Today is Veterans’ Day, when the nation honors those who served in all branches of the U.S. military. This year, be especially mindful of those who have returned from recent wars, but do not forget those who served before them, either.
Elected leaders placed great demands on servicemen by prosecuting two major conflicts in the past decade. Unfortunately, the civilian arm of the federal government has failed to show an appropriate respect for their sacrifices.
Eighteen months after it was first reported, the major scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs is still not being taken seriously. The two leading Democratic candidates for president have both tried to downplay the importance of the bureaucratic malingering that resulted in widespread mismanagement of veterans’ benefit claims and needless, possibly fatal delays in granting veterans’ health benefits.
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As recently as last month, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the whole scandal had “not been as widespread as it has been made out to be,” and characterized it as a partisan Republican attack against the VA. This is not so. In fact, new examples of scandalous and unethical behavior at the agency are being discovered even now.
As House Veterans’ Affairs chairman Jeff Miller recently noted, VA bureaucrats at 110 different medical facilities were gaming the appointment scheduling system to cover up their incompetence and maximize the bonuses they would earn. In order to hide the backlog of veterans seeking appointments, they kept secret waiting lists off the books so it would appear that veterans were being served in a timely fashion, when in fact their requests were languishing, with many dying while still awaiting care.
Amid this widespread malfeasance, Veterans Administration executives repeatedly were given bonuses for failures that sometimes resulted in even more veterans becoming sick. Corrupt VA staff retaliated against whistleblowers, including doctors, who expressed their concerns, by allegedly orchestrating false testimony for their periodic peer evaluations. Meanwhile, VA employees worked to stymie congressional investigations — they actually bugged a room where congressional investigators were working — and cover their own rear ends.
As veterans suffered, bureaucrats devised new and even more egregious abuses that are still being uncovered today. In September, the VA’s Inspector General reported that senior executives within the agency had abused the department’s relocation incentive program to enrich themselves at a time of government pay freezes. Two top VA bosses have been referred for prosecution after they got themselves demoted and reassigned on purpose so that they could collect tens of thousands of dollars in relocation incentives. The actions of just those two cost the government more than $400,000 in moving expenses.
In short, the federal government has not just failed, but maliciously failed to serve the veterans it was created to serve. Its bureaucracy is a viper’s nest where anyone who speaks up on behalf of the veterans can expect punishment.
The fact that there has been no mass firing of VA staff shows just how far the nation must go before it sets things right for the men and women who put their lives on the for their country.
