Veterans Administration hands out $3.8 million in senior management bonuses

Told that he would be put on a waiting list after telling an intake counselor he was suicidal at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in St. Cloud, Minnesota, Jonathan Schulze wrapped a household extension cord around his neck, tied it to a beam in the basement, and hanged himself 4 days later.

Months after a politically embarrassing $1 billion shortfall that put veterans' health care in peril, Veterans Affairs officials involved in the foul-up got hefty bonuses ranging up to $33,000.

The list of bonuses to senior career officials at the Veterans Affairs Department in 2006, obtained by The Associated Press, documents a generous package of more than $3.8 million in payments by a financially strapped agency straining to help care for thousands of injured veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan .

Among those receiving payments were a deputy assistant secretary and several regional directors who crafted the VA's flawed budget for 2005 based on misleading accounting. They received performance payments up to $33,000 each, a figure equal to about 20 percent of their annual salaries.

Read the rest at AOL News

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