Political fallout continued Friday to a report that senior employees at the Veterans Affairs Department received hefty bonuses - a year after the department underestimated its budget needs by $1 billion.
Rep. John Hall, D-N.Y., said he would introduce legislation to freeze 2007 bonuses for department employees until the department reduces a backlog of pending disability claims - currently estimated at more than 400,000 - to 100,000 or fewer. Hall chairs the House Veterans Affairs Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs Subcommittee.
"The Bush administration has spouted a lot of platitudes about the principle of pay for performance," Hall said in a statement. "But somehow their own appointees at the VA get the pay while our veterans get stuck waiting for the performance."
The 2006 bonuses, as high as $33,000 for some senior employees, came after the department faced massive budget shortfalls in fiscal 2005. According to an Associated Press report, some bonuses went to employees who worked on the department's faulty budget.
VA spokesman Matt Burns did not dispute the report in a statement Thursday, arguing that the bonuses are necessary to keep department employees from leaving for the private sector. Without them, he said, "VA would be much less likely to retain its most experienced career civil servants."
In each of the past two fiscal years, the VA experienced multibillion-dollar medical budget shortfalls, some of which officials blamed on a surge in demand for medical services for soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Daniel K. Akaka, D-Hawaii, Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee chairman, first drew attention to the bonuses in an April 30 letter to the VA. In it, he expressed concern that the bonuses had not been awarded based on performance and that they "should not give the appearance of an entitlement for the most centrally placed or well-connected staff."
Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson is to appear before the House Veterans' Affairs Committee May 9 to discuss a department task force's findings on how soldiers transition from Defense Department health care programs to the VA, Burns said.
He can expect to hear loud dissent from the committee's Democrats. Chairman Bob Filner, D-Calif., said Thursday he had directed his panel's Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee to hold a hearing on the issue.
Four Democratic members of that panel, including its chairman, Harry E. Mitchell of Arizona, criticized the bonuses in a Thursday letter to Nicholson. The letter - also signed by Tim Walz of Minnesota, Zack Space of Ohio and Luis V. Gutierrez of Illinois - singled out Ron Aument, VA deputy undersecretary for budget, whom they blamed for the VA's disability claims backlog. Aument reportedly received a $33,000 bonus.
"We wonder if the veterans who continue to wait for their claims to be processed would agree with the VA's decision to award these lucrative bonuses," the letter said, noting a 177-day waiting period for veterans submitting an initial claim.
Freshman Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., has called on Nicholson to resign over the bonuses.
"Those bonuses could have helped put up some money for brain-injured vets," Hare said of the reported $3.8 million paid out.
The committee's ranking Republican, Steve Buyer of Indiana, has not joined the chorus of criticism. His communications director, Jeff Phillips, issued a statement saying that "bonuses must reflect performance - the higher the bonus, the more performance we expect."
