Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins said a senior Democrat needs to apologize to the department after wrongly suggesting it was curtailing research work on spinal cord injuries.
Mr. Collins said the VA’s spinal cord centers are operating during the federal shutdown and have not been affected by broader restructuring at the department.
“It’s a lie,” Mr. Collins told The Washington Times for “Sit Down with Swoyer,” a new podcast. “To imply that, in any way, that we’re cutting back on spinal cord injuries [work] and anything else is abysmal conduct from a senator.”
He was responding to remarks from Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, who last month said he feared trims at the department were hurting spinal cord services.
“As VA continues to bleed employees due to this secretary’s harmful policies, the services provided to people who are directly involved in [Spinal Cord Injuries and Disorders] are particularly at risk,” said Mr. Blumenthal, himself a veteran. “I am very disturbed at how Secretary Collins has failed to provide any credible assurances that he’ll fight to preserve access to SCI/D care at VA – which, even before these cuts, needed bolstering and expanding.”
Mr. Collins said the claim was “hurtful” to the VA.
“He ought to apologize, frankly, especially when he’s one of the ones cutting off funding to the federal government,” Mr. Collins said.
The Times has reached out to Mr. Blumenthal’s office for comment.
The VA has been at the center of questions since Mr. Trump retook office in January and began cutting government bureaucracy.
Mr. Collins said his department saw about 30,000 employees take early retirement buyouts, leaving VA with about 450,000 workers, but without trimming doctors.
“What it really did was begin to focus our workforce where it should be,” the secretary said.
He said judging the department by budget or staffing made no sense. Under the Biden administration, the budget grew by $100 billion and the department added 100,000 employees, “yet our metrics went the wrong way.”
He said VA when he took over had a 260,000-claim backlog, which has been cut by more than 100,000.
Mr. Collins said the department might have more personnel adjustments but he didn’t see any major reductions in force.
“We’re good where we are right now,” he said.
Mr. Collins has traveled to VA hospitals across several states — into the dozens — and is working to streamline them for efficiency. He said instead of having individualized departments, there should be one VA.
“We have leverage. We have the best research in the world,” he said.
“We too often sidelined ourselves into our own individual hospitals,” Mr. Collins added. “We just started a dashboard that is now capturing metrics for all hospitals the same way, in the same area, so they can compare themselves to each other. … For those that are struggling, we are going to give you a help plan from those that are doing well.”
• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.
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