In his first six weeks on the job, US Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins has combed through less than 2% of the agency’s contracts — and is already stunned by the bloat he’s found, he told The Post this week.
“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 told The Post this week.
Not to mention DEI training, prosthetic private parts, gender affirming hair removal and gender affirming voice training.
But that spend-happy era is over — and he’s not making any apologies for it.
“I’m not going to allow the VA to be the whipping post anymore. We’re actually going to solve problems and keep doing our job, so for anybody on the Hill or in unions who wants to complain,” he said, firing back at critics across the aisle decrying cuts.
“We’ve got to make sure that we’re doing what is mandated by us and that is to take care of veterans, no matter what,” he said. “They’re all still going to have their benefits and healthcare. But we’ve got to remember we’re not an employment agency, we’re a service organization.”
Collins has so far canceled hundreds of non-mission critical contracts to net $900 million in savings, and then saved another $14 million by ditching DEI employees and contracts.
On Monday, he ended treatment for gender dysphoria to reallocate funds to treat severely injured veterans and amputees. The agency previously covered hormone therapy, prosthetic genitals and breasts, hair removal, voice training, and other so-called “gender-affirming care,” according to internal agency documents viewed by The Post.
Transgender people make up only about “one-tenth of one percent” of the 9.1 million veterans enrolled in VA healthcare, according to the agency.
Likely the biggest savings will come from reductions in force — the department already axed 2,400 employees, and a leaked memo from the Elon Musk led Department of Government Efficiency earlier this month recommended firing 80,000 more.
If implemented, that number of terminations would return the VA to its 2019 staffing levels.
During former President Biden’s term, the total number of VA full time staff grew by more than 52,000 employees, said a VA spokesperson. That accounts for two-thirds of the department’s expanded workforce set to be slashed.
“The previous administration added tens of thousands of employees, and frankly we’re not sure what they were hired for because we’re not seeing the benefit,” Collins told The Post.
Biden tacked on a staggering $89 billion to the VA’s budget during his term, but Collins said the last administration had nothing to show for it.
An 2024 Office of Inspector General documented hundreds of millions of dollars in improper payments and questioned costs under Biden, including $325.5 million in unauthorized dental procedures and $200 million in prescription costs lacking justification.
Meanwhile, average VA wait times for primary care, mental health care, and specialty care all rose significantly between 2021 and 2024, according to a VA spokesperson. The department’s disability benefits claims backlog reached its highest level since 2013 last year.
Veteran suicide didn’t improve either. The VA spent $571 million on suicide prevention outreach last year — up from $4.4 million in 2008 — yet the outcome grimly remains the same, with about 6,500 veterans per year taking their own lives.
“They felt like money and people were the solution, but we’ve come to find out real quickly that the problem at the VA is that we need to be better stewards of the resources we’ve been given,” Collins said.
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