Officials in Washington find themselves under intense pressure to remedy the long waits experienced by thousands seeking medical care at VA hospitals and clinics.

There’s no denying the American government has violated its covenant to provide medical care to military veterans for life. More than 57,000 veterans have had to wait at least three months for initial appointments, according to government audits, and an additional 64,000 veterans who asked for appointments over the past decade never got them. The VA has confirmed at least 35 veterans died while awaiting appointments at VA facilities in the Phoenix area.

Congress is bent on fixing the problem in a hurry, but unfortunately the remedy contains too many carrots and too few sticks. The plan is to throw money — a lot of it — at the problem while sidestepping a primary symptom of VA dysfunction: a bloated bureaucracy focused on self-preservation rather than on medical care for veterans.

The carrots: The Senate bill that overwhelmingly passed last week would add $35 billion a year over the next three years to the $44 billion currently spent annually on medical care for veterans, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office. Once the program was fully in place, the budget office said it expected veterans “would ultimately seek additional care that would cost the federal government about $50 billion a year” — double current spending.

And since only about one-third of the 21 million eligible veterans are enrolled, an expansion of VA health care is bound to attract millions more enrollees, thereby sustaining the likelihood of delayed services.

The sticks: The Senate bill and a House version, which also passed, would require the Veterans Affairs Department to pay private providers to treat qualifying veterans who can’t get prompt appointments at the VA’s nearly 1,000 hospitals and outpatient clinics, or who live at least 40 miles from one of them; both would make it easier to fire or demote senior agency officials; and both would end bonuses to regional VA officials and other administrators based on meeting patient scheduling goals — a practice investigators say led some officials to create phony waiting lists to “game” the system.

The changes mentioned so far should have completed the legislation. All are sound, sensible steps to improve our obligation to provide health care for veterans.

But there are at least a couple more carrots, neither of which really advances the objective of more effective or more efficient delivery of health care.

One of those carrots: The Senate bill would devote at least $1 billion to opening an additional 26 VA hospitals or clinics in 17 states and Puerto Rico and $500 million for hiring more VA doctors and nurses. It would better serve veterans, and taxpayers, to simply issue vouchers for existing medical facilities, particularly as the current population of Vietnam and Gulf War veterans diminishes in coming decades. This is particularly important when considering an expansion of a self-preserving bureaucracy that will resist any attempt to dismantle it later.

The other carrot: Declaring the long appointment waits an emergency, the Senate averted having to raise taxes or find spending cuts elsewhere to cover the bill’s costs. It’s irresponsible to earmark $50 billion, no matter how noble the expenditure, if you don’t have $50 billion to commit.

While Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the bill’s authors points out, “If it is not an emergency that we have neglected the brave men and women who have served this country and keep us free, then I do not know what an emergency is.”

On the other hand, we can’t ignore the position of Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.: “We can’t just write a blank check and think it will solve these problems.”