democratic spirit that s kept the country together. so we would like you to send us your dog ate my homework responses to the federal government and the irs when they call and write and e-mail you about your taxes and about your compliance with the law. what should you be saying? sustained water damage in ted kennedy s car. i don t know. some things are worth not forgetting. all right. there s another scandal at the va. turns out it gets even worse. usa today has an amazing story. it shows va brass knew data had been falsified for two years. you ll remember va employees got bonuses if they were able to show they had provided health care services to veterans on time, within a certain time frame. so they cooked the books in order to get the money. tens of millions were given out in bonuses, and it was all fake.
they knew about it in 2012. even before that. we ve broken it down. it s really quite incredible when you go year by year. you look at 2011. the va leaders nationwide were told to stop gaming the system. then in 2012, there was an audit in the southwest va. they found arizona, texas, and new mexico had violated policies and that it was common place across the united states. then in 2013 e-mails revealed that the southwest va leaders were aware of scheduling problems and fraud. but we wouldn t have found out about any of this if there weren t whistle blowers that came forward. according to the inspector general, $10 million over the last three years were given out in bonuses to these people who obviously cared more about bringing their money home than
they did about the lives of our veterans, our heroes. when they went out to fight for our freedom, they expected to be taken care of. mccain was pretty vigilant about this. he was on the va about this, and they lied to him. now it s been proven so. by the way, i don t think any of these employees have had their bonuses taken back. how does that work? you lie, you commit a crime. not only do you not get fired, but you get to keep your bonus, which you lied in order to get? how does that happen? the va has come up with this response saying we have to go through the processes and we can t take some reaction. so these people are still there, still getting paid. but they haven t given their bonus back. no, absolutely not. no one has asked. the federal government is beyond accountability. we ve seen some of the leadership. one more point to make, we mentioned this was happening in the southwest. this report says it s also prevalent of what s going on across the country, not just