{"id":26994,"date":"2015-11-18T20:45:56","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T01:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=26994"},"modified":"2015-11-18T20:45:56","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T01:45:56","slug":"this-is-a-great-place-to-cut-the-federal-budget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=26994","title":{"rendered":"This Is A Great Place To Cut The Federal Budget"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2015\/11\/18\/secva-bashed-for-defending-millions-in-bonuses-awarded-to-employees-ensconced-in-scandal\/\" target=\"_blank\">The Daily Caller<\/a> posted a story today about <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States Department of Veterans Affairs\" href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?ll=38.9009027778,-77.0348238889&amp;spn=0.01,0.01&amp;q=38.9009027778,-77.0348238889 (United%20States%20Department%20of%20Veterans%20Affairs)&amp;t=h\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"geolocation\">Veteran&#8217;s Administration<\/a> (VA) Secretary Robert McDonald&#8217;s policy regarding bonuses to employees.<\/p>\n<p>The article reports:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>For 2014, employees received a total of $140 million in performance awards. Almost 50 percent of the 340,000 workers at the VA took home bonuses. The sheer number of employees awarded has raised questions about low-bar performance standards.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Regardless,\u00a0McDonald was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/opinion\/2015\/11\/16\/veterans-affairs-va-veterans-editorials-debates\/75888276\/\">quick to justify the bonuses<\/a> in an op-ed in <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"USA Today\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"homepage\">USA Today<\/a>. First, the bonuses covered the time period of October 2013 to September 2014, meaning that they are not based on current scandals. Second, bonuses play a large role in retaining talent. Third, the huge majority of the 156,000 workers who did receive bonuses definitely put veterans first.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t want to see the VA budget cut in the areas that provide services to veterans, but it seems to me that bonuses at this particular time might be a little over the top.<\/p>\n<p>The article includes a few illustrations of how bad things are:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Kim Graves, a regional benefits director in St. Paul, who recently pleaded the <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fifth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">Fifth Amendment<\/a> at a <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"United States congressional hearing\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States_congressional_hearing\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">congressional hearing<\/a>, received an $8,700 bonus.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><strong>Dr. David Houlihan, infamously known as <a class=\"zem_slink\" title=\"The Candy Man\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Candy_Man\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"wikipedia\">the Candy Man<\/a> at the Tomah VA, took home a bonus fo $4,000 10 months before he was fired from his post.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>We need accountability in government spending. This sort of thing is unacceptable. Congress needs to do a better job of oversight.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Daily Caller posted a story today about Veteran&#8217;s Administration (VA) Secretary Robert McDonald&#8217;s policy regarding bonuses to employees. The article reports: For 2014, employees received a total of $140 million in performance awards. Almost 50 percent of the 340,000 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=26994\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7015,9551,9550],"class_list":["post-26994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-the-daily-caller","tag-va-secretary-robert-mcdonald","tag-veterans-administration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26994"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26995,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26994\/revisions\/26995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}