WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) joined a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee (SVAC) hearing with President Trump’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA), Doug Collins. Sen. Tuberville and Secretary Collins discussed the importance of the VA improving its processes to ensure veterans get the best possible care.
Read excerpts from the hearing below or watch on YouTube or Rumble.
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Secretary Collins, for being here. And thanks to the veterans that are here today, and I want to pass on the thanks from the 400,000 veterans in the state of Alabama. They have, for the first time, in just two months, have seen progress at a lot of the VAs in my state. We’ve seen a record number of disability claims processed, employees finally returned into work, and an end of the DEI programs like treatment for ‘gender dysphoria.’ You know, the days of business [as usual] as we all are noticing and hearing today are over. And finally, our veterans are being put first.
And let’s talk about the budget a little bit, Mr. Secretary. Over the last ten years, the VA’s budget has more than doubled and the number of employees that the VA [employs] has increased more than 100,000, but the number of veterans in our country is declining and the VA enrollment has [not] changed. The VA has become a bloated bureaucracy. I think most of us will agree with that. Secretary Collins, why has the VA budget become so bloated over the last ten years if the veteran population has remained stagnant?”
COLLINS: “Senator, I appreciate the question because there’s also one other number that we’re leaving out there as well—that veteran population actually enrolled in the VA has stayed steady at 9.1 million. And again, we can try and talk about numbers all we want here, but it’s been 9.1 million steady for the last, you know, ten years we look at this. So, we’re also losing veterans as a total population. We’re also not gaining in the enrollment of the VA. What we tend to forget, and some people say, ‘well, we’ve had an increase in different programs’—we have, but we also lose about 400,000 veterans a year to death, you know, natural causes. So, I mean, it’s a priority of function.
So, what we’re looking at here is there’s been programs that have been increased, there’s been a mandatory spending increase, and there’s been the things that we look at. I think what we’re actually looking at here though is there’s been a decision that we want to—that it’s easier to just put money and people toward issues without looking at, is there any cost or is there any real world aspect of that? Is there a return on investment? I think that as you talk to veterans and I go out and talk to the veterans, one of the things that we’re having is that those amount of numbers in people aren’t equating into how we can actually function.
I mean, I appreciate the Ranking Member’s service. I appreciate it—we just disagree on this that when we have doctors and nurses [and] other clinicians who are not actually, you know, being clinicians and not reading, you know, charts or doing anything else. They’re actually, you know, formulating policy or doing administrative work. When I have, you know, these many folks that need to be more in the clinics, then we’re not helping the veteran. That’s just something that’s not happening. When you’re taking time to process disability claims that went up, then also not having the proper, you know, computer, the AI technology to help us and do that, but also putting out the issues that are slowing up.
And then also we get in our own way. Because we’re such a bureaucratic organization, we have rules over rules over rules. I had a gentleman tell me just the other day—and this is, again, I’ve seen this before from my own daughter. He actually said that—he was a double amputee. He actually said, ‘I have to go to the VA if I need a new wheelchair, I have to go to my primary care, a PT, and an OT before I can get a seating clinic appointment.’ Explain to me why we’re having to go through that kind of mess to get straight to a seating clinic in which we know where they need to be to start with.”
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you. I often hear a lot about the large amounts of paperwork and the administrative burden VA doctors are forced to navigate when seeing patients. This leads to VA doctors seeing less patients per day. Where do you see the opportunity to reduce all these administrative processes?”
COLLINS: “I think there’s plenty of opportunities there. And again, this has nothing to do with employees, has nothing to do with money. Simply, are we doing it most efficiently in the process? I’ve made a statement to every hospital that I go to, every clinic that I go to, every veteran benefit office that I go to. Just say this, tell me […] if you have ten sheets of paper to get a veteran the services that they need or ten sheets of paper to do the next thing, can you do it with five? I mean, I’ll show you an example—to apply for benefits in our VBA, there’s a sheet on there […] that has a full listing of the veteran as far as just basic information about their military service. And this for older veterans could be a problem actually to go back and remember dates. If the veteran served, then we could use that with their name, their Social Security number […] or their ID number, using their DD214, we can gain all the records that we need to confirm that they’re a part. But yet, we’re making them go through this process of filling out a form that many of our veterans who may or may not have computer capabilities are having trouble with, so it makes it difficult.”
TUBERVILLE: “I hear from my some of the supervisors in the VAs, and they say we use two coding systems, one hospital coding system that is very, very effective. And the other one is from the WHO, which is a useless piece of crap. This comes from them. Why do we use both of those?”
COLLINS: “That’s something I’m looking at now, again, to try and streamline the issues that we have in our system so that we, again, it is interesting a lot of times we end up talking about processes and plans here and not talking about actual care and actually what the veteran experiences when they go in. Most of the veterans, I will tell you a lot of times they actually—when they get through the labyrinth and stuff to get there, they are happy with the service that they get. They’re glad that they’re getting the service and they appreciate that. […] But when we actually put restrictions on our employees and put restrictions on veterans getting in, it just makes it all the worst. Thank you.”
Senator Tommy Tuberville represents Alabama in the United States Senate and is a member of the Senate Armed Services, Agriculture, Veterans’ Affairs, HELP and Aging Committees.
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