It sounds hard to believe, but things just keep getting worse for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. A culture of festering corruption was exposed yet again this week — this time by its own watchdog.

The revelations aren’t game-changing — it’s been clear for years that the VA is deeply troubled — but they should represent a turning point in the discussion about the agency’s failings and its future.

The question is no longer what responsibilities the VA should be stripped of. It’s what, if anything, the agency can be trusted to do properly.

A report issued Monday by the VA Office of Inspector General alleges that senior executives manipulated the VA’s hiring system to secure cushy job reassignments for themselves with the aim of keeping or increasing their salaries while reducing their responsibilities.

In the process, one executive also scammed taxpayers out of about $300,000 in improper reimbursements for moving expenses for the 140-mile trip from Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia. Another is accused of exploiting the reimbursement system for $100,000 in improper moving expenses.

Not content with showcasing only their greed, the executives also used their authority in the agency to pressure lesser VA administrators to leave the positions that they coveted for themselves.

The watchdog’s report found this to be part of a longer-running scam that dates back to 2013: 23 senior executives — all already making six-figure salaries — bilked the Veterans Benefits Administration out of $1.8 million in salary increases and moving expenses by reassigning themselves. The scam was a workaround used to circumvent a freeze on executive pay and a ban on bonuses imposed by the White House.

The allegations are the latest in what has become a laundry list of scandals for an agency that’s tasked with one of this country’s most sacred duties. Nearly 6.5 million veterans are served each year by the VA system.

Here’s some recent, shining moments for the VA:

• A whistle-blower in Phoenix, Ariz. kick-started a 2014 investigation which exposed VA administrators across the country for coaching scheduling clerks into falsifying medical and agency records to hide long delays for patients; 130 VA employees faced disciplinary action and the agency terminated nearly 1,500 employees over the next year.

• A half-built VA Medical Center in Aurora, Colo., that began construction six years ago has, at $1.7 billion, become one of the most expensive hospitals in the world. The project is $1 billion over budget.

• In 2012 the VA hired, then later fired an Ohio-based developer to build its new health care center in Butler County, engaging in an inscrutable second site evaluation and bidding process that has confused and angered developers and local government officials. The agency subsequently refused to answer questions from local and federal officials regarding the process.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel has expressed to the White House its concerns that whistle-blowers at the VA are facing “(a) pattern of ... trumped-up punishment,” internally for exposing wrongdoing.

It bears repeating that there’s no apparent problem with VA medical care or services at the grass-roots level. Local VA workers have demonstrated nothing but competent and caring service.

The problems are higher up.

The VA’s top executive has been replaced; employees have faced criminal charges; lawmakers have publicly toyed with stripping the agency of authority to run its own building projects. Still, the scandals keep coming.

What is it going to take to clean up this gangrenous agency?

We don’t know the best course of action. We do know that the VA can’t be allowed to continue in its pattern of incompetent and deceptive conduct any longer.