WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) questioned Doug Collins, President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA), during his nomination hearing in the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs (SVAC). Sen. Tuberville asked Collins about increasing oversight at the VA, ending taxpayer-funded services for illegal aliens, and ensuring massive VA budget shortfalls never happens again.
Following the hearing, Sen. Tuberville penned an op-ed supporting Collins’ nomination and emphasizing the need to reform the broken VA.
Read Sen. Tuberville’s remarks below or watch on YouTube or Rumble.
TUBERVILLE: “Thank you, Congressman, for wanting to take this on—you and your family.
[The VA is] the largest healthcare system in the world. If that’s not eye opening, I don’t know what it is. We’ve had a lot of people tackle this job and it is a hard job and it’s very, very important. I grew up in military family [and I’ve] been to many, many VAs and we have some good ones in Alabama but it’s amazing to me that, you know, that we look at this and it’s again [the] second largest budget that we have here in Congress—second largest behind the DOD.
But it’s really not about money, you know, I think about and look at all this in a different perspective. Sometimes it’s about people running what you have, and we’re run by unions. And there’s obviously some good and some bad. But we’ve got to find the problem because we got more and more of our veterans are adding up. We have almost 500,000 just in the state of Alabama alone and it’s a big problem that we can’t take care of all of them.
Now, when I first got here and got on this Committee four years ago, one of the first things that we did—President Trump had eliminated 4,000 people—he didn’t care what they were in, if they didn’t do their job, they got fired. He took 4,000 of them and sent them out the door. Well, the Biden Administration [came] in [and] the first thing they did is they rehired them, and [gave them] back pay, and put them in a situation where a lot of them had really breached protocol.
Now I come from a previous profession [where] if you didn’t do it right, you were gone. Will you commit to doing what’s right for the veterans when it comes to the personnel that are handling these people?
We can talk about acts, and laws, and bills, and all this it [isn’t] going to do a damn bit of good unless we get the people that’s running these VAs in these homes that take care of our veterans [and if] we don’t get the best. Will you commit to that?”
COLLINS: “Senator, thank you for that. I mean I your last profession, not just your profession, but I think every other profession in the world expects accountability. And I think that’s what raises the standard. So yes, we’re going to have accountability the VA.
[The VA] Accountability Whistleblower [Protection] Act, which by the way passed unanimously out of the Senate, its intent was to make sure that those workers who were not fulfilling their mission—they were not going to take a job anymore.
I intend to make sure that this is a promise that I have. If there is someone who is harming, or in the way of a veteran, or taking a veteran’s benefit away, I have no problem in getting rid of that person and making sure we do it properly. And I have no problem with the legal repercussions [of] that because there’s no one at the VA going to stand in the way of a veteran getting the care properly, and if they’re not doing it safely. Which we saw many of those were not doing it safely and putting our veterans in harm’s way, but I will say it again, and I think you would agree with me—I will be the biggest cheerleader for every VA employee out there who is out there getting up every morning [and] doing it right, making sure we’re taking care of our veterans.
But I believe the only way I can make them better—the only way I can push them—is to not allow those not to do it. So, we have to have that accountability. This body passed it unanimously. It is about raising standards. It’s about saying that we’re going to expect the best and we’re going to require the best. Because if I want to retain doctors, if I want to retain nurses, if we want to retain benefits [for] people, then you got to set a standard says, ‘I’m proud to be here,’ and for me, I want to lead an agency that works and puts our veterans first and holds accountable those that have not.”
TUBERVILLE: “Awesome. In 2023, it was reported to us some of our VAs, especially our Community Care Systems, were funding illegal aliens’ healthcare. Would you please look into that once you take this office?”
COLLINS: “Yes, Senator I will. I do not believe any money that’s taken outside the mission of the VA to help the veteran is a worthy cause of the money that has been appropriated for the veteran and we will not be doing that.”
TUBERVILLE: “You know we were given a budget shortfall just back last July. We were called and told by the [Biden] administration that we were $3 billion short. We had to come up [with funding] very, very quickly or we were going to default in the VA.
You can imagine how frustrated we all got with that when we found out that we actually had a surplus. I would hope that we take better care of what we do with our money, and we know where it’s at.
Also, one thing before I go off here and I didn’t get a chance to talk to you about this back when we met. Electronic healthcare. Nobody has told you this, [but we have spent] $20 billion on updating our VA’s electronic healthcare records over the last decade. The Department of Defense completed their update, yet the VA has nothing to show for the $20 billion. Houston, we got a problem.”
COLLINS: “Houston, Atlanta, DC, everywhere else we have a problem. That is not acceptable that’s one of the things that we’re going to [address] as we’ve said earlier.
And we talked about this earlier we’re going to have to get into very quickly. Put every player on the table to make sure that we’re getting it right from the VA perspective and from the Oracle perspective as it’s currently held.
DOD and VA are very different, but also as I said before we’re special, but not unique. What we can do can be done and there’s ways that we can look at that. I think Senator King talked about ways that we can [do better]. Let’s do what we can do. We’re going to get that right even up here. Eight years and that much money and no results […] is not acceptable.”
TUBERVILLE: “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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