When you boil away the platitudes and declarations of military resolve, President Barack Obama’s 40 minute speech Tuesday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Pittsburgh can be summed up in two sentences:

• The best national defense is a robust economy and innovative diplomacy; and

• Long waiting lists at Veterans Affairs hospitals are the result of budget sequestration — funding cuts triggered by a dysfunctional Republican Congress that can’t pass a responsible budget.

Obama could have said much more than he did about the VA health system. He chose not to. That’s a disappointment.

In April 2014, news reports first surfaced about dozens of military veterans who died while waiting for medical attention from VA health centers. A subsequent internal VA audit found more than 120,000 veterans were left waiting or never got care and that ranking VA officials either knew about or took park in altering schedules to hide the long waits.

Obama promised action. To his credit, the president ordered a White House investigation, which found significant problems existed.

Congress passed legislation to streamline the firing process for VA managers. Even so, a few — not many — were fired or faced other undisclosed disciplinary actions. Congress added a half-billion dollars to the VA’s already gargantuan $164 billion budget, providing funding for veterans to seek private health care where VA care wasn’t immediately available.

Even with the additional funding, the VA faces a $2.6 billion budget shortfall with three months remaining in the current fiscal year.

Congress is negotiating with the VA and attempting to move existing VA money to vital line-items.

The president’s answer is even more money for the VA. His 2016 Budget, proposed in February, includes $168.8 billion in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. That’s $5.2 billion, or 7.5 percent, more than was budgeted for the current year.

In Tuesday’s speech, Obama chided Republicans for the sequestration, or mandatory automatic budget restraints. But he already knows the Republicans’ position: That the VA is a bloated, wasteful bureaucracy that needs restraint, not more tax dollars.

A year ago, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said: “We gave the VA the resources to improve their care and the waiting lists are even longer. And the VA’s problem isn’t funding. It’s outright failure, absolute failure to take care of our veterans.”

Our own congressman, Rep. Mike Kelly, points out frequently that local veterans speak glowingly about the care they receive at VA centers in Butler and Pittsburgh. It’s the VA upper management that gives Kelly headaches. The VA’s planned construction of a $127 million health care center to replace the existing VA Butler Healthcare center has been fraught with error, protests from a bidding contractor, a contract awarded and then rescinded, changes in a site grading evaluation, and even a federal corruption conviction.

Like Kelly, we have asked what will happen with the existing VA center and why the siting criteria have changed. We want a clearer picture of what’s going on. In fact, Kelly will host a meeting from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Aug. 27 at the Butler Township American Legion hall, 150 Memorial Lane, on the topic of wanting to know what the VA is up to in Butler.

It’s a shame that no one — not even President Obama — seems able to get a detailed accounting of VA business practices.

Given all the facts — and the absence of facts — it seems appropriate to shut off the money spigot until the VA demonstrates more transparency and accountability to the tax payers who fund it.