The Department of Veterans Affairs VA shelled out more than $142 million in performance bonuses in 2014, the same year that the VA’s healthcare scandal exploded and revealed the VA was systematically denying veterans access to health care.
The average individual payout was over $900 for the thousands of employees. A total of 156,000 VA workers qualified for bonuses as a result of being rated them “fully successful” or higher at carrying out their responsibilities last year, including officials at delay-prone hospitals. But those ratings were later found to be inflated, as the vast majority of workers were getting rated highly enough to get a bonus.
More than 325 were compensated with $5,000 to $13,000 in year-end bonuses, according to data given to the Washington Examiner by the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
Related Story: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/article/2575923
Before he resigned, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said he’d stop bonuses at the troubled agency. But in the summer of 2014, Congress approved legislation allowing the agency to hand out up to $360 million in bonuses each year.
House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Fla., said the bonus awards are part of a “disturbing trend” of rewarding workers even when they haven’t earned it.
“VA loves to tout its bonus program as a way to attract and retain the best and brightest employees,” Miller wrote. “Unfortunately, often times the employees VA rewards with thousands in taxpayer-funded bonuses are not the type of people the department should be interested in attracting or retaining.”
In the current Congress, the House has passed a number of bills that include language to rein in the department until better results are obtained, including recouping bonuses paid to employees, changing the cap on bonuses from $360 million to $300 million, and limiting senior-level bonuses to $2 million per year.
The Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is currently considering three of the House-approved bills.
“Rewarding failure only breeds more failure. Until VA leaders learn this important lesson and make a commitment to supporting real accountability at the department, efforts to reform VA are doomed to fail,” said Miller.
