The Veterans Administration is in crisis. The culture of corruption and bureaucratic incompetence that plagues the VA is an abysmal waste of taxpayer dollars and even worse, the men and women who have fought for our country fail to receive the care they have earned.

Headline after headline reveals a seemingly never-ending list of scandals at the VA. Worse, it is a place where no one in leadership is held accountable for wrongdoing. In fact, the only people punished are the whistleblowers who expose the truth about this organization.

In a hearing last week, VA Secretary Robert McDonald said, “The VA can’t fire its way to excellence.” He’s wrong. He should start by holding people accountable and firing those responsible for the problems.

Just last week, a report on the Colorado Springs Community Based Outpatient Clinic, or CBOC, revealed lengthy wait times and a failure to add veterans to the Choice List. In fact, 64 percent of veterans at CBOC did not receive timely care in the audiology, mental health, neurology, optometry, orthopedic, and primary care services. Further, the inspector general also determined VA staff failed to add veterans to the Veterans Choice List allowing them to seek timely care from a private physician as required by law. If past actions are at all indicative, under the current administration, it’s not likely that anyone will be held accountable.

Last year, the VA gave out hundreds of millions in cash bonuses and, if anything, these bonuses have played a key role in fostering the culture of corruption that has fed this scandal-plagued agency.

For example, cash bonuses were given to VA’s Veterans Health Administration personnel for reducing the time that a veteran has to wait to receive care at the VHA. Unfortunately, what really happened was a systemic manipulation of patient wait times across the VHA where two sets of books were kept, an “official” set to ensure employee bonuses and “secret” set with the real schedules.

Yet when McDonald was asked his opinion about a proposed bill that would allow VA to take back bonuses when fraud or any other criminal misconduct was committed, he responded that he would not support the legislation. In other words, McDonald does not even want the tools necessary to clean up the corruption in the VA.

Corruption at VA is not the only problem; bureaucratic incompetence is the norm for the agency. The result of these two catastrophic systemic problems is veterans suffer and taxpayers are forced to pay much more than is necessary.

There is no better symbol of VA’s bureaucratic incompetence than the mismanagement of hospital construction projects. In 2013, a Government Accountability Office investigation found that the VA had four hospitals under construction, including the Aurora hospital, averaging $336 million over budget and 35 months behind schedule. Cost overruns for the four hospitals are now estimated at $2 billion.

Naturally, no one has been held accountable for the cost overruns and the construction delays at these major hospital projects. To add insult to injury, Glenn Haagstrom, who oversaw the construction of all four hospitals, received $64,000 in bonus money some of which was awarded after the GAO report was published.

Until the systemic problems are addressed, VA will remain in crisis. We must elect a president who recognizes how important the VA is to the men and women who served our nation in uniform and who will demand accountability from VA.

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Mike Coffman is a member of the U.S. House of Representatives where is serves on the Armed Services Committee and is the chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee for the Veterans Affairs Committee. He is a combat veteran with a combined 21 years of military service.