It seems like only yesterday that some people were holding up the Veterans Administration as a shining example of how well government can do health care. Today, the agency has become a symbol of everything wrong with government.
Rather than keeping the promises made to returning veterans, the self-centered bureaucracy of the VA has been caught sandbagging their applications for disability benefits. It has been caught using secret waiting lists to hide the poor performance of its health care system, so its employees could make veterans wait for care without losing bonuses. It has been caught retaliating against whistleblowers on many occasions, and obstructing congressional investigations into all of this wrongdoing.
One manager even tried to spy on congressional investigators when they arrived at her facility to look into allegations of data falsification and whistleblower retaliation. She instructed her subordinates not to cooperate with them.
Despite documented cases of top officials participating in massive deceptions and coverups, and of further misdeeds that amount to cheating the taxpayer, the VA has failed to hold its managers and employees accountable. As of the last available count, fewer than two dozen people had been fired for what amounted to a pervasive, systemic act of evil against veterans at more than 100 different VA facilities. Why is this? Perhaps it is because senior officials don’t even know what the word “accountability” actually means. And we mean that literally; they apparently don’t know or understand its dictionary definition.
On Wednesday, VA Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson opened his testimony before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs with a combative statement, asserting in effect that his agency is being unfairly persecuted. He lectured the members of Congress whose investigations his agency has stymied, for wrongly applying the word “accountability.”
“It seems the term ‘accountability’ has taken on a new meaning,” said Gibson. “Instead of the dictionary definition — ‘providing a record or explanation of one’s conduct’ — the term has become shorthand for firing people.”
This is drew a scathing response from Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., and not just because it is the wrong definition to cite in this context. Our Merriam-Webster, like Miller’s, defines “accountability” as “an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one’s action.”
It is a truism that democratic government is representative and responsible. Representative means it acts on behalf of the people. Responsible, by definition, means that the people can throw the bums out. And that applies not just to elected leaders but to officials, too.
A willingness to take responsibility is a willingness to lose one’s job if one fails. And Veterans Administration officials have demonstrably failed.
The idea of accepting responsibility for one’s behavior, as least in the everyday sense of the phrase that even children understand, implies a willingness to accept punishment for wrongdoing. And there is no appropriate penalty other than firing for the hundreds or thousands of VA employees who continue to show willful, callous bureaucratic indifference toward the very veterans who are the sole reason for their agency’s existence.
“You can’t fire your way to excellence,” said Gibson glibly. Actually you can. And we should. Perhaps Gibson would be a good place to start.
