Press Releases

Today, Rep. Jen Kiggans (R-Va.), the Chairwoman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared at the start of the subcommittee’s oversight hearing to examine the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) decision to spend thousands of dollars on improper recruitment, relocation, and retention incentive payment practices in their  bonus payment system. This subsequent hearing comes as the Committee uncovered that the Biden administration erroneously gave away thousands of dollars in improper bonus payments to VA DC office employees. Following multiple recent VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) reports revealed that taxpayer funds have been proven to be paid out with very little oversight. According to a 2017 OIG Report, relocation payments grew by 86%, retention payments grew by 131%, and recruitment bonuses ballooned by a staggering 237%. More recently, an OIG Report released on June 2025, acknowledged when the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) awarded $30,000 in relocation payments for a VHA employee who never relocated.

Good morning, everyone, the Subcommittee will come to order.

I would like to welcome the Members, witnesses, and audience to this hearing for the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

I appreciate my colleagues on the dais and the witnesses for being here to discuss the chronic issue of improper recruitment, relocation, and retention incentive payments. These are commonly referred to as the “3 R’s.”

These incentives are tools provided to VA by Congress to attract and retain quality staff in positions that are consistently vacant or identified as difficult to fill.

While many federal agencies can use these incentive payments, they are particularly helpful for an agency like VA, whose mission is to provide complex services and quality healthcare to veterans across the entire country.

These incentives are designed to be part of a benefits package for positions in markets that are difficult to hire in, like specialist physicians, nurses, and social workers in rural areas.

Congress gave federal agencies the ability to pay these incentives so that government entities like the Veterans Health Administration can be competitive in attracting and keeping quality health care professionals in a labor pool that is facing staffing challenges across the country. As a nurse practitioner, I understand these challenges firsthand.

Unfortunately, recent reports have shown that these funds have been proven to be paid out with very little oversight. 

While this hearing was organized after the release of the June 2025 OIG report on VA’s poor oversight of these incentive payments, the problems we will discuss today are not new to VA.

In fact, in 2017, the OIG released a similar report detailing oversight issues with recruitment, relocation, and retention incentive payments based on the OIG’s oversight work stretching back to July 2014.

The 2017 OIG report identified the need to improve controls over the use of these incentives, having found that VA did not properly authorize 33% of the retention incentives that were awarded to senior executives. The improper payments found in 2017 totaled more than $158 million in unsupported spending.

As a result, the OIG made recommendations that VA develop internal controls to monitor policy compliance and decrease VA’s reliance on retention incentives.

Now, here we are in July 2025, confronted with the same issues that the VA has failed to improve since the first report. The only difference is that now there is even more taxpayer dollars involved.

For example:

• Between 2020 and 2023, relocation payments grew by 85%.

And

• Retention payments have grown by 131%.

While

• Recruitment bonuses have ballooned by a staggering 237%.

I believe anyone would agree that these numbers are alarming when there is little data to back up the massive increases.

The 2025 report acknowledged that after the initial report, VA implemented processes to improve authorization and review controls for the payments; however, VA employees inconsistently followed them. This made the good government improvements virtually useless.

In response to the 2017 OIG audit, quality assurance teams were created at both the Office of Human Resources and Administration/Operations, Security, and Preparedness, and the VISN level.

However, the 2025 OIG report found that while these teams identified errors, they did not address systemic issues in the request and authorization of incentives and did not proactively prevent incentive packages from being processed and paid based on insufficient justifications. 

Additionally, the OIG found that 28 employees continued to receive annual retention incentives for many years after the initial award period expired.

In one case, an employee continued to receive annual incentive awards for more than 11 years after the initial award period. In total, VA improperly paid these employees a total of about $4.3 million.

Between 2020 and 2023, more than one hundred and thirty-four thousand employees received incentive payments totaling $1.2 billion.

• $341 million of those incentives were found by the OIG to be improperly documented.

The lack of documentation also hinders review efforts by oversight bodies like the OIG, the GAO, and this Committee. I echo what the OIG said in their report that “The required documentation helps provide assurance that incentives are properly used, and effective oversight of incentives also requires sufficient documentation for review.”

In fact, the OIG noted that much of the data used in the report relied on projections due to VA’s sparse documentation.

I found it shocking in the report that when cases of waste, fraud, and abuse were discovered, VA’s implementation of established processes did not always guarantee that the issues were appropriately resolved.

The 2025 report cited an example where VHA awarded thirty thousand dollars in relocation payments for an employee who never relocated. The employee was a remote worker teleworking from home.

When someone receives a relocation incentive and never actually relocates, that is wrong and a clear waste of taxpayer dollars.

Despite this clear case of impropriety, VHA declined to recoup the payments that were made to this employee.

These are taxpayer dollars set aside for veterans and for far too long they have been carelessly handled.

I am excited hear the Trump administration’s plan to not only satisfy the OIG’s recommendations, but their plan to make real and necessary improvements and corrections in how the VA manages and oversees their incentive programs.

The status quo is not acceptable, and I will continue to push VA to make improvements that lead to better care outcomes for the veterans VA serves.

I look forward to working with Secretary Collins and his team to right the ship and create real change at VA.

I now recognize Ranking Member Ramirez for her opening comments.