VA Secretary Bob McDonald is willing to concede that the Department of Veterans Affairs has some improvements to make.
The embattled department has been the source of several high-profile scandals in recent years over poor care at some of its facilities and long wait times for veterans seeking operations and other life-saving medical services.
But in a column for USA Today, McDonald said that a recent report from that paper on the $142 million in bonuses his agency had paid out to employees last year was much ado about nothing.
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To suggest that certain problems in the department should mean the end of bonuses for hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file employees would be counter-productive, he argued.
Like any other employer, McDonald contends, the VA has to provide competitive pay to attract top-notch employees from the private and public sector.
More than 150,000 VA employees received bonuses in 2014; the average payout was just over $900.
"Occasionally, we make errors; those deserve more scrutiny," he said. "But severely curtailing or ending awards, only in VA, would be a mistake, negatively impacting veterans and our ability to attract top talent."
In its report on the bonuses last week, USA Today cited a number of employees who received bonuses despite being closely-tied to some of the scandals.
David Houlihan, the chief of staff to a facility in Tomah, Wis., received a $4,000 bonus nine months after a report voiced serious concerns about the high levels of narcotics being prescribed to patients–10 months after that, the VA fired Houlihan.
It was such bonuses that spurred legislation in 2013 to limit such payments to a small class of VA senior executives for five years.
But the bill that ultimately passed allowed the department to pay up to $360 million in bonuses annually–a threshold that it has not gotten close to reaching.
U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., who chairs the House committee that oversees the VA, nevertheless told USA Today that the $142 million in bonuses reflects a "disturbing trend of rewarding employees who preside over corruption and incompetence."
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