Congress is pretty well gridlocked on immigration, the overwhelming student loan debt burden, climate change, and just about every other issue of substance.

Lawmakers made an exception, however, for rescuing the Veterans Administration health care system after a scandal over waiting times in the Phoenix, Ariz., area. A General Accounting Office report found wait times were dramatically understated, which disguised long delays in getting treatment.

Within weeks, both House and Senate passed similar bills, which will now be reconciled by a conference committee, of which District Rep. Mike Michaud — ranking Democrat on the Veterans and Affairs Committee — is a member.

The main story line is, by now, familiar: Heedless bureaucrats covered up the fact that veterans often had to wait months, not days, for initial appointments, and they were in some cases given performance bonuses as a result.

Remarkably, though, hardly anyone seems to be asking why the scandal happened. The surface explanation plays heavily on the idea that the federal government can’t be trusted to do anything right, something branded into our political discourse over the past three decades.

Call it the myth of bad government. In reality, government is probably more accountable, more focused, and certainly more efficient that it was three decades earlier.

We all know the price of health care is out of sight, and that until the Affordable Care Act was enacted, private insurers could charge anything they wanted for administration.

Now, under the ACA, they’re limited to 20 percent for administration, and must refund anything over that to policyholders. Administrative costs for single-payer government programs like Medicare, and the VA, meanwhile, are less than 5 percent.

It doesn’t seem credible, then, that the only reason VA officials were fudging numbers is that they were venal or incompetent.

We’ve ignored another explanation that makes more sense, even if practically no one in Congress or the Obama administration has seen fit to mention it.

It is this: There may not be enough financial resources in the VA to provide the care veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars were promised.

It’s as if the ill-considered deal agreed to by President Obama in 2011 to cut $1 trillion from future spending, simply to keep Republican House members from defaulting on the national debt, never happened. Or that the “sequester,” which cut nearly $100 billion from current spending, didn’t happen either.

Lest we forget, the “sequester,” continuing into a second year, was conceived as so unpalatable an option that it would force a budget “grand bargain.”

Obama and Democratic congressional leaders forgot that the GOP House is dominated by those who don’t believe defaulting on the national debt could really be all that bad, and that cutting spending, no matter what the need, is always a good thing.

So it makes perfect sense that, given a huge influx of returning veterans from two wars, the VA would find itself overwhelmed when its funding was cut at the same time it should have been gearing up to meet increased demand.

The “not enough money” theory is confirmed by the bills the House and Senate just passed.

The Senate bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would eventually boost annual spending by $50 billion. The House bill, surprisingly, would cost even more, $54 billion.

That’s about twice what we now spend on VA care. Yes — double.

Now, there are reasons to believe that, in responding to a perceived crisis, Congress may be going overboard. Much of the new spending would go to referring VA patients to private providers who — lest we forget — already charge a steep markup.

Some small programs to increase access already exist. One, in Maine, helps Aroostook County veterans who would otherwise have to travel to the Togus VA in Augusta. Continuing and modestly expanding these programs makes sense.

But the VA mission should be carried out in government facilities that — waiting lists aside — have historically provided superior care without overburdening taxpayers.

It should have been obvious that major budget cutbacks at the VA weren’t sustainable — something that applies in many other federal agencies, too.

It’s dismaying that we rarely read about the effects of reductions in research funding at the National Institutes of Health, or the imminent bankruptcy of the Highway Trust Fund states rely on for all major road and bridge projects.

It’s ignored because, as we’re all supposed to believe, government always spends too much and we can continue cutting taxes with impunity.

But what if it isn’t true? What if the real scandal about the VA isn’t about the bureaucrats, but about our own unrealistic expectations?

Douglas Rooks is a former daily and weekly newspaper editor who has covered the State House for 29 years. He can be reached at drooks@tds.net.