Secretary Collins: We owe America’s veterans real solutions

The Department of Veterans Affairs has been a punching bag among veterans, Congress and the media for decades. Things need to change.

We owe America’s veterans — and hundreds of thousands of excellent VA employees — solutions.

For many years, veterans have been asking for a more efficient, accountable and transparent VA. This administration is finally going to give veterans what they want.

President Trump has a mandate to bring generational change to Washington, and that is exactly what we’re going to deliver at VA. We are going to make the department work better for the veterans, families, caregivers and survivors we are charged with serving. Here’s how:

In response to Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative, VA is conducting a department-wide review of its organization, operations and structure. Central to these efforts is a pragmatic and disciplined approach to eliminating waste and bureaucracy, increasing efficiency and improving health care, benefits and services to veterans.

This will be a thorough and thoughtful review based on input from career VA employees and senior executives, as well as top department leaders.

Our goal is to reduce VA employment levels to 2019 numbers of roughly 398,000 employees from our current level of approximately 470,000 employees — a nearly 15 percent decrease. We will accomplish this without making cuts to health care or benefits to veterans and VA beneficiaries.

VA will always fulfill its duty to provide veterans, families, caregivers and survivors the health care and benefits they have earned. That is a promise.

And while we conduct our review, the department will continue to hire for more than 300,000 mission-critical positions to ensure health care and benefits for VA beneficiaries are not affected.

There are many people complaining about the changes we are making at VA. But what most of them are really saying is “Keep doing the same thing VA has always done.”

Nope. The days of kicking the can down the road and measuring VA’s progress by how much money it spends and how many people it employs — rather than how many veterans it helps — are over.

Here’s just one example of the change we are bringing. We are conducting a comprehensive review of VA’s 90,000 contracts, which total more than $67 billion. After reviewing roughly 2 percent of those contracts, we found almost 600 non-mission-critical or duplicative agreements that we will be cancelling, saving the department nearly $900 million. Just imagine how much we will be able to save after we complete our review of the remaining 88,000 VA contracts.

The money we’re saving by eliminating non-mission-critical or duplicative contracts is money we are going to redirect to veteran-facing health care, benefits and services, resulting in massive improvements in customer service and convenience.

Improving services to veterans is exactly why VA exists. That is what everyone — Congress, the media and VA employees — should be focused on.

There has been a lot of news coverage regarding recent layoffs at VA. We regret when anyone loses their job, and its extraordinarily difficult for department leaders to make those types of decisions.

But the federal government does not exist to employ people. It exists to serve people. At VA, we are focused on serving veterans better than ever before, and doing so requires changing and improving the organization.

VA was never perfect, and it will never be perfect. But we can and will make it better. When we find problems we will fix them, and we will communicate what we are doing to the public. But we will be making major changes. So get used to it.

Right now, VA’s biggest problem is that its bureaucracy and inefficiencies are getting in the way of customer convenience and service to veterans.

As I said before: We owe America’s veterans — and the hundreds of thousands of amazing VA employees — solutions. And mark my words, that is what we will deliver.

Doug Collins is the 12th Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. If you are veteran who needs VA assistance, please call 1-800-MyVA411 (1-800-698-2411).

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Secretary Collins: We owe America’s veterans real solutions

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