The broadening scandal surrounding shoddy and negligent treatment of veterans in desperate need of health care from a federal government agency charged with providing it to them has risen to a potentially criminal level.

It's inexplicable how President Obama and his administration are so slow to react to virtually every issue, from Benghazi to the IRS targeting to the first reports of the mishandling of so many medical cases by the Veterans Administration. And as the VA story further unfolds, the issue might not be whether heads roll and those responsible face serious charges, but rather why it has taken this long.

The VA's Office of Inspector General has released an interim report suggesting that VA workers understated patient wait times to make the internal reporting at a Phoenix VA hospital look good, and that similar problems exist throughout the VA hospital system. At the Phoenix facility, some 1,700 veterans seeking medical care were kept off the hospital's official waiting list, and there have been accusations that some 40 veterans have died while on alleged waiting lists in Phoenix alone.

Now, we wait to see if a president who has lost the respect of the international community for his bark followed by no bite, who has thumbed his nose at obvious abuse of the IRS and who has never owned up to the fiasco and cover-up surrounding the deaths of Americans serving our nation in Benghazi, will finally have the backbone to clean house at the VA and unleash his Justice Department on a truly criminal matter.

As this column is written, the news is fresh. If by the time most read it, President Obama has not fired Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki nor asked for a criminal investigation from Attorney General Eric Holder, then Obama will have failed a nation and permanently destroyed his legacy.

There are rare moments when a leader must act impulsively, on basic gut instinct. Not every issue can be studied to death like some interesting case in a second-year law class. Upon occasion, a president must act out of true anger and act in a way that lets the American people know that he means it. For Barack Obama, zero hour has come. And even if action comes before other eyes read this commentary, it must be examined for its bluntness, its clarity and its force.

It won't take more than a few days, or I dare say even hours, before other lawyers join me in wondering if the potential false statements, the detrimental reliance of those who suffered waiting for medical treatment and the alleged deaths that ensued amount to more than just slap-on-the-wrist crimes. Was this "only" a breach of the public trust by those who run the hospitals to treat our most honored heroes? Or was this perhaps negligence, resulting in the death of veterans who could otherwise have been saved or at least provided with alternative treatment?

Could all this have taken place without the knowledge of VA employees of the massive fraud being perpetrated, and the potentially fatal results of such deception?

Yes, this whole situation could be just that serious.

Even as this news breaks, it comes as no shock to many following the story. And that begs the bigger question of why the White House has allowed Shinseki to remain in his position. To what level of winking and nodding, game-playing and bureaucratic whitewashing has the federal government sunk?

This is the final straw, and it will permanently decide how the Obama years are measured.

Matt Towery, a former Georgia state legislator, heads a nonpartisan polling and media company. He is also publisher of the Washington-based Southern Political Report, the nation's oldest active political newsletter.