During a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Michael Guest (R-MS) spoke in support of VA Secretary Doug Collins.
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00:00Mr. Gast.
00:02Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
00:04Mr. Secretary, thank you for joining us today.
00:08Thank you for your service, both your service in this body, but more importantly,
00:12your service in the United States Air Force.
00:15I want to highlight a couple of the successes that you've had within the first 100 days.
00:23You have redirected funds from non-mission critical areas to healthcare.
00:29You've ended remote work and brought employees back into the office.
00:34You've canceled duplicative and, therefore, wasteful contracts that the VA had entered into.
00:41And you've reduced disability backlogs by 21%.
00:45I think you said 60,000 cases have been resolved in just your 100 days, and that was the backlog of 60,000.
00:53And so I want to thank you for those incredible efforts in those first 100 days.
01:00I also want to talk a little bit about the VA in general.
01:04As I understand, the VA has more than 478,000 employees.
01:10It is actually larger than our active duty United States Army.
01:17And we've seen incredible growth within the VA just in the last decade.
01:22In the last decade, as I understand, the VA has added roughly 114,000 employees,
01:29114,000 within a decade, while the number of veterans that they serve has remained fairly constant at roughly $9.1 million.
01:40During that same time period, the budget of the VA during that 10-year window has grown from $160 billion to now $394 billion.
01:53So you would expect, or I would expect, that we have an agency that has substantially more money.
01:59They have substantially more employees.
02:02They are serving the same number of clientele that we would have metrics that would show that the VA was doing an incredible job.
02:14But some of the metrics that you cited earlier in your testimony, and I think a metric which is very important to all individuals who are using the VA,
02:26is wait times and claim backlogs as it relates to wait times.
02:33Over the last four years, so from FY21 to FY24, the wait times for primary care went up from 15.7 days to 24.3 days.
02:47The wait time for mental health care, and we heard earlier about suicide and the need to make sure that our veterans are receiving mental health care.
02:55The wait time for mental health care went up from 14.7 to 20.4.
03:00The wait time for specialty care went up from 24 days to 38 days.
03:05And the backlog for disability benefits went from 65,000 to 232,000 during that four-year window.
03:17Again, during that window, we are continuing to add employees.
03:21We are continuing to add and increase the budget within the VA.
03:27But it would seem that our veterans are not getting the care that they need.
03:32And I'm a big believer in metrics.
03:34We can talk in generality about things, but hey, show me the numbers.
03:38And those were numbers that you provided to myself and others, talking about the challenges that you face.
03:47And so I want to ask you, Doug, as you take over this role, and if you've been in now on the job for 100 days, and again, I think you've done some incredible work in the 100 days, what can we do?
03:59And let me address another rumor, and then I'll probably run out of time, so you probably won't have to say a word at all.
04:06But we have seen rumors and we have seen news reports that of the 478,000 employees that you have under your control, that you're going to cut 80,000 of those employees.
04:19That those employees are going to be cut and is going to dramatically impact veterans care.
04:26But in the first 100 days, if I understand correctly, there's only been 1,000 employees, and those employees were employees who were serving at the very beginning.
04:40So they were probationary employees that have let go, some I'm assuming were let go for calls, which is only one half of 1% of non-mission critical employees.
04:51And so I just want to put a lot of the false rumors to rest that the allegations that have been made against you, against your leadership team, against the VA, are not true.
05:01That what we saw in the last four years in the VA, we did not see care improve.
05:06We did not see our veterans reduce wait time.
05:08We saw those increase substantially.
05:10And you've got a difficult job ahead of you, Doug.
05:13And so I just want you to know that this committee wants to provide you the resources that you need.
05:18And we want you to be successful because our veterans deserve a VA that serves in.
05:23So with that, Mr. Chairman, I am out of time and I yield back.
05:27That's okay.
05:28So let's take a look at that.
05:29Good, guys.
05:30All right.
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