Blake Hall
When words fail to describe dismay, there is always the facepalm. But how many facepalms can one VA scandal hold?
(Actual candid footage of the House Veterans Affairs Committee)
In the latest development of the Diane Rubens and Kimberly Graves case, a sordid tale where two executives from the Department of Veterans Affairs scammed their employers out of $400,000 through a job-switch scheme and then got to keep all the money AND their jobs, the VA has decided that Rubens and Graves didn’t even break the law. They just made bad decisions. Everybody makes mistakes, right?
Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson testified in front of the House Veterans Affairs Committee that Rubens and Graves’ schemes to bypass the agency’s rules regulating raises and promotions were “failures of judgement” instead of “ethical breaches.” He also said that the VA wouldn’t wait for outside investigations from the Office of the Inspector General (IG) to decide whether or not a VA employee was guilty of a crime.
“We won’t administer punishment based on IG opinions, referrals to the Department of Justice, recycled and embellished media accounts, or external pressure,” Gibson said. “It’s simply not right, and it’s not in the best interest of the veterans we serve.”
The sound of palms slapping foreheads echoed throughout the room.
Gibson told the committee that while the VA will become more swift in its punishment of agency corruption, it can’t just “fire its way to excellence.” Instead, Gibson said the VA would move towards “sustainable accountability.”
Rep. Jeff Miller, chairman of the committee and the loudest facepalmer of all, was confrontational in his response.
“Mr. Gibson, I think your statement is pretty damn inconsistent,” Miller said. “We’re all educated enough to know the definition of accountability but you and the secretary have decided to change that definition.”
When Miller was reprimanded by another congressman for saying ‘damn,’ he continued by whipping out a less spicy d-word.
“I’m dumbfounded that with such a high-profile case, which included a criminal referral to the Department of Justice, that the VA still found a way to botch its decision to merely demote them,” Miller said. “Frankly, this ineptness clearly illustrates that VA can’t even slap a wrist without missing the wrist.”