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Shinseki confirmation hearing on fast track

The Senate will hold a confirmation hearing for the new secretary of Veterans Affairs one week before it formally receives the nomination so it can vote on members of President-elect Obama’s cabinet immediately after he takes office.

The confirmation hearing for retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs will be held on Jan. 14, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman, announced Tuesday night.

Akaka said he scheduled the hearing “early in the new Congress so that the Senate can act on the nomination as soon as it is received.”

If everything goes as planned, the veterans’ committee would question Shinseki during the Jan. 14 hearing and then vote on the nomination as early as the afternoon of Jan. 20, after Obama is sworn into office. The full Senate then could vote on final confirmation. That could also happen on Jan. 20, although Senate leaders have not yet announced a schedule for votes.

Shinseki, the former Army chief of staff who retired in 2003 after a disagreement with the Bush administration’s estimates about how many troops would be needed for the war in Iraq, appears to have strong support from veterans’ groups and bipartisan support in Congress.

Even the current VA secretary, Dr. James Peake, has thrown in his support.

Peake, a former Army surgeon general, worked for Shinseki when Shinseki was the Army’s leader and said he is “proud to count him as a friend.”

“He is a soldier who has dedicated his life to serving this nation,” Peake said. “He knows servicemen and women, he knows large organizations and he knows Washington. General Shinseki will be a great leader for them and a strong advocate for our veterans.”

Also backing Shinseki is the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 150,000 VA workers.

Shinseki “represents a clear break from the past eight years in which the Bush administration sought to dismantle VA through the use of fee-based contract care and undercut the agency by continually understaffing and underfunding the agency,” the union said in a statement.

“We believe that as a veteran, retired Army Gen. Shinseki understands the tremendous sacrifice of servicemen and women and that of their families, and that we can work together to make sure that our veterans receive the world-class care they deserve.”