The Department of Veterans Affairs has some bureaucratic problems, if you haven’t heard. The latest from Huffington Post’s David Wood is that the VA “is systematically overpaying clerks, administrators and other support staff, according to internal audits, draining tens of millions of dollars that could be used instead to ease the VA’s acute shortage of doctors and nurses. The jobs of some 13,000 VA support staff have been flagged by auditors as potentially misclassified, in many cases resulting in inflated salaries that have gone uncorrected for as long as 14 years.” Worse, Wood writes, “Rather than moving quickly to correct these costly errors, VA officials two years ago halted a broad internal review mandated by federal law. As a result, the overpayments continue.” But that’s not all – thanks to federal law and their posh union contract, these employees could be reclassified but still owed their higher salary. Again, such problems are systemic in bureaucracy, which would be a good reason not to grow it. More…