms of their incumbents, mr. cochran has been hit pretty hard, he's been an appropriate for, spendi

and he's got quite a fierce changes coming from this competitor. this is going to be an interesting race, because one of the things like for instance in the mcconnell bevin race, is there wasn't a huge amount of difference between the candidates. >> on policy. >> on policy, on policy. that's why some of these challenges have fallen flat. i think what's challenging about the mississippi race is that you have a contrast there in terms of spending policy and stuff like that, which is why that is proving to be a little bit more competitive of a race. >> you're still picking cochran, right? >> i still think he's got the competitive advantage. >> when we come back, four years after haiti's devastating outbreak, is growing over the failed reconstruction and the role played by the clintons. .ita heart valve problem. dad, it says your afib puts you at 5 times greater risk of a stroke. that's why i take my warfarin every day.

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it's been more than four it's been more than four years since a magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated haiti, and outrage there is growing over the largely failed reconstruction effort despite the hundreds of millions of dollars in aid. now two prominent lawyers have petitioned a haitian court and it's manager former president bill clinton. wa"wall street journal" mary an has been following the details. why are haitians so unhappy? >> well, the earthquake was in january 2010, so we're four years into this process, they were promised a lot. and they also know that a heck of a lot of money was spent. >> how much? what are we talking? >> the international development bank claims that over four years, a total of $3 billion was

disbursed to be managed by the interim haitian recovery commission. >> what do they have to show for it? >> really a disaster, there are two components that were important. one was they were supposed to build housing, okay, and that was primarily handled by usaid. usaid after several years of hiring consultants and contractors reported that they had to increase their budget by 65% and decrease the number of houses that they promised by 85%. that's how far off they were in their studies. they also built supposedly an industrial park in the north of country, a very important part -- haiti would get up on it's own two feet and stop being a basket case.

you need roads, you needs buildings. you need water, you need electricity, power. >> this is all in chaos right now. they do have couple of buildings, reportedly, they're very shoddy construction, the roads are not there, the port which they spent several years thinking about now has been completely cancelled. they can't do a port there, they found out. >> what role has the state department and obviously run at the time for four years by secretary of state hillary clinton played in this? >> the state department was the major -- >> government agency. >> government agency in charge of overseeing all of this. and in 2009, remember that bill clinton was named the u.n. special envoy to haiti. >> sure. >> and from that time on, when you call the state department and you had interest in either investment or some kind of business, you were referred to the clinton foundation. and subsequently, after the effort quake, basically the state department took over everything and bill clinton was

the go-to guy for all of the transactions. >> and you reported a fascinating detail about hillary clinton's chief of staff at the state department and former white house lawyer in the clinton years, sheryl mills. >> that's the talk of haiti, because everybody knows that sheryl mills went to haiti, more than 30 times in four years, which is a heck of a lot to go to one country when you're the chief of staff for the secretary of state. and she was basically put in charge of the industrial park in the north of the country, which is the colossal failure. >> what response did you get from the clinton foundation and bill clinton? >> they did not comment, they did not come back. but since then we have gotten a lot of support for the clintons, all of the letters are written in a very similar way saying the clintons are really not to blame here, that there were lots of problem, but bill clinton, what did he have to do with it? and that i find very strange because he was the point person

in haiti for the last four years. >> this is fascinating stuff. big picture quickly, how much will this affect hillary clinton's campaign if she is runs? >> it's a perfect example of the sort of problems hillary clinton will have, because the clintons together are just questions of conflict of interest get raised constantly. that does not mean they're doing things illegal or wrong. but they are political problems. and it's going to be endless land minds for hillary, the whole time she's trying to run for president, with her husband. >> when we come back, our hits and miss of the week. memorial day weekend?

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to help support regularity. wife: mmmm husband: these are good! marge: the tasty side of fiber. from phillips. time now for "hits & time now for hits and misses of the week. >> a miss to harry reid and nancy pelosi who this week de defying warnings screened a hit piece documentary about conservative activist charles and david c orkoch. now i know the democrats are desperate to distract from their election year woes by raising a public campaign against the kochs. >> all right, joe? >> well a miss for oregon and it's dysfunctional obama care

campaign. worst than the national rollout, enrolled zero people. the senator claimed to fire the guy responsible but it turns out that he's still on payroll drawing a salary of $15,000. the oregon exchange is now under investigation for fraud and if anybody is held accountable, i'll resign. >> this is a miss for iranian state security which arrested seven iranian students for making a video where they danced to ferrell williams song called happy. the big security said that this is a warning to all people in iran, that the government will find you if you are happy and they will catch up with you. >> too much happiness all over the world. thanks, mary, if you have your own hit or miss skeend it to

jer@foxnews.com. a fox news alert, president obama promising a, quote, responsible end to the war in afghanistan will come to a close by the end of the year. welcome to america's news headquarters. the president making the announcement during a surprise visit to afghanistan this memorial day weekend, air force one touching down under cover of darkness. the president meeting with u.s. troops and officials while at home concerns are growing over the va scandal and our senior veterans not getting the care they need. wendell, before we get to the va