Our View: VA, a two-letter synonym for insanity

The old definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The new definition is more compact. In fact, two words:

Veterans Affairs.

Has there ever been bureaucratic dysfunction more spectacularly on display?

One would expect the VA under intense national scrutiny to clean up its act. But even beneath the bright lights of television news and congressional hearings, the department cannot stop twisting itself into knots of organizational incompetence.

The latest gyrations come in the transfer of Kimberly Graves, the former director of the Veterans Benefits Administration’s 14-state North Atlantic area, to the Phoenix VA.

Here at the heart of the national VA scandal, Graves has been assigned as an administrator at the regional benefits center.

The move is a demotion, as The Republic’s Dennis Wagner reports. But even a demotion with administrative duties is remarkably generous given what the Office of Inspector General accuses her of doing.

The OIG found that Graves and Diana Rubens, a former VA under secretary, used their positions of influence to force lower-ranking regional managers to accept job transfers against their will.

They then assumed those vacant jobs themselves, keeping their pay while shrinking their responsibilities.

That the two executives could have rigged the system to their favor and still remain employed with the VA was too much for Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee:

"For those wondering whether the VA is committed to real accountability for corrupt employees, VA leaders answered that question today with a resounding 'no,' " he said in a written statement. "Rubens and Graves clearly should have been fired. The fact that VA leaders refused to do so gives me no hope the department will do the right thing."

In a written statement, the VA disclosed it had demoted the two from senior executive posts to assistant directors. Graves will serve at the VBA Regional Office in Phoenix, which oversees veterans' benefit requests. Rubens will have a similar assignment in Houston.

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Formerly, Rubens was a deputy undersecretary at the VA's Washington headquarters. Graves directed the Veterans Benefits Administration’s 14-state North Atlantic Region.

Both were subpoenaed last month to testify before the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, as Wagner reports. And both exercised the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

The Veterans Affairs crisis presented an opportunity to blow up a bureaucratic model that has failed for generations. The VA health-care system has had a terrible reputation for decades because it tried to mirror the private health-care system while it shouldered the burden of providing specialized care for service- and war-time-related injuries, ailments and syndromes.

The latter should be the very narrow function of the VA. The government can provide veterans the vouchers they need to get their conventional care in a private system that is better on all fronts: It’s faster. It’s more humane. It’s higher quality.

This moment was rich for reform. The Obama administration chose instead to seize the status quo. And what has it produced?

A new synonym for insanity.

VA.