At Thursday's House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) questioned VA Sec. Doug Collins.
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00:00I remember. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here today. Mr. Secretary, you've testified that, quote, no one has discussed firing doctors or firing nurses, end quote. No one has discussed this. And that the 15% figure floating around is just a goal, not a directive.
00:20Then I need you to explain this spreadsheet that I have behind me. And we're handing you a copy of this spreadsheet. It was circulated by your own reorganization implementation cell.
00:33It asks VA staff to calculate the savings from a 15% cut to every VHA position, including frontline clinical roles. And it says cutting nearly 4,000 nurses, for example, would save a billion dollars.
00:49Cutting 400 psychologists, another $110 million. The list goes on. Health aides, pharmacists, housekeepers, et cetera.
00:58Now, if your testimony is true, that no one is looking at plans to cut these jobs, why did your team ask for this analysis?
01:10Ranking Member, I'm looking at this right here. This is exactly why we're here. This is a leaked pre-decisional document that is not helpful.
01:20And it is not working because here's the end of the day. No, no, I'm going to answer this.
01:23You've testified, Mr. Secretary. No, no.
01:25You're claiming my time, Mr. Secretary. It's my time.
01:28Well, it's my answer.
01:28You have said publicly that no one has discussed, that would be interpreted, no one has discussed this at all.
01:35But we have a document, whether leaked or not, that establishes that these cuts are being discussed.
01:41I said that I have made clear we will not be cutting frontline health care.
01:46But your subordinates are discussing this. They must have gotten the directions from somebody.
01:50They did. Well, I've been very public. It's just like your staff.
01:53Okay, well, you can understand why there's a lack of credibility from the public on this sort of stuff.
01:59There's a lack of credibility.
01:59This is not speculation, Mr. Secretary. It is a VA document.
02:04We have asked your head of HR, Mark Engelbaum, for answers.
02:07We've actually asked your subordinates about this.
02:10He promised a follow-up and we never got it.
02:13So I'm asking you now, on the record, why did your team request this analysis and what are you preparing for?
02:19Well, if I have to explain this in a way that makes sense, let me just say this.
02:24Don't talk down to me, sir. I'm just asking you a question.
02:27I'm just answering your question. If you let me answer it, I'll answer it.
02:31Please, time is ticking.
02:36This right here is an overlook of our entire organization to see.
02:40What they did here is fine. Whatever they're looking at is fine.
02:43But when it comes to the Secretary of the VA, which is me, and the direction that we have given to make sure that health care is prioritized,
02:50to make sure that our veterans are getting the desire that they need.
02:52And when I've told you that when we're talking about this and exempted 300,000 positions, that is what happens at the VA.
02:59Can they have other conversations that involve other things? Possibly so.
03:02But coming from me, it's not.
03:03Okay, well, thank you. Let's move on.
03:05So I'd like to point out that you've set a goal of 83,000 VA employees.
03:10I know it's not a fact. It's a goal.
03:12But I just want to make sure we go over this and we have some agreement.
03:15Without cutting clinical staff, there simply aren't 80,000, 83,000 employees elsewhere in the department.
03:23If you look at this chart over here, you've already cited these numbers yourself.
03:26So if we add up all the VBA, NCA, and all the other positions, it hardly adds up to 83,000.
03:34You're going to have to cut deeply out of the VHA column there.
03:37So, you know, there's just simply no way that that can be done without that.
03:43So I would also like to move on and say it is also our understanding that on the VA Human Resources SharePoint,
03:51there is a document that lists every employee hired since 2019 with their name and occupation.
03:57Will you get that document to us in digital form?
04:00I'm not familiar with the document you're talking about.
04:02But if it does exist, I mean, we know it exists. Would you get it to us?
04:06I don't know what you're talking about.
04:08And also, if I can answer your other question, it would be...
04:10Okay, no, I'd like to move on.
04:12I'd like to move on to the deferred resignation program.
04:15There's been a lot of confusion about the deferred resignation program.
04:18Okay.
04:19It is my understanding that you have made employees who are in positions that provide direct care exempt from this program
04:25unless there is an additional review by VA leadership.
04:28How many employees who directly provide care or support the provision of direct care
04:34have submitted requests for DRP, early retirement, or retirement?
04:38The last number I had on that was about 2,500, of which all of them are going to be denied.
04:50You're going to deny them.
04:51So you're telling me today that you're going to deny all of the clinicians who have applied for DRP.
04:56That is what we're looking to do.
04:58And I will say this, as we look at this, one of the issues of DRP is making sure that employees who want to be here are not.
05:04We're not looking to get rid of any clinicians.
05:06We're not looking to get anybody.
05:07In fact, we're turning it down.
05:08That's fine.
05:08I got it.
05:09But 2,500 clinicians have applied for DRP.
05:14You're going to deny those.
05:16We're denying clinicians.
05:17You're denying.
05:17But have you thought about why frontline staff are requesting DRP in the first place?
05:22To me, it's an indictment of your leadership that valuable clinicians that are hard to recruit, hard to onboard,
05:29that that staff who loved serving veterans now want to leave.
05:33Well, have you looked at actually the ones who may want to leave and how close they are to retirement to start with?
05:37Have you actually looked at where they may be?
05:39I've not looked at those, but we're going to keep them in the system.
05:41So your question may sound, you know, like it's ominous, but also you've not answered the other questions where these people actually are.
05:47Okay.
05:48Well, so fine.
05:49Let's move on.
05:50Mr. Secretary, are medical center directors exempt from the hiring freeze?
05:56Medical center directors.
05:57Yes.
05:58They are.
05:59So to be clear, so is that your answer?
06:01They're part of the clinician side, yes.
06:02Okay.
06:02Well, to be clear, the list you have provided to Congress does not include medical center directors as exempt positions.
06:09That is not something.
06:10It's been updated.
06:11So now it is.
06:12Now, according to a report that VA just submitted to Congress last week, there are 12 medical center director vacancies,
06:18eight of which cannot be hired due to the freeze.
06:21The chart behind me shows a page from the report with those vacancies listed and the status, which is that, quote,
06:30recruitment is on hold due to hiring freeze, end quote.
06:33We're working to fill all those.
06:35When we find those, we're working to get them hired.
06:37Those are many of those were actually predecessors to me.
06:40All right.
06:40Well, this document shows that they're not, they're empty because of a freeze.
06:45So you'll commit to exempting medical center directors from the hiring freeze and prioritize finding leaders for those facilities as soon as possible?
06:53I already have.
06:54Wonderful.
06:55Well, Mr. Secretary, I just want to know, can we get a RIF plan before you execute it and not execute it for 30 days so that the public, veterans,
07:04and Congress can examine it before it's put into force?
07:0883,000 is a lot of people to cut.
07:10We're going to provide everything we're supposed to under RIF to make sure you have every notification you have.
07:15Well, that's not the same as providing us with the draft plan so that we all can discuss it together.
07:21That's 83,000 is a huge change.
07:24And again, I wasn't able to answer your question because you didn't allow me to discuss the 83,000.
07:29I'll take that as non-responsive.
07:32I'll take yours as not letting me answer.
07:34The gentleman yields back.
07:35So one thing I've discovered about today is that normally the ranking member and myself, we ask our questions first.
07:47So what has happened is I think we have questioned you to the point that I think we got a lot of answers of what my questions were going to be.
07:57So maybe I'm going to ask you this.
07:59What is something that has not been asked that you feel is vitally important to put on the record?
08:06Mr. Chairman, I think it's not what necessarily has been asked, but I think it is from the perspective of how it was asked.
08:11And this is the fight that you and I have spoken about, and I've spoken to many, and we just got through with it.
08:17And please hear me to everyone here.
08:19I consider the ranking member a friend we came in.
08:22We vehemently disagree on this because I think the problem we have here is something that I refuse to talk about in a setting like this
08:29or where we actually have living proof of pre-decisional documents being leaked, basically even against the law of land that these are not supposed to be leaked.
08:42We see this.
08:43If they want to go to Inspector General Whistleblower, those are all there for them.
08:48But this is the exact reason I was asked earlier about NDAs.
08:50Okay, because now what is happening, as you sit here and we put up forms, we're continuing to fester this idea that there's no way we can do what needs to be done without hurting veteran health care.
09:08I refuse to accept that because one thing that was not accepted, and I was not able to continue, there are 409 positions in VHA.
09:17And when we look at that and you look at some of the areas that we have in VHA, which also includes call centers, which also includes staffing issues,
09:26they also include procurement, they also include HR, they also include processing of payroll, which these hospitals were not supposed to be doing.
09:34By the way, those numbers add up to significant amounts.
09:37What was not said just a minute ago is that just last year, the Biden VA in the VHA, in their own internal documents, stated that they could get rid of 28,000 people.
09:51This is the Biden VA six months ago.
09:55Haven't heard that.
09:5728,000.
09:58Now, if you go by the numbers that I've been told today, oh, you can't do that without hurting health care, then we're saying the Biden administration wanted to hurt health care.
10:07No, I think they actually looked at the same numbers we did, Mr. Chairman, and determined that of the frontline health care, frontline disability workers and all,
10:15there is a lot of interest in looking at are we being as efficient as we should be.
10:19And I believe that as we look at this, you're going to find those answers, and that is why we have to do this in a very methodical way.
10:28Everybody wants to run forward and say, here, give me your plan, because you know what?
10:31Then they want to go out and say, you're going to cut here, you're going to cut here, and they're going to put fear in my employees, and they're going to put fear in my veterans.
10:38That's wrong.
10:40It's wrong.
10:41You see no other industry in this country who are making decisions about their workforce who do it in a way that we're talking about being told here.
10:49We're doing it in a methodical way, using career employees who've been there forever.
10:55We're actually looking at actually using consultants.
10:57We're actually using our political folks to get this into the record, to say, here's how we look at this.
11:02Looking at the examples of private industry and knowing that we're not private industry.
11:06We're a veteran organization that gets to treat the best people in the world, and that is our veterans.
11:11We only have one mission, the veteran.
11:14But over time, we have gotten away from that.
11:17So when you look at these numbers, I have a question for anybody that wants to look at this.
11:23Why do we have a middle management, if you would, or a structure system that keeps our clinicians out from seeing patients?
11:31And then saying that if we look at anything of a doctor or a nurse who's not seeing patients, that we're going to affect health care if for some reason they wasn't around or if they quit on their own.
11:42I think what we're saying here is there's a large understanding gap that unfortunately has become political.
11:50I could go along almost every member except the new ones, because there's a lot of new on this committee, Mr. Chairman.
11:55And I can go from ranking member to you to everybody else and find quotes on the Senate side as well.
12:00VA needs reform.
12:01VA needs efficiencies.
12:03VA needs cost-cutting.
12:04VA needs all these things, both Democrat and Republican.
12:06And then all of a sudden, you have somebody like myself who is just, and I say this in knowing that somebody will use it against me,
12:17I'm just a simple country lawyer from North Georgia who simply says, maybe we actually ought to look at this.
12:23And maybe we actually ought to ask the questions on why we have this.
12:25And why do the VSOs and why do others always seem to have issues that they want to get fixed at the VA,
12:30but all we do is continue to perpetuate the problem?
12:33I'm not willing to do that anymore.
12:36We can disagree.
12:37The president told me to do one thing, and it's take care of our veterans.
12:43And yet, in this time frame, which was not brought up, and we're going to bring it up even again,
12:48by the Biden administration, they changed the wait time issue to make it more transparent so that we,
12:52in fact, I got this last week when I said the primary care days.
12:57Let me just repeat this.
12:58It's worth repeating.
12:59Primary care rose from 15.7 to 24.3.
13:03Mental health rose from 14.7 to 20.4.
13:0724 days for specialty care rose to 38.
13:10And the backlog, by the way, interestingly enough, in 2019, before the COVID, was under 60,000 on the backlog.
13:17Of course it went up during COVID because we couldn't get our appointments.
13:21And it's still at 260,000 when I came in.
13:24And in less than 100 days, we've actually brought that down 21% to 200,000, and it's heading south.
13:30Now, I was actually accused the other day of, well, you're using flawed numbers.
13:34And the VA wait time is flawed because the VA changed the way it does its wait times.
13:38But here's the problem.
13:39It was changed under the Biden administration to better reflect calculations because the data reinforced above did not reflect the adjusted change.
13:46It plainly shows that the wait times increased because here's what you need to hear.
13:49Wait time clock started only after a veteran was contacted by a scheduler for an appointment under the prior administration.
13:57In other words, we didn't even start the clock until we reached out to them.
14:01The veteran may be looking to get their help, but they didn't get it.
14:04So the new method, which was, again, done under the previous administration, and adjusted through every number beforehand.
14:09So there's no apples to oranges here.
14:10This came from Dr. Lieberman, who is our top doctor, by the way, at the VHA.
14:16The method is now calculated on when the schedulers are called to reduce so that we actually make a query time.
14:25So as we look at this, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate you allowing me the time.
14:28I appreciate the ranking member.
14:29I appreciate all the committee wanting to do good work.
14:32But what I can't have is spending another 100 days as we go forward here because, as Dr. Morrison and many others say,
14:37yes, there is from people who have morale issues.
14:40Because they're having to sit here and listen to the wrong answers.
14:43How that yield.
14:48Yes, I do.
14:50Mr. Secretary, you know, you're opining about a so-called leaked document.
15:00It's obvious.
15:01It's obvious.
15:02We're not mushrooms.
15:05We're going to hear stuff.
15:06We're going to hear stuff from employees who are alarmed about huge, massive changes that are occurring.
15:16And that document, we don't get answers to our questions.
15:20When we don't, when there's no transparency, we're going to rely on whistleblowers telling us the truth.
15:27Look, private industry, sir, would not have fired 2,400 employees and then hired back 1,000.
15:35That was indiscriminate firing of indiscriminate firing of probationary employees.
15:43A memo went out, signed by Tracy Theret, that said they were being fired because of their performance.
15:51And I questioned her, and she couldn't really cop to the fact that they were fired because of their performance.
15:57And I'm not even sure, really, that you personally authorized all of that, or whether it was someone from the Office of Personnel Management.
16:07And she, in fact, said that that memo was actually not, even though she signed it, was actually not written by her, but was written by OPM,
16:16which does not seem like it came from the Secretary's office.
16:19And that, sir, was entered into evidence into a federal court.
16:23And that judge did indeed rule that they had to be restored, those probationary employees.
16:32That 28,000-employee cut that you were talking about from the Biden administration, the VHA, you know, is related not due to necessity,
16:45but because of a shortfall in the budget.
16:48And there was a huge shift in acceleration of expense in the community care, the community care account.
16:59So, you know, we need to have some space for some straight talk here, and we're not getting it here.
17:08Now, Mr. Secretary, I must say I was pleased to hear you say that you want to make the disability claims process easier to veterans.
17:14I was listening carefully to your response.
17:17I personally do not want to see claim sharks legitimized.
17:22And I'm not saying you're taking a side on that gentleman's bill, but I think we have some meat in the mind here.
17:29We do need to, maybe we need to talk about some presumptives that would make the process easier,
17:39and more veterans would get through that red tape.
17:42I'm all for cutting that bureaucratic red tape.
17:45And so we share that goal.
17:47We do need to make it simpler for veterans to get care and benefits.
17:51And there are two really good ways to do that.
17:53One is to increase the number of presumptive illnesses,
17:55and the other is to automatically enroll transitioning service members into VA health care,
18:00as my legislation in the EVEST Act does.
18:04And I look forward to your considering supporting that bill
18:07and to VA increasing the number of presumptions of service connection.
18:12I also think it is possible for us to work together and help veterans and ensure that VA is a world-class institution.
18:19But I cannot emphasize enough that VA's unresponsiveness to my questions and letters is not acceptable.
18:26VA's recent habit of canceling long-standing briefings at the last minute is also not acceptable.
18:32VA's refusal to provide briefing materials to staff is not acceptable.
18:36And we cannot have a productive relationship if we do not have the information we need
18:41for our constitutional oversight responsibilities.
18:44Now, when you told Ranking Member Ramirez that canceling outreach was not your intended policy,
18:50I take you at face value.
18:52So I expect that our follow-up questions about this outreach problem
18:56will receive responses with the same candor and attention.
18:59Listen, this research issue is, this outreach issue, is not limited to just one district or facility.
19:07Now, you blame the issue on, quote-unquote, malicious compliance.
19:11But, sir, the buck does stop with you.
19:14And I know that's a phrase that you embrace.
19:19If policy is not being implemented correctly, then I say it is on you.
19:23If veterans and employees are scared and feel like they have to over-comply with a policy, that's on you.
19:32That should cause you to re-examine the policy as well, not just blame the staff.
19:37If you truly want to lead VA, accountability is where leadership begins,
19:40and you cannot expect your employees to be accountable if you will not be yourself.
19:46Now, another thing I just want to say is I've gotten concerns from my colleagues about this directive
19:52that any member of Congress wanting to visit their VA facility has to get it cleared through your chief of staff.
19:59And they're having to take that very literally.
20:03They're taking it very literally, based on all that we're seeing coming out of your first 100 days or so in office.
20:09That cannot stand.
20:10Again, members of Congress need to be able to visit their facilities, talk to their medical center directors,
20:18and be able to see what's going on.
20:20My job as an elected official and the ranking member of this committee is to represent the interests of veterans.
20:25We cannot answer questions from veterans or get them information if we cannot get answers from VA.
20:31We cannot represent veteran interests if we do not have the full picture of how their interests will be affected.
20:36And that is why veterans are scared.
20:38Now, let me be clear, veterans are not scared because I or any other member of Congress asks a question.
20:45They are scared because you have made massive changes with no plan, no details, no accountability, and no transparency.
20:52You have truly, if you truly believe it is a quote-unquote fear-mongering to ask a question,
20:59then you should ask yourself why you, Mr. Secretary, fear answering our questions.
21:03Now, I am proud of the employees who have bravely shared their stories with us.
21:09We are relying on the courage of whistleblowers now more than ever.
21:13I am grateful to the veterans who have shared their concerns,
21:16and I will continue to fight to ensure that their worries are heard and addressed.
21:21Now, Mr. Secretary, if you want to accuse VA employees of quote-unquote malicious compliance,
21:25I say you need to examine your role in creating a culture where VA employees feel like your directives
21:33to require them to implement policies that harm veterans.
21:36Reconsider the cruelty in your treatment of minority veterans.
21:42Reconsider your termination of collective bargaining rights for the hardworking public servants.
21:47Reconsider your role in ending critical programs like VASP because veterans will now lose their homes to foreclosure
21:55unless you put a moratorium on those foreclosures until we can ramp up the partial claims legislation.
22:04Reconsider your pause of clinical trials.
22:06Leave sick veterans, leaving sick veterans without the lifeline of hope.
22:11Reconsider how you have indiscriminately fired employees only to hire them back again.
22:18So, Mr. Secretary, I truly hope that you'll go back to the central office today and chart a plan to course correct.
22:24That plan should include complete and truthful answers to all of the questions you were unable to answer today
22:30and a path to true partnership with both sides of this committee, and with that, I yield back.