FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Biden administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs improperly awarded $10.8 million in bonuses meant for staffers who directly serve veterans to highly paid senior executives. Under President Donald Trump, the agency is close to recovering the remainder of the lost funds.
The VA improperly awarded $10.8 million in “critical skills incentives” to more than 180 senior VA officials, the VA’s inspector general office revealed in a May 2024 report.
Trump’s VA has nearly completed the recoupment of the nearly $11 million in inappropriately awarded bonuses to senior VA officials under the administration of President Joe Biden, The Daily Signal has learned.
“Under President Trump and Secretary [Doug] Collins, we are transforming the department from a bureaucratic organization to a service organization that puts Veterans at the center of everything we do,” VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz told The Daily Signal.
“This is a welcome change from the Biden administration, whose obsession with bureaucracy and woke causes led to millions in bonuses for undeserving VA bureaucrats and major distractions from the mission like gender dysphoria treatments,” he continued.
More than 96% of the wrongfully distributed funds have been recovered, according to the VA.
After learning about the improper payments in September 2023, Biden’s VA secretary, Denis McDonough, canceled them and ordered the managers to pay them back.
But at the start of the Trump administration, about $1.4 million in bonus money remained uncollected.
As of mid-October, less than $400,000 remains outstanding.
To recover the money, the Trump VA has denied all requests from recipients of the bonuses to stop or slow efforts to recoup the money, a spokesperson told The Daily Signal.
The bonuses averaged $61,000, with several managers collecting more than $100,000 in payments.
The VA has also worked with the Internal Revenue Service and other agencies to make sure former VA employees were paying the bonus back.
As of last week, all employees and former employees who received the bonuses have either paid their bonus back or are in the process of paying them back via installments.
The bonuses were intended to supplement the salaries of employees in high-demand jobs for which there is a shortage of trained workers. Senior VA managers were specifically excluded from the payments.
In October 2023, Biden’s VA issued collection notices to “all senior executives” who improperly received payments, according to the VA’s Inspector General Office report.
Managers were given the option to return the bonuses by Dec. 31, 2023, or enter a repayment plan.
The Trump administration’s success in recovering the remainder of the funds is an example of one of the many ways the VA is maximizing its taxpayer funding for serving veterans, according to a VA spokesperson.
For example, the VA has partnered with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid to identify and recover $106 million in duplicative billing.
On Oct. 4, the VA terminated special salary rates for about 15,000 employees in human resources and information technology.
