 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Control of Congress May Shift, But Doug Collins Will Still Be VA ChiefBy Suzanne Gordon and Steve EarlyHere's What VA Defenders Can Do! By Labor Day, 2026—the traditional start of general election campaigning—the likelihood that MAGA Republicans will lose control of Congress was no longer a question of whether, but of how much. Depending on the scale of any mid-term rebuff of President Trump that puts Democrats in charge of the House and/or Senate, the White House's post-election response is likely to include, in traditional fashion, a cabinet shake-up. Some controversial Trump appointees—Kristi Noem, Pam Bondi, and Lori Chavez-DeRemer—did not even make it to the midterms. They lost their top jobs at the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Labor, respectively, because of mounting bad publicity about either gross misbehavior or personal bungling of presidential directives. President Trump fired them almost as fast as he once dismissed failed contestants on The Apprentice. President George W. Bush may have been an early fan of the show because two decades ago this November, after heavy Republican losses in the 2006 mid-term elections, he quickly pushed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld out the door. Rumsfeld resigned on November 8, 2006, to deflect mounting popular criticism of the administration's failed "shock and awe" campaign in Iraq. In the wake of its sinking fortunes at the polls, the floundering Trump-Hegseth war on Iran may require a sacrificial lamb as well. We can confidently predict that it won't be the guy who went to Penn rather than Princeton, where our current DOD Secretary penned a post-9/11 letter to The Daily Princetonian praising Bush and Rumsfeld for responding "in an appropriate an effective manner" to the "correct perpetrators" of mayhem in the Middle East. A Mayhem Creator at Home Doug Collins, another "officer class enemy" profiled in our new book Courage or Complicity, is a leading candidate for not being purged from the cabinet. And the likelihood that Collins will still lead the federal government's third-largest agency budget and second-largest workforce for the next two years is not good news for the 17 million veterans it serves. This low-profile Air Force Reserve chaplain is a clean-living Southern Baptist minister, small-town lawyer, and former Congressman from Georgia. He became Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) in early 2027, with bipartisan support that was very undeserved. Twenty-two Senate Democrats, including Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), voted to confirm their former Capitol Hill colleague. Collins even got a confirmation vote from Bernie Sanders (I-VT), former chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee (SVAC) and a longtime foe of VA privatization who definitely should have known better. During Collins' term in office so far, Trump's third—and worst VA Secretary ever—has kept the nation's largest and, in the past, best-functioning public healthcare system on a disastrous course of accelerated outsourcing. This will eventually lead to downsizing and dismantling of the VA's own direct care capacity. Taking Care of Veterans? So, going forward, VA defenders will have their work cut out for them, even with a Democratic majority in charge of the House or Senate, when a new Congress convenes in January. Fortunately, veterans' organizations, across the political spectrum, had a major victory earlier this year when they derailed the "Take Care of America's Veterans Act" (TACVA), which Collins supported. Traditional Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) like the VFW, DAV, and PVA all sounded the alarm about this deceptively labeled legislation championed by Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson. Without a doubt, it would have helped 50,000 former service members—whose careers were cut short due to medical problems—collect both their military pensions and VA disability benefits. But, as Common Defense Political Director Naveed Shah warned in July, this omnibus bill was also heavily booby-trapped. If enacted, it would have adversely affected hundreds of thousands of other veterans. According to Shah, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, it would have "cut $57 billion from our future tinnitus and sleep apnea claims, tripled the VA home loan fee, allow disability appeals to be decided in bulk rather than on the merits of each veteran's record, enable more lay-offs that threaten the quality of VA care, and lay the groundwork for handing VA facilities over to private operators." A Damage Control Agenda In the future, advocates for veterans, inside and outside the Beltway, need a damage control agenda that will restrain, rather than enable, further White House attempts to cut VA jobs, services, and benefits over the next two years. Those most motivated to lead the charge against Secretary Collins on Capitol Hill in 2027 are veterans on the ballot this fall, who personally depend on the VA for their own care. Among those opposing VA outsourcing as part of their insurgent campaigns for Congress are former Army paratrooper Richard Ojeda in North Carolina, former Marine drill instructor JoAnna Mendoza in Arizona, and Navy and National Guard veteran Dan Osborn, a labor-backed independent making his second run for the US Senate in Nebraska. In upstate New York, another blue-collar challenger to a MAGA Republican incumbent is Afghanistan war veteran Alissa Ellison. She came back from the Middle East with toxic exposures and related health problems that made her a PACT Act-enabled patient of the VA. In 2025, Ellison reports, she "was working at the VBA, helping veterans secure their benefits when she was fired during the cuts made by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)." Grassroots Organizing Needed If elected, any of the above would be a much-needed addition to the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees, where playing nice with Collins (and his Biden Administration predecessor) has gone on for too long. But nobody inside the Beltway—whether in Congress or veterans' advocacy organizations—will get much done on their own, without far more "Save The VA" public education and protests around the country. Paul Reickhoff, the Iraq war veteran who helped found Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) two decades ago, warns that "both parties are looking for quiet ways to control VA disability spending, which now tops $118 billion a year for 5.1 million disabled veterans." Reickhoff's new group, Independent Veterans of America (IVA), backs candidates like Osborn—who are running against both major parties. That's because IVA fears that "career political operatives" in Washington are still floating "budget options" which include "cutting benefits and raising minimum disability rating thresholds." To counter these continuing threats, veterans have to "build the media and organizing muscle to mobilize fast when veterans' benefits are on the line." How to Defend VA Care? Veterans for Peace (VFP)—through its longtime "Save Our VA" (SOVA) activity—has been an invaluable first responder whenever veterans' health care has been at risk. VFP's SOVA committee has generated thousands of letters to members of Congress about VA-related threats, which VSOs too often ignore. VFP members have personally lobbied several dozen members of Congress or their staffers on VA issues. A newer Common Defense campaign—branded as "VA Not For Sale"—has done VA-focused lobby days in DC and town hall meetings around the country. Both groups have partnered with the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute (VHPI), which produces research studies, fact sheets, and journalistic reports on VA privatization. (www.veteranspolicy.org/) In California, members of the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) and VFP have joined forces with active and retired VA caregivers to conduct weekly anti-privatization picketing and rallies at an outpatient clinic in Santa Rosa, CA. Last April, this same group organized a town hall meeting in the Sonoma County Veterans Memorial building, attended by more than 100 VA patients, their family members, unionized caregivers, and community supporters. There should be many more such events like this around the country. Many should also target Secretary Collins' continuing rollout of a new electronic record-keeping system installed by Cerner Corporation, a subsidiary of Oracle. Stop Oracle's Rollout! As Ace Allen, a now-retired VA medical oncologist, noted last spring in the Kansas City Star, the contractor responsible for this disaster was co-founded by Trump buddy Larry Ellison, the world's second-richest man. During the president's first term, Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner helped Oracle-Cerner get a no-bid contract to replace a "custom built, publicly owned electronic health record (EHR) system that was refined over decades by VA clinician-coder teams to support clinical care, not maximize revenue." According to Allen, wherever the VA's existing record-keeping system has been "modernized" by Oracle-Cerner, the result has been serious disruption of patient record handling and widespread demoralization among VA caregivers forced to use an inferior system. As a result, "huge numbers have quit or retired early." Meanwhile, the estimated cost of a $10 billion contract (awarded during the first Trump Administration) "has ballooned to $32 billion or more," in the same "cost-over-run" fashion as infamous Pentagon projects like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. In Michigan, Steve Friday, an Air Force veteran, VFP member, and former VA social worker, is helping rally foes of Oracle-Cerner as part of StopTheRollout.org, a grassroots campaign gathering steam around the country. According to Friday, this critical effort "brings together clinicians, VA employees, veterans, advocates, union members, and others who understand what is happening and are willing to act." They are scouring contracting records and publicizing the inspector general. GAO reports on Oracle-Cerner system failures, and sharing whistleblower information from patients and providers with members of Congress trying to hold Collins responsible for the resulting patient safety threats. As Friday explains, "protecting the VA has become about something even bigger for me. The VA, for all its problems, demonstrates that we can publicly fund and publicly deliver healthcare rather than turning every patient into a source of profit. I think losing that would hurt veterans, workers, and the larger struggle for healthcare as a human right." When and if additional reinforcements arrive on Capitol Hill—to help win this fight—the beneficiaries will include everyone who needs better health care in America. Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon are the authors of Courage or Complicity: How Veterans are Responding to the Assault on Democracy from PM Press. Gordon is a co-founder of the Bay Area-based Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute. They can be reached at Lsupport@aol.com)
|
