Donald Trump’s secretary of veterans affairs is bragging about his plans to make extra cuts to the division and its well being care system.
Doug Collins advised the New York Submit in an interview revealed March 22 that the VA is “not an employment agency” because the division scurries to chop lots of of contracts and slash numerous applications from out there well being protection.
Whereas the previous Home member claimed he wasn’t eliminating very important veterans’ well being care, he rapidly added that remedy for transgender veterans didn’t match the invoice of mandatory medical care.
Collins particularly focused gender-affirming care and medical providers supplied to transgender individuals. In keeping with knowledge provided to the Submit by the company, transgender veterans make up one-tenth of 1% of 9.1 million veterans enrolled within the VA’s well being care program.
However Collins additionally bragged about reducing out another egregious contracts that he claimed have been mucking up the finances.
“The VA was paying for PowerPoint slides and meeting notes, for the watering of plants, and consulting contracts to do the work that we should be doing ourselves,” he advised the Submit.
Like his fellow Trump Cupboard members, Collins has focused company staff beneath the guise of stomping out variety, fairness, and inclusion, or DEI. The secretary slashed a bit of his workforce and canceled contracts that have been allegedly associated to the Trump-hated acronym.
Per the outlet, Collins’ deliberate cuts will save $914 million. However the data offered by the Submit can’t be independently verified by Each day Kos right now.
Attributable to many different cases wherein multibillionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity and different federal businesses have incorrectly reported “savings,” it’s unclear whether or not these numbers are correct.
It’s additionally not unusual for departments to brag about reducing funding for alleged wasteful applications that turned out to be one thing arguably totally different.
As for the person behind these cuts, Collins is a former Baptist minister with an attention-grabbing story behind his rise to Trump’s Cupboard. Collins was in Georgia politics for fairly a while, however he actually made a reputation for himself in the course of the 2019 probe by particular counsel Robert Mueller into Russian election interference. The Republican congressman was one in every of Trump’s largest allies in the course of the probe and finally wrote a e book claiming Democrats sought to question Trump as revenge for his victory over Hilary Clinton within the 2016 presidential election.
However ass-kissing books apart, now that Collins has his dream gig of creating veterans’ lives worse, Democrats are demanding that he reply for his actions.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut referred to as on Collins to testify at an off-the-cuff listening to subsequent week to debate the cuts he’s made to the VA, together with an anticipated 80,000 layoffs.
Unsurprisingly, Collins is predicted to show down the invitation.
Many teams and businesses have been hit onerous since Trump took workplace in January, however veterans appear to be one in every of his administration’s larger targets. Not solely is their well being care protection and workforce being gutted, however the inhabitants is taking different hits as properly.
The standard of psychological well being care offered to veterans has taken a nosedive within the identify of “efficiency,” and a division that investigates disparities in how the federal government offers incapacity compensation has been shuttered.
It’s unclear what the Trump administration’s finish aim is, however those that advocate for veterans are all too conscious of the doubtless catastrophic impacts.
“It’s a first step toward gutting the second-largest agency in our federal government,” Richard Brookshire, co-founder of the Black Veterans Mission, stated to ProPublica on the closure of the VA’s Workplace of Fairness Assurance.
“The consequences will be dire, wide-reaching and deadly,” he warned.
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