the federal bureaucracy is a huge part of the US government,

sometimes even called the fourth branch.

It has more than two million employees

who work in various agencies

dedicated to implementing the law.

So the bureaucracy has a lot of discretion

to decide how best to achieve a policy goal.

But the sheer size of the bureaucracy,

along with its independence,

can make it difficult to monitor.

What happens when a bureaucratic agency

fails to carry out its mission,

or deviates from the letter or the intent of a law?

What can the other branches do to keep it accountable?

Let's use a real example to make things a bit more concrete.

In 2014, a whistleblower came forward, reporting that

a hospital in the Department of Veterans Affairs

was deceiving federal regulators

about how long veterans were waiting to receive healthcare.

Because officials at the VA got pay bonuses

based on ensuring that patients

had short wait times for medical care,

they were falsifying electronic records

to keep wait times within those acceptable guidelines.

In reality though, the average wait time for medical care

was greater than 100 days, and dozens of veterans died

while waiting for delayed appointments.

Now, this is a pretty complex story,

so I'm just giving you the broad strokes here.

But for our purposes, what you need to know is

this was a case of very serious mismanagement

in a bureaucratic agency.

So now, let's think about

what the other branches of government could do,

using their formal and informal powers,

in response to this situation.

I encourage you to pause the video here,

and see if you can list at least one action

that the executive branch, Congress,

or the judicial branch could take.

Ready, go.

Okay, so let's go through some of the actions

that the other branches did take

in response to the VA scandal,

and you can check to see if you came up with any of them.

So what steps did the executive take?

Remember that the bureaucracy itself

is under the executive branch.

So first, we saw internal investigations

from the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki.

The VA used its rulemaking authority

to abandon the unrealistic wait time goal

in order to remove that perverse incentive.

It was within the power of Barack Obama,

who was president at the time,

to fire the cabinet secretary,

but instead, Shinseki resigned.

Then the president used his nomination power

to replace him with a new VA secretary, Bob McDonald.

Obama also introduced a number of executive actions

to address the problem,

including establishing an independent

accountability review board,

a board of physicians to advise the secretary,

a plan to upgrade the electronic health record system,

and protections for whistleblowers.

What steps did Congress take?

First, Congress used its oversight power to call hearings,

investigating what was going on at the VA.

They subpoenaed Secretary Shinseki to testify.

They also passed reform measures,

using their lawmaking powers and the power of the purse

to fix the larger problems at the VA,

funding a $16 billion plan to hire more doctors and nurses,

upgrade facilities, and allow veterans

to see private doctors if necessary.

And as part of this reform,

Congress included legislation that made it easier

to hold VA officials accountable for misconduct.

Congress also used its power

to approve presidential nominations

by confirming the new VA secretary.

The judicial branch, for its part,

reviewed the constitutionality of the new rules

holding VA employees accountable.

The federal court system heard a case

about whether it was constitutional

to fire civil servants who weren't appointed,

without giving them a chance to appeal.

The courts ruled that that was unconstitutional,

so in 2017, Congress passed a new bill,

adding a grievance process for civil servants,

which President Trump then signed into law.

So it's been a few years since the VA scandal,

so how are things doing?

Did the reform measures work?

In 2015, The New York Times reported

that only three people had been fired

as a response to the scandal,

despite Bob McDonald's public statements

that 60 employees had been fired.

In 2019, Debra Draper, the healthcare director

at the Government Accountability Office,

told the House Veterans Affairs Committee

that although the VA had made progress

in wait times and scheduling,

there was still room for improvement.

She said that the VA's new system

was still not accurately recording patient wait times,

and that veterans might still wait

up to 70 days for an appointment,

even though the VA was reporting a much shorter delay.

On the positive side, the VA completed

one million more appointments for veterans

in 2018 than in 2017, showing that

access to care for veterans had definitely improved.

So what do you think?

Were the other branches of government

able to hold the VA accountable?

If you had to solve this problem,

either as a member of Congress, a judge, or the president,

what other steps could you take?