SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The secretary of Veterans Affairs appeared before a House committee today to explain a national reorganization plan to streamline its bureaucracy. This is a significant issue, considering the VA is the second largest in the federal government, after the Pentagon, in terms of scale. Lawmakers had questions, and so did NPR's Quil Lawrence, who covers veterans and the VA and is on the line now. Hey, Quil.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Hello.
DETROW: What is the goal of this reorganization?
LAWRENCE: Well, the VA is the largest health care network in the U.S., and the stated goal is to make the VA more - sort of more uniform across the board and have fewer big bosses. They want to cut the regional bosses that divide up the country from 18 down to five. But there's a lack of trust here, and Democrats say a lack of transparency. They see VA pushing toward spending more money or - on paying for private care outside the VA system while neglecting these chronic medical staff shortages at VA. And it got heated, like when California Democrat Mark Takano asked if this was all just a push to gut the VA workforce. He and VA Secretary Doug Collins had this exchange.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DOUG COLLINS: When I came before this committee last year, we were discussing an overall reduction in force across the government as a whole. At that point, as I told you in this committee, that we were - that our target would have been 83,000.
MARK TAKANO: So...
COLLINS: We ended up with about 30 - you either want an answer, or you don't.
TAKANO: Is that a yes or a no?
COLLINS: You either want an answer - I don't know the answer (ph).
TAKANO: It's a yes or no question.
COLLINS: I don't give yes-noes, and you know that.
LAWRENCE: So as you can hear, it got kind of spicy. But the baseline here is that the VA's proposing maybe the most significant reorganization in at least 30 years and being kind of tight-lipped about what exactly they're going to do.
DETROW: When we talked to you about this in January, you mentioned the VA-mandated reports that had not been released, including about prevention of veterans' suicide. Has that report now been released?
LAWRENCE: Yes. It was months late - came out last week. Essentially, there has been no change in the veterans' suicide rate, really. It's still around 17 per day, which is tragic. But the VA is doing a pretty good job compared with the civilian sort of improvement of prevention of suicide rate. But this report, it was just - the first volume was just six pages of text, and last year's report was 38 pages, with graphs and charts and much more accessible information. I mean, some of the things that were missing, for example, following a Trump administration policy of not really discussing diversity, is there was less info about what populations are at higher risk, like by race and age, gender, sexuality. Experts say that you want to know - if you want to try and prevent suicide, you need to know which groups are most at risk. And they need that information.
DETROW: And another report that you've been trying to keep tabs on is one about homelessness among veterans. Any information about that?
LAWRENCE: No, and that's actually officially put out by HUD, but the VA has a hand, and they usually have it by November. It's not out yet. And there's been a real lack of information around the Trump administration's signature effort on this - an executive order that they were going to create a 6,000-bed facility in West LA on the VA campus out there. Initially, that made veterans' advocates in LA very happy. They've got the most homeless vets in the country out there. But there really hasn't been much information at all since then - no funding requests. And vets' advocates are worried. They say when they're not consulted, things don't always work out so well.
I've covered six VA secretaries over five administrations now, and I think I can say this is the least access to the press and to Congress and veterans' groups. Half of the hearing today was just Democratic Congress members asking on camera for details that they said they'd requested in writing sometime last year.
DETROW: That is NPR's Quil Lawrence. Thank you so much.
LAWRENCE: Thank you.
DETROW: And if you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach out to the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. Press one if you're a veteran.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
