Veterans Affairs Secretary tours Roudebush VA Medical Center

INDIANAPOLIS — Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, accompanied by Gov. Mike Braun, Congressman Jefferson Shreve, and Congresswoman Victoria Spartz, took part in a ceremony Thursday at Roudebush VA Medical Center to recognize staff members.

“If I was a veteran in Indiana, you’ve got a great place to go,” Collins said. “Use these facilities because they’re here for you.”

According to Collins, the VA is working to ensure the more than 60-year-old Roudebush facility receives its priority needs as the agency continues to assess its entire construction schedule nationwide.

“We have 170 hospitals across the country, average age is about 60, so we’re having a lot of construction projects we’re dealing with, but we’re making sure that facilities like this that are highly utilized…it’s very much a priority for us; we’re just having to work with our Congress and congressional members on the budget as we go forward,” Collins said.

Since his tenure, Collins said the disability benefits backlog nationwide is now under 200,000—the lowest it’s been in two-and-a-half years. Collins also signed an MOU with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to better coordinate post-military transitional programs.

“That’s been a big issue for years now, Collins said. “That translates into some of our homelessness issues, our death by suicide issues, and we’re going to work together.”

But questions remain over the VA’s proposed goal of a 15 percent reduction in staff.

“We have over 470,000 employees,” Collins said. “We’re bigger than the active-duty Army, and that should say something to you.”

However, Collins said the 15 percent goal is not set in stone, and that the agency is primarily looking to cut duplicative HR, contracting, and payroll systems that don’t directly affect veterans’ care.  

“When we put out a goal of saying ‘okay, we’re just going to look at what would a 15% reduction look like?’, that doesn’t mean we’re going to get, that we’re going to have 15%,” Collins said. “It means we’re going to look at that and then back it up to what I’ve said is, ‘are we going to keep our healthcare and our benefits advisors and everybody in place so that the veteran is not affected?’”

Meanwhile, the Trump White House has requested a four percent increase in programmatic funding for the VA, but how that proposal will fare in Congress has yet to be seen.