MaSSSoftech

There is a big scandal brewing at the Veterans Affairs Office. According to the VA's inspector general, $24 million in bonuses has been paid to thousands of technology office employees for the past two years. There are also allegations of nepotism in the technology office.

Bonuses to high-level VA employees for the past two years included sums of $73,000, $59,000 and $58,000. In all, 4,700 VA employees received a bonus in 2007. The average bonus was $2,500. A now-retired VA official, Jennifer S. Duncan, received $60,000 in bonuses herself and engaged in nepotism, claims the VA inspector general. Other VA employees, the report charges, paid college tuition for other employees.

Why are bonuses being handed out like candy at the VA? Bureaucrats playing around with taxpayers' money is, unfortunately, nothing new. However, what makes this particular corruption so outrageous is that while the VA has been tossing our tax dollars to each other, many veterans, including wounded ones seeking disability checks they earned on battlefields, have been left waiting for their checks.

The VA's technology office, where the alleged corruption has occurred, has been charged by President Barack Obama to improve its information technology so that a current backlog of disability checks can be eliminated. The administration wants checks to be issued seamlessly and without delay.

As we mentioned, so far that has not happened. Many disabled vets have been waiting months for their delayed checks. How disgusting that the VA office entrusted with helping our vets spent a considerable amount of energy handing money to each other.

This isn't the first time the VA has slapped obscenely large, unearned bonuses to employees. In 2006, VA employees received $3.8 million in bonus checks.

Apparently nothing was learned from that incident of greed. It is frustrating to witness so many cases of persons entrusted with our tax dollars spending recklessly or greedily filling their own coffers. Look at the health care debate, where Big Pharma fills pols' campaign coffers with hundreds of billions of dollars and wins such cost-busting concessions as long delays before super-expensive medications can go generic in the U.S.

Members of Congress have promised an investigation into the VA's latest financial shenanigans. We hope they do a thorough job and that it leads to the VA cleaning up its operations. A better emphasis on getting checks to vets and an end to bonuses would be a great start.