The Daily Signal - Veterans Affairs Secretary Has a Message for California Politicians Who Let Rioters Shut Down Clinics

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Starting point is 00:00:25 We'd love to talk. Business. I'm sitting down with the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Doug Collins. Thanks so much for joining us today. I'm glad to be with you. Since cuts and reforms began at Veterans Affairs just a few months ago, Democrats have claimed that veterans will lose access to their care. What is your response to these concerns?

Starting point is 00:00:45 Well, that's all I've been doing for a little over four and a half months now is fighting lies in any window from rumors from the hill and other parts of the press and saying, you know, that we're destroying everything at the VA. The reality is we're actually helping veterans. We're actually putting the VA back in the proper mode of being a service organization. and not a jobs program and not something that's just perennally complained about on the hill and we're actually doing some stuff. So look, I've made it clear from day one, no benefits and no health benefits and no

Starting point is 00:01:10 disability benefits for being cut. The budget that we just, that the president just submitted proves that we're not moving anything. So again, I guess I guess they just have the opinion that they just keep telling a lot long enough somebody will believe them. So I'll just keep telling the truth that that's not true and we're making it more efficient and I'm getting word every day from our veterans who are actually finding better service or getting disabilities claim process quicker. 25% down on the backlog, under 200,000. You know, this is the kind of thing that they want and to see and they're actually responding.

Starting point is 00:01:37 A report says that the Veterans Affairs Office is going to work with the Office of Personnel and Management to do the largest restructuring in Veterans Affairs history. Could you talk a little bit about why that's necessary? Well, it's necessarily. There's professionals to do anything. You know, government's really good at growing itself. It's not really good at shrinking itself. So sometimes you need those help in OPM as the guiding agency for the department for the administration,

Starting point is 00:02:00 across different agencies to help do what we need to do to make sure it's done efficiently, cost effectively, but also right. And again, right now there's still a lot of that up in the air because of court cases and stuff, so we're just waiting to see what we need to do. But we're taking a thorough approach. We're making sure we promised always that if we look at our organization, that it's going to come from career people, it's going to come from consultants, it's going to come from those folks to show exactly what we need in our organization to help us fulfill our mission.

Starting point is 00:02:25 What would the benefit be of working with OPM to make those cuts? I think we always work with them. And I think that's the big thing. And this is, you know, perspective we've had since we've been here in the administration. It's not a new, necessarily a new story. It's something we've been doing, you know, for day one. But they, you know, they give guidance. They're, you know, career folks who, you know, been a part of how you do reduction for us if we come to that. And so we're just making sure that we're making every possible way to make sure the VA is efficient and what it does. And the report said this would be the largest of all agency staffing reductions under the Trump administration so far. Why do you think that's necessarily specifically at Veterans Affairs to have such a large overall?

Starting point is 00:03:03 Well, again, this is the part of the innuendo and rumor problem that I've had all along is they don't know how many we're actually looking at because guess what? I don't know how many we're still looking at right down because we're still doing the evaluation process. But you know, it makes much better headlines for Democrats and others on the Hill to try to demonize the VA of what we're trying to do to make changes. But in the end, they're just scaring veterans and scaring our employees, which I find offensive. And so we're looking at it. We're the largest. It's also a matter of scale. We're the largest single agency in the administration.

Starting point is 00:03:34 DoD is technically larger, but they have all the branches. They got Army, Navy. We're bigger than a standing Army, the Act of Duty Army. So, you know, again, any perspective is going to have to reflect that we're that size. Do you expect that reducing middle management and some of those unelected bureaucrats will reduce wait times for veterans? I think it's going to be because we can look at focusing our, resources, our money, doctors, nurses and stuff back into the clinics, back into the hospital. So yes, I think that's something that we can definitely look toward being much more efficient.

Starting point is 00:04:03 And also, the other thing is not necessarily, you know, from a perspective of the clinics is getting answers to questions much quicker, getting answers to referrals. And we've already started to do that for best medical interest is what we're using to get people into the community. And if they're having an issue in one of our hospitals and they sort of, quote, send it up the line, well, it's 10 to 50, you know, it seems to be like, it seems to be 15, 20 steps to get to a decision. Well, we're trying to make sure that that's much more streamlined so that our center directors and our hospitals can make decisions much quicker. Just this week,

Starting point is 00:04:35 a mob in L.A. shut down the office of one of the Veterans Affairs branches in L.A. What is your message to California Governor Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who let the riots get to that point that veterans care was impeded? Yeah, actually, they shut down two. As of this taping, they shut down two of our offices and I would just ask the governor and the mayor to actually, you know, be considered of the Americans who have earned their veteran benefits who need to get their ambulatory health care, which is a center that's been shut down since day one, the benefits office, which has been shut down as well, is to, you know, they should have looked at this much more in depth and not a political stance of illegals who come into our country, who fly

Starting point is 00:05:13 other flags and claim to, you know, be a part of something that, frankly, you know, there's a privilege to be here in this country as a citizen and our, other things and to shut down whole city blocks and shut down veterans. Don't tell me that you're really overly concerned about veterans if you're allowing the riots to get to a point where we can't take care of our veterans. How long do you expect to take before these veterans will be able to resume care at those centers? Hopefully as soon as by the end of the week we're hoping for it. The president has made a great progress in that he stepped in even before the California governor or even the mayor,

Starting point is 00:05:46 I think, while they were still trying to figure out what politically they wanted to do it seemed like. He stepped in, sent the guard, has Marines on call. I think you're going to start seeing much more efficiency in getting these protesters off. And hopefully, you know, for the ones who don't want to be here, you know, maybe they'll go somewhere else like back to wherever they came from. Could you describe the challenge of accomplishing some of these major changes you've made here at the VA, particularly when it comes to helping VA enrolled veterans access health care from non-VA providers? Yeah, that's one of our biggest issues.

Starting point is 00:06:17 Mission Act was passed when I was actually still in Congress, the president signed it. It's something he's very proud of. And we are as well because it actually provides a what I call a community partnership with our VA health system. So when you look at the two and you see, you know, folks who want to get their care at the VA and we can do that timely, we can do it faster. We'll do it there. If we can't or send them their best medical interests, we'll send them into the community. So for us, it's fulfilling the law. And so many times, especially in the last administration, they chose to ignore the law. In fact, they actually discourage people from going into the community, which at the end of the day is why was that? It was

Starting point is 00:06:49 about feeding the VA animal itself, so to speak, and that is the organization. And we're supposed to be about the veteran, not our organization. Our organization should be set up to help our veterans, and I think we were much better off now where we're at. Why do you think there was some resistance, and is there still resistance to that effort? There is. It's territorial. It's, you know, it's the organizational in structure that we're the only ones that can do this and that we grow ourselves. And that's really one of the things you've seen. We've grown our budget in 10 years, even being on the GAO high-risk list, hundreds of billions of dollars and over 100,000 employees. But yet the numbers wasn't getting better.

Starting point is 00:07:24 Even through COVID, even coming out of COVID, we had a lot more employees, a lot more money, and we're still seeing backlogs way up. And in our hospital. So this is the kind of thing that says, you know, money and people are not always your answer. It's the structural processes and what you're focused on. And so for us, it's going to be the veteran. And we're starting to see good results from it. Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit.

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Starting point is 00:08:12 One of those focuses has been reducing suicide rates for veterans. Could you talk a little bit about what you've done to make grounds on that We're still in the process of that. It's not something that I'm happy with. We're spending over $500 million a year in, quote, preventative programs. We spend about $2.3 billion in treatments and others for folks who are struggling with PTSD and TBI and other things that keep them from taking their lives. We're in death by suicide. This is an area where we're not reaching times the right people. The numbers, whether you use 17, 22, whatever the number is, we're missing about half of those in the VA. In other words, they've never had contact with us. So we haven't even had a chance to try and try and try and turn them on a different way. So we're looking at new alternative ways from new media, podcast. We're going to be partnering with sports organizations, film industry folks, music people, to try and figure out how we can reach those that may be reached on another platform. And if they come to the VA, great, we want to help directing there. But we're also going to be able to get them to anyone that's willing to sit down and take a look. And there's a lot of great

Starting point is 00:09:12 nonprofits VSOs out there that can help them. The VA announced a few months ago it's phasing out coverage for transgender procedures. Why do you believe that change was needed? It's not something we need to be doing. That's said, this is a settled sort of issue for most people. It's just something that the following DODs lead as well. If you're currently in, and what we did was, if you're currently in still in receiving treatments, you're going to continue those.

Starting point is 00:09:35 We understand the medical issues there, but we're not going to be starting any new ones. And there'll be no gender assignment surgeries done at the VA. That's just not something we're supposed to be to be. I don't think and I think most of the people understand that. What do you have a figure about how much money that will save for Texas? It is predictive going forward so I mean you just have to you know sort of predict what may have been so for us it's millions of dollars probably in the upfront but we're going to continue that we're going to make sure look we're going to make sure our veterans have care and we'll make it very

Starting point is 00:10:02 clear if you are transgender your others and you have earned the benefit as a member every other benefit is there for you we're just not going to be a part of the gender reassignments and the dysphoria that's going on. So and if they were, if they say they're receiving any pushback from going to a clinic or hospital, then they just need to call me. I'll walk in with them. Because if they've earned the benefit, they earned a benefit. The VA just announced new grants to address homelessness. Could you speak to why that is important? It's important because we still have about 40,000 homeless veterans in this country on an average. Now we went down. As compared to the overall population, the vet population of homelessness as went down, but 40,000 is still a lot. And so we just

Starting point is 00:10:43 have the president signed that Center Vexas out in LA is one of the years we're dealing with one of the highest homeless populations for veterans in the country where we're going to make the West L.A. campus a place where we can provide the services and issues that they need to get out of the cycle of homelessness. He'll get the treatments and stuff that they need. Also, just the financial planning to get back and we're going to have that is going to be one place. But these other grants throughout the country let us address these needs as we're seeing them many times in our southern states, many time our urban cities. How can we help them get self-sufficient, self-standing. We don't want to see any person who served this country

Starting point is 00:11:17 not have the ability to find shelter and have permanent shelter. Under your leadership, do you plan for the VA to partner with nonprofits and non-governmental organizations as well to help veterans? Yes, you better believe it. There's some out there doing some great work. And I meet with them regularly. I meet with our VSO. You know, you have the traditional VSOs we have, but I'm also reaching out to nonprofits who go really since 9-11 have taken a different role and a more focused and targeted role in certain areas. Some of them deal with housing. Some of them deal with mental health issues.

Starting point is 00:11:48 Some of them deal with job and recreation. Some deal in special communities, like special operators. These are the kind of things that we're going to help with, because if they're helping my veterans and we're apart, then they're part of our circuit. Would you support a bill in Congress that seeks to shrink the VA's role in the community care referral process? No.

Starting point is 00:12:08 Because one, they'd have to get rid of the Mission Act. So I don't think they want to, they're not going to take on the mission. Act, if anything, there's a lot of feeling in the Congress to expand the Mission Act even more to make sure that the original intent of the Mission Act was fulfilled. We have a partnership with the community care. It's not overtaking the VA. It's not privatizing the VA. It's a partnership that we need because there's rural health care areas, there's rural health care needs,

Starting point is 00:12:32 even urban health care needs, where sometimes we can provide the services better and quicker in the VA. But then there's a lot of times that there may be times when the veteran themselves want to take part and more closer to home in their community. get that care quicker. We want to make sure they have every option available. Do you think that the increased recruitment rates that the military has seen over the past several months could have something to do with changes at the VA? And do you see there being a relationship between better veterans care and more recruitment to the military?

Starting point is 00:12:59 I would hope so. I mean, I think the OD and VA are fraternal twins. We just, we very much do the same kind of a mission with the same people. They do the kinetic mission. We do the aftercare mission, if you would, but it's the same group. And so I think when the parents and grandparents or aunts and uncles who served they come out they get a good experience in the VA they can see that we're fulfilling their promise to them so when you have the younger generation coming up they're they're more apt to say yeah it's good take the the initiative going to the military because we've gotten into a point here just in the recent history where you'd have open to 40 or

Starting point is 00:13:32 50% of those who served would tell their children not to serve and it was either issues within DOD or some frankly others with the VA and so we're seeing that hopefully reversed and that they get the benefits that they've earned. Is there anything else about your plans for the VA over the next few years that we haven't covered yet that you'd like to add? I think it's just a system of excellence. I want us to realize that the veteran is our focus of everything we do. And the VA is not about its organizational structure anymore.

Starting point is 00:13:58 It's about taking that organizational structure and making it helpful for the veteran so that they can look at it with something proud. They can look at something that they know is there for them. And the benefit they earned is something that they can care with them. Thank you so much for having this conversation. I'm glad to do it.

The Daily Signal - Veterans Affairs Secretary Has a Message for California Politicians Who Let Rioters Shut Down Clinics

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