All Episodes
Previous Next
May 12, 2025 - Stew Peters Show
01:08:02
Doug Collins Under Fire: The Truth About VA Cuts
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Earlier this week, Doug Collins, once again, was draped out on the main stage to be drilled.
Not drilled by everybody, but drilled, of course, by every member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee about his cuts and about restructuring and how unfair it is and how veterans are not going to get the care that he talks about.
It's so important to his tenure at the VA, the goals that he wants to achieve with the agency throughout his time there.
But it seemed to me, after two hours, two plus hours of this committee hearing, that they didn't really get anywhere.
Not in my opinion.
They had a lot of arguing over numbers and this and that.
Oddly enough, there were some good questions.
There was some good conversation.
But of course it didn't come from the naysayers.
So today we're going to have a conversation about this whole ordeal.
And I want to show you a couple clips of the hearing just to prove a point about how these lines of questioning go.
And some of it's pretty...
Asinine, if you ask me.
So that's today's conversation.
Stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
Music.
Hey, everybody, and welcome here to another installment of the Richard Leonard Show here on the Stu Peters Network on Rumble.
I want to thank you for being here if you're a returning viewer.
Thanks for coming back.
We really do appreciate it.
If you're new here, thanks for stopping by.
I hope that I can keep you engaged enough to come back, or at least maybe some thought-provoking conversation that'll get you to come back another time.
Either way, whatever your reason for being here, we all hear thank you.
So thank you.
And also, before we get started, I'd like to say Happy Mother's Day.
To any of you out there who are moms, or going to be moms, Happy Mother's Day.
The role of mothers in our lives, I think, is pretty important.
And I think that at times, some people lose sight of that.
So it's amazing that we have this day to honor our moms.
So if you are a mom out there, happy Mother's Day.
And then, of course, how the show is made possible.
That is Mr. Carlos Cortez Jr. and his agency, Cortez Wealth Management.
Get yourselves on over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com.
Check out a webinar.
They happen on Tuesday and Thursday evenings at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Let Carlos Cortez and his staff talk to you and present you all the information you need to plan and execute a tax-free retirement plan.
So, again, Tuesday.
Thursday evenings, 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com is where you need to go to sign up.
Once you get all that information, process it, formulate your questions, your comments, any other concerns, and reach out.
Reach out to Carlos and his staff.
They want to help you.
They want to answer your questions.
One last time, AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com.
Get on over there, check them out.
I think that it's important to preface this conversation with all of these conversations and hearings and interviews and all these things that Doug Collins has done since he became the Secretary of the VA.
He has said the same thing.
About what his intentions are, what the goals of his tenure and his administration within the VA, what he hopes to do, the things that he wants to accomplish.
And he's been just beat up.
Beat up by these Democratic members of Congress and the Senate.
And he's never changed his tune, as far as I know.
Every time I see that he's testifying somewhere or he's doing an interview, I always at least click and watch most of it.
Sometimes the stuff gets long and whatnot, but for the most part, he has been saying the same exact thing this whole time, which isn't been long, clearly.
I mean, we all know that.
Doug Collins has talked about his goal.
To reduce the VA workforce by about 15%.
Now, if you go back and look and Google Doug Collins or Google VA cuts or whatever it is, however you want to find it, you're going to see a lot of information that has numbers, like raw numbers, actual numbers.
You're going to see 80,000.
You're going to see 83,000.
You're going to see all these things.
But Doug Collins hasn't talked about cutting 80 to 83,000.
The goal is about 15%.
And of course, maybe there are.
Maybe there are interviews I've missed.
Maybe there are talking points that I've missed.
That's completely possible.
But I believe, as a veteran who uses the VA for care, not for everything, but quite a few things, I can tell you that some of the issues that he has brought forward to talk about in a public forum are certainly things that veterans who are trying to use the VA and its programs run into.
These are issues that veterans are calling about.
They're talking about here on podcasts.
They're writing emails.
They're leaving comments.
I mean, hell, you go into any VA facility, somewhere in that building, there's at least one comment box.
And it's probably a good thing.
You know, a lot of our older brothers and sisters, they don't use cell phones and computers and things like we do.
And then, of course, the generations after us, who are a whole lot more into technology.
So, it seems to me, every VA facility I've been in, there is a place.
For you to leave your comments.
There are telephone numbers.
There's boxes with little comment cards.
You can email.
You can call.
You can text.
You can tweet.
You can TikTok.
You can YouTube.
You can Facebook.
You can Insta.
You can do all of these things.
And leave your concerns about your experience at the VA or concerns about things that may be coming.
Changes you'd like to see.
All of those things are available to you.
And trust me, veterans take the opportunity to leave comments.
They take the opportunity to tell especially, especially the VA where they've screwed up and what could be better.
And on the flip side of that, there are also many veterans who Have good things to say about the VA, which is great because every now and then it's refreshing.
It's refreshing to hear somebody be excited about services maybe they had at the VA or programs or benefits or whatever else that they know are coming to them.
But of course, it takes time.
And it's been no secret over, of course, the last decade for sure.
And I'm sure a lot longer.
It's been no secret that wait times at the VA are long.
Veterans are receiving subpar care in places.
The facilities are old and dilapidated, many of them.
I will say that here in Minneapolis, the VA hospital is over by the airport.
And I think it took them, I don't know, three, four years.
Maybe they're still working on many places, but they've remodeled the hospital.
Looks nice.
Doesn't smell like pee anymore.
And so they are working to make facilities better.
But I think that the dangerous thing about all of these conversations, which is why I want to talk about this, is because, and as we'll hear from Doug Collins, is that The information that is put out on a mass stage, or on social media, or in the mainstream media, wherever you want to consume your news and information, as Doug Collins will say, it's not accurate.
They have twisted words, and of course it's easy, right?
If the Secretary of the VA makes a statement, That they're looking to potentially cut up to 15% of the VA workforce.
Well, it's public knowledge that you can go on a government website and you can find how many total employees work for the VA.
There's the VBA, the Veteran Benefits, the VHA, the Veterans Health Administration.
There's all kinds of other little arms of VA.
And so it's easy to find the information, open your calculator if you're not savvy with math like I'm not.
I have the calculator as a pretty easy to find shortcut on my computer.
And do the math and find out what that raw number is, which is probably why we see 80, 83,000, things like that.
But just because the man has said our goal is to look at up to 15% doesn't mean that he has a hard number in his head, that anybody else who's working alongside him,
and maybe there's a working group or something like that I'm sure he has people that consult him and inform him of what's going on and and things of different avenues that maybe he's not you know privy he's privy to everything but maybe he's not there every day so he has people around him giving him the information it's not like he's just pulling numbers out of a hat and
I'm new here.
I'm the new boss.
So make sure that...
You fear me.
You're going to do what I say, and you're going to do all these things.
That's not who he is, at least that's not what it seems.
Doug Collins has been pretty damn boisterous about what his intentions are, what his real priorities are with his time as the VA secretary.
And to be quite honest, it's pretty reminiscent to me of the same message Pete Hegseth had when he took over the DOD.
Pete Hegseth said, we're going to turn over a new leaf.
We're going to make sure that we take care of our soldiers first.
And not only that, but we are going to promote, due to merit, We're going to find the best people who want to be here, and we're going to put them in the best position for them and the United States Department of Defense to succeed.
Whatever branch of service that means, whatever office, whatever building you work in, whatever it is.
And people went absolutely insane.
Because now he's a racist.
Or something like that.
Because the message was, we're going to promote on merit.
If you're going to stay in your job, you better be doing your job.
You better be doing it well, or at least to the best of your ability.
Keeping up with everyone else and providing results.
I guess I don't see the problem with that.
And Doug Collins has a very similar message.
We are going to look at the VA, as he said, we're going to look at the VA from a lens of the care of our veterans is the absolute most important thing for our patients.
And clearly, it seems that part of that answer to those problems is staffing cuts.
Does it suck?
Yes.
Yeah, it sucks.
It sucks to get fired.
It sucks to get laid off.
It's a horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach.
But is it the end of the world?
No.
And if we are going to have conversations about what is in the best interest overall for the veteran community, some people are going to get laid off.
And it doesn't seem like Doug Collins is cherry-picking veterans to fire or non-veterans to fire.
His narrative is, and always has been, and you'll see in a second, his narrative is that we want the best people for the job.
We want our veterans to be taken care of.
And furthermore, we want to be able to afford all of it.
And again, we've talked about many times, I'm sure all of you have heard from many different sources or outlets, that some of this stuff may get a little too aggressive.
You know, you hear things like you're chopping, you put veterans on a chopping block and use a meat cleaver to get employees and veterans out of the VA.
Well, no, I don't think.
I don't think that that's the narrative.
At least, that's not what's come out of his mouth.
But what was really interesting to me in this committee hearing was the differences between the left and the right members of this committee and how they approached their time to talk to the Secretary of the VA about real concerns of their constituency.
Real concerns of the American people as it pertains to VA.
Real concerns of veterans as it pertains to where they go to get their care.
What else is there to talk about?
Well, we're going to see.
We're going to see because it's aggressive and people like Senator Blumenthal.
That'll be the first guy that we hear from today.
He doesn't ask really any questions having to do with anything at all other than staffing cuts and Elon Musk and all these other things that Doug Collins must do.
And every time Doug Collins tells any of these people, nope, that's not true.
That's not our goal.
That's not what was said.
This is not good information.
They just pass it by.
And why?
Well, because they only get their five or five minutes.
And once the five minutes is over, they've got to shut up.
And so maybe that is one thing that I would like to see change in committee hearings is five minutes total.
Because quite often, you don't ever get any conversation.
You don't get any conversation about what real problems are.
What happens is, at the beginning of every five minutes, you get some senator or some congressman or some congresswoman talking for three and a half minutes of their opening statement for the line of questioning.
Well, how can any real conversations be had?
When, you know, you get two minutes, a minute and a half, whatever it is, to actually have a discussion that starts with a question and answer.
But instead we see that these members just run off at the mouth, and in this video, they all just instantly start, not all of them, the ones on the left, start to go right for, 80,000.
You're going to fire veterans.
You're not taking care of veterans.
Are veterans even important to you?
But nobody wants to have a discussion with Doug Collins, at least in any of these committee hearings, about what it is that he's really trying to do, why, and how it might go down.
Is there a possibility that 15% of the VA workforce gets cut?
Sure there is.
Does that mean that's the absolute final say?
We're just going to cross that one out?
No, I don't think so.
But let's see Mr. Blumenthal.
And to be quite honest, I'm a little concerned about him.
He's very shaky.
I hope he's okay.
Maybe he just needs more coffee or maybe he's just old.
But anyway, let's check it out.
Here he is.
Are you aware, Mr. Secretary, that the VA changed the way it calculates wait times in 2022?
Yeah, check this out.
The information I gave you is as of our current VA system.
The information you gave us is deceptive and misleading because the VA changed the way it calculates.
Wait a minute.
When did Doug Collins take office as Secretary of the VA?
It was just January or February, right?
What does anything...
And this is exactly what I'm talking about, folks.
This is exactly what I'm talking about.
What does anything about the way that the VA changed...
Looking at wait times in 2022, what does that have to do with the information that Doug Collins apparently wasn't good enough for the committee or Mr. Blumenthal?
What does that have to do with him?
And then his response is, well, the information I gave you is based on the way we currently have been doing things.
Okay.
So...
Why hammer him about it?
What does that mean?
Why is that relevant?
Yeah, we're going to look at wait times.
We're going to figure it out.
If it's effed up, we're going to figure it out to make it better.
But why would anybody want to say that he's hiding the truth because the information wasn't accurate?
Well, the information came from exactly the way that we've been doing things since 2022.
Hmm.
Interesting.
It begins in 2021 at a time when a lot of VA patients were coming back to the VA after COVID in 2022.
This information is fundamentally deceptive and misleading.
I ask you to go back to the VA and correct it in a written submission to this committee.
Mr. Chairman, I ask that...
It's just crazy.
...we enter into the record...
Here we go.
...an article...
Here's the part.
...that appeared in the New York Times entitled, What Elon Musk Didn't Budget For, Firing Workers Costs Money Too.
Are you aware...
If there's no objection.
Without objection.
Are you aware of the costs that will result from firing those VA workers?
In compensation that has to be paid to them when they have been wrongfully terminated.
Well, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ryan, remember, if you look at that from a perspective, there's cost to moving forward.
There's been some issues here.
You don't have a number for us, do you?
No, because we've less than one half.
Because you haven't calculated what it will cost to fire those workers and then reinstate them when the courts tell you, as they will.
That they've been wrongfully terminated.
We're talking about less than one half of one percent, Mr. Chairman, I mean, Mr. Rankin member.
You've thrown out numbers of thousands.
This is exactly what I'm fighting against.
It may be a small part of your workforce, but they are the physicians.
No, no.
Mr. Rankin member, I will not let you do that.
I will not let you sit here and scare my veterans and scare my employees.
Because there's been no...
I mean, you must have stuff that, again, you're looking at making a prediction in the future.
Because no one has discussed firing doctors or firing nurses.
We've always said that we're going to keep frontline health care.
Now, if we want to continue this message that these are out there when you have no knowledge of what you've just said.
Let's begin with facts right now.
That is facts.
Will you submit to us?
See, now, here's the thing.
I believe that Senator Blumenthal knows.
Everything that Doug Collins just said is absolutely true.
We can't consume the information that is put out by our elected officials because apparently it's not accurate.
And it hasn't been the whole time Doug Collins has been Secretary of the VA.
The information that these son of a bitches get put out when they leave this hearing and somebody from C-SPAN is going to put them in front of a camera or Fox News or CNN or MSNBC or you name any of the asshole mainstream media networks.
And he is going to continue the narrative and putting out the information that apparently to Doug Collins is not true.
And furthermore, this is the same committee that confirmed him not too long ago.
If you watched it, if you watched the confirmation hearing, a lot of these questions were asked.
And he went to got the ability to sit in the chair that he sits in every morning without this group of people.
Confirming him to do what he's doing.
There were discussions about how to make the VA more efficient by people on both sides of the aisle in the confirmation hearing.
And now all of a sudden, just a few months later, now that Elon and Doge went through all these agencies and found all this bullshit, Now they want to fight.
Now they want to put up a fight.
Well, who do you think, the American people, but more importantly, veterans who are using the VA, who are they going to believe first?
Who is telling the truth?
And I think...
And don't get me wrong, I mean, Doug Collins was a member of Congress, too, so I'm not saying that he's 1,050% innocent of anything, because who knows?
Who knows what he may have been or is into?
Who knows?
But we have seen, as of late, and even before as of late, the whole last administration, a lot of these people just...
Throwing up filth, flowering filth all over the place that's not true and gets people spun up.
And so good for you, Doug Collins, for telling this man, no, no, no, I'm not going to let you do that.
I am not going to let you spin this web and get veterans who really rely on the VA and its programs and all those things.
We're not going to let you put out this information, at least not in my presence.
And I applaud him for doing that.
That shows me, just as a veteran who uses VA, who has also, mind you, worked in the veteran service industry for quite a few years in my day.
I've never, I've never seen a secretary of the VA shut down a senator and tell him, nope.
You're not going to say that.
You're not going to say that and get away with it here.
Not in my presence.
So thank you, Doug Collins, for doing that.
Good on you.
I think it's awesome.
Okay, let's continue.
You have failed to do specific positions where workers have been fired already.
At this point in time, we've submitted to that.
You also said something that I need to address real quickly.
Wait a second.
Please answer my question.
Will you give us the information?
We've requested it again and again and again.
What positions have you terminated?
And what's your plan for terminating in the future?
Okay.
First off, we will get you the information that you are.
Our staff will check back with the plans for the future.
This is an interesting thing.
You would like for, I think what we're trying to do here is we're going through a process, which I talked about in my opening statement, that deals with career employees, that deals with professional staff and others outside consultants to see what is the proper size for our VA.
You know, you're running out the clock.
I know what the tactic is.
Yeah, of course.
He's making sense.
Doug Collins was making sense, so he stopped him in his tracks.
He's trying to engage in a meaningful discussion, it seems to me.
He's trying to put out information to Mr. Blumenthal with that shit-eating grin on his face.
What a dick.
He's trying to put out the information.
He's trying to have a discussion.
I think that what...
One thing that Doug Collins is really good at is being cordial enough to have meaningful conversation with even the naysayers, like this guy.
I mean, he looks like some robot or some, who knows, is he dead already?
I mean, didn't they say, side topic, I read somewhere or saw something on X maybe that there's this conspiracy that the Pope was dead for a long time and they...
They traipsed him around St. Peter's Square the day before he died, and it wasn't even him or wasn't even a real person or whatever.
But this shit-eating grin right here, that reminds me of something that ain't real.
Anyway, let's continue.
States Congress, too.
You can fill the air with words.
But what veterans deserve is action and accountability.
We've asked for this information repeatedly.
You've said...
You are firing 83,000 people.
If you fire the people who have been hired in the last five years, you will be firing physicians, nurses, surgeons, counselors, workers who are front line.
You cannot slash and trash the VA without eliminating those essential positions which provide access and availability.
Of health care.
It simply cannot be done.
And you may give us a lot of verbiage here, but you're not giving us facts.
And facts are essential to accountability.
That's why you're supposed to be here.
But you're not giving us the facts that we need.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
With all due respect, can I answer his question?
You may answer.
Thank you.
With all due respect, there's verbiage being said from the diocese as well.
Just real quick, if you're not sure what a dais is, it's the big, the huge desk they all sit behind, the podium or whatever.
It's called a dais, just for reference.
...hearing that there is a goal of looking at a 15% reduction.
You have stated on several occasions already that I'm saying we're going to fire 83,000 employees.
That is wrong.
I would appreciate that being corrected because that's not true.
Yep.
I said we're looking at a goal of how many employees we have and how many employees that are actually working in the front line taking care.
I have doctors and nurses right now that do not see patients.
Is that helping veteran health care?
Yes, it does.
No, it does.
A doctor who consults on a case.
Not when I need those doctors in a clinic.
Let me ask you this.
If I'm a doctor that consults on a case or...
Reads MRIs or reads x-rays or anything like that.
In my mind, in my opinion, that's direct care.
The x-rays and the MRIs and the blood work and this and that, whatever it is that Blumenthal was trying to get at, is that doctors and nurses who are not seeing patients, what are they doing?
Do they spend?
8 to 12 hours a day just looking at x-rays?
Maybe they do.
I have no idea what it takes.
Maybe it's a painstaking process, and it takes a lot of education, a lot of schooling, a lot of know-how, and all those things to read x-rays and MRIs properly.
But if the secretary of the VA is telling the world, I have doctors and nurses who don't even see patients.
Well, why are they there?
Is it like the B squad of the football team?
Well, if the varsity doctor gets hurt or maybe he's sick or has to go on a family vacation, you're up, son.
I think that...
In this time where we were hemorrhaging, and maybe even still are, hemorrhaging money, that these are the types of things, every little bit helps, right?
Every $100,000 or every $50,000 and every $500,000, I mean, every penny helps.
And if the man has said, We're not cutting doctors.
We're not cutting nurses.
We're not cutting frontline staff.
Veterans are going to get the care they have been getting.
They're going to get their disability payments.
They're going to get their claims adjudicated.
You want to put in a claim, PAC-DAC claim?
No problem.
Put it in.
We'll adjudicate it.
But the VA has never been a place.
In my opinion, until recently, in the last five years, I guess, has never been a place that seemed to me was overstaffed and underworked.
When I first started going to the VA hospital for care in 2000, late 07, early 08, the wait times were ridiculous.
I think when I put in my initial disability claim, it was about 14 months before I got a decision.
And so, if we're at a place, and Doug Collins can articulate that we're at a place where we have all these extra people that we're paying, we're paying salary to, wait times haven't got a whole lot better, they say.
The quality of care.
In many instances, they say, is not up to snuff.
Another part of the hearing that I don't think I have queued up in a video is that Doug Collins had been talking with another member about the cost of having all these redundant...
And the fact that it's expensive to pay doctors, right?
Doctors make a lot of money.
But the interesting part was that his opinion is that the doctors aren't paid enough in the VA.
They're government employees.
They're not offered a high enough salary to be able to compete with the civilian or private health care system.
And so, if we're going to talk about providing better care for the veterans who use the VA, and then the secretary is also saying, our doctors, we can't offer enough money to secure good doctors, doctors who are pioneers in whatever little field of medicine they're in.
The guys and gals that are inventing procedures and new ways to treat people for various different conditions or injuries or sicknesses or whatever.
Why would they come work at the VA for half?
I mean, he had mentioned in some cases, we're only able to pay some of these specialists half of what they'll make anywhere else in the country.
So it would take, and maybe there are some out there, but it would take doctors who are just hell-bent.
Hell-bent on serving veterans to take half pay.
I don't really know anybody that would take half of what it is they're supposed to make just to work at the VA.
And if there are some, awesome.
Thank you.
Thank you for being that kind of doctor.
We appreciate it, the people that are going to utilize your services.
We appreciate that you're willing to take half the money that you're worth just to work with veterans.
But I don't know that that's a real thing.
But let's get to the next one.
This next one is Senator Hassan.
I think she's from New Hampshire or something like that or somewhere in New England.
Because it gets kind of heated.
And she says some shit that just really doesn't resonate with the goal that seemingly the left has in this committee.
It seems that the goal is to throw his name.
On the rug, stomp it in the dirt, and then tell him that he's wrong about all these things that he's doing.
And that there's no way possible that you're going to make anybody's life better that you fire.
I think that they also have this idea that he's living, he's like this narcissistic guy that gets off on firing people.
But if we remember right, There was a mandate from the President of the United States to fix the VA.
There was a mandate on Pete Hegseth to fix the Department of Defense.
There was a mandate on Pam Bondi to fix the DOJ.
There's a mandate on Kash Patel.
Get the FBI to be an elite law enforcement agency that's respected once again.
Why would we not even, like...
Give the guy a year at least.
I know that we all love this instant gratification.
And we all want these changes to happen yesterday.
Because the way that it all sounds in conversation, it sounds like it's going to be great for us, the American people.
But I think where we fall short as the public is that we hear these things and then just assume...
All right, well, now you're in.
What's up?
It kind of reminds me of this whole ordeal about eggs, right?
I had read somewhere that the reason why there was an egg shortage was because somebody, somewhere, somehow, within government halls, somewhere, killed all these chickens or mandated that all these chickens be exterminated because of the bird flu or something.
Okay, well, if the bird flu is real, And it was dangerous.
And all of these chickens, and all these chickens were infected.
Of course we don't want their eggs.
Why would we pull the eggs out of the ass end of a sick chicken and then sell them to the American people?
So then, of course, right, just by sheer nature of the situation, eggs are going to be more expensive.
There's a higher demand than there is a supply.
Yep, price of eggs are going to go up.
And inflation and all that stuff.
And so when the new administration came in, oh, well, Trump's been in office for six days and eggs are still $7 a dozen or $5 a dozen, whatever the hell it was.
Okay?
Yep, they were for a little while, weren't they?
Well, because guess what has to happen?
If we exterminated 30% of the chickens in the country, they all have to, the ones that are still good, that aren't sick, they gotta do their thing.
They gotta lay eggs and sit on them, hatch them.
These little baby chicks are gonna grow up to be egg-shitting birds in a short time.
But until that happens, on a massive scale, eggs are gonna be expensive.
But instead, many people in this country use some dumbass thing like eggs to slander somebody else, to slander the president and talk about how big of a piece of shit he is because eggs are expensive.
And also, to be fair, among a multitude of other things that they have been trying to roast him on.
But anyway, let's get to Senator Hassan here.
Oh, holy crap.
We need to take a break.
We will be right back.
Stick with us.
Don't go away.
Hey folks, real quick before we get back to the show.
It's no secret that we have been experiencing a loss of sponsorships.
Sponsors have been leaving the network or the network leaving sponsors due to our convictions.
And so we have recently began to ask you, the viewer, for help.
We need your help.
You are the most important thing when it comes to this network.
You are the lifeblood of the Stu Peters Network.
And so we are asking for your help once again.
And in doing so, the way that you can help is to go down below on this video.
Right here you'll see the red button that's titled Stu Crew.
You see it blinking there.
You can click on there and it'll take you to the Stu Peters Network Locals page.
You can sign up for a membership.
It is $90 for one year or $9 a month.
If you do the $90, you'll get two months for free.
Also, when you go to checkout, if you use keyword StuCrew1, you'll get the first month for a dollar.
So these things are extremely important.
Keeping the network funded and bringing you content and information that you're not going to find on the mainstream media.
The truth bombs that you're not going to get from the mainstream media.
This is where you get them.
The new age of information is not the mainstream media.
It is platforms like this one.
And we bend over backwards and break our backs to try to find you the content and the topics that are going to really affect you.
So, for $9 a month, you can join the Stu Crew, get exclusive access to behind-the-scenes footage, all kinds of extra content that will be available to you.
Also, monthly giveaways.
This month, Curable.
Which is a local CBD company, has a huge basket of body creams and lotions and bath bombs and Epsom salts and booty scrub.
Not quite sure what that is, but it sounds interesting.
They are going to give this basket away to one Stu Crew member.
So, if you join the Stu Crew, or if you are a person that just wants to give a one-time donation, that's great.
We will accept that too, and you will also be entered into a drawing.
So get on over to the Stu Peters Locals page.
You can also go to StuPeters.com and sign up there as well.
But it is easier to just go down and hit the red button there that says StuCrew and sign up that way.
Again, it's $9 a month or $90 a year.
You get two months for free.
And when you check out, if you use StuCrew1 as a keyword, you should get one month for free.
We really do appreciate your support.
And as I said, you are the lifeblood of this network.
We can't do this work without you.
We can't continue to bring you all of this amazing content without your support.
So thank you once again for being here.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for supporting us.
We really do appreciate it.
We really do love you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Hey folks, welcome back here.
I apologize for going way over time and not leaving us but about 12 minutes left of the show.
But I think it's pretty important to discuss the differences between the lines of questioning and what the Secretary says is the truth.
To me, it's confusing, right?
Because...
Again, these were the people that just a few months ago were singing Doug Collins' praises and confirmed him.
I don't remember if it was a unanimous decision, but it was a pretty large victory, if you want to call it that.
The people that voted yes, the majority, was pretty large in the committee.
But I wanted to show you quickly.
Senator Hassan, this woman here is quite a peach.
So let's check out what she's got to say.
In your testimony, you stated that the VA is an organization whose sole purpose is to serve veterans.
You've also publicly stated that you plan to fire 80,000 VA employees.
The quote is, that is a goal, that is our target, close quote.
Well, roughly 25% of VA employees are themselves veterans, meaning that if you do follow through with this plan, you'll likely end up firing thousands of veterans.
It's also worth noting that the Veterans Health Administration...
Let's point something out real quick.
Maybe she's right.
Maybe these cuts will lay off veterans.
The focus of the secretary isn't necessarily employees.
I mean, it's important to him, right?
You want to have good people.
You want to have a positive culture in the workplace that you oversee.
But the goal of the secretary and what he's doing to the VA is to make health care for veterans, the people that consume the services and benefits of the VA system, not necessarily the employees, not the members of the committee, not even really the general public.
His goal is to make care Let's continue, because she brings up a couple other points.
And I think that...
In a couple places, she kind of talks over her own point.
She kind of contradicts herself a little bit.
But let's check it out.
Accounts for nearly 90% of all VA employees.
So if you're firing evenly across the VA, you'll end up firing roughly 70,000.
So, Secretary Collins, is your goal to fire thousands of VA employees who work to support and provide health care to our veterans?
Yes or no?
My goal is to make sure that veteran care is done in the best possible way.
And the numbers are placed that, of course, you have no blueprint for is not helping any veteran in this room.
Attaboy!
The numbers that I am talking about are the numbers that exist at the VA now, and I'm basing my remarks and my questions on your public statements because we, to many of the other senators' points, we aren't getting specifics from you or your agency.
Now, how many employees does the VA have that work outside of the Veterans Health Administration?
If you divide it up in the different administrations, it's the vast majority are close to what's going to be the last number, about 350.
So let me answer the question.
Outside of the VHA, there are 54,000 employees.
It is actually impossible for you to fire 80,000 employees without firing those who help provide health care to our veterans.
And I'm disappointed that in all this back and forth, you seem to be trying to hide that.
Senator, can I ask a question?
I just want to respond to this because I have a question for you.
My goal is to actually take care of veterans' health care.
And when you look at an interior designer in a hospital, is that actually taking care of health care?
Good question.
I don't think so.
Those are the kind of positions we're looking for.
And you have multiple duplicity of stuff.
My point is this.
If there are a few hundred here and there, but you are talking about 80,000 employees, 54,000 employees work outside of DHA.
So you're going to have to take, you are taking a meat cleaver approach.
There's that old adage, measure twice, cut once.
You guys have been cutting without measuring.
Been cutting?
I've not cut anything yet.
Attaboy, attaboy.
We've not cut anything yet.
2,500 employees randomly.
There's been 83,000.
Secretary, my time is my time.
No one in the Trump administration has been able to explain how cutting nearly one in five VA employees won't harm health care and service for veterans.
In fact, just last week, the VA's head of clinical services, the top doctor in the entire VA, came before this committee and stated that he has not been involved in any discussions about how firing 80,000 employees.
Would affect veterans' care.
And he had not seen or been provided any analysis as to how these planned firings might affect care for veterans.
That is the VA's head doctor, the person in charge of primary care, emergency medicine, surgery, mental health, etc., saying that no one from your team Before he answers her question,
if I'm not mistaken, we just not too long ago heard from Senator Blumenthal and his exchange with Doug Collins about this firing.
Doctors and frontline staff.
And the secretary came back and said, well, no, no, no.
It's misinformation.
It's misinformation.
It's not true.
We're not cutting doctors.
We're not cutting nurses.
We're not cutting x-ray techs.
We're not cutting frontline staff.
So if we're not cutting any doctors or no other medical personnel, and as Doug Collins said, that are seeing patients, Why would the overall head honcho of medical care in the VA system be the first?
Maybe he should be involved in the conversation.
But maybe they're not there yet.
There is no plan to cut doctors and other frontline staff.
So maybe the head doctor of the VA of primary care and emergency medicine and this and that and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Maybe his input isn't going to be helpful yet.
And so he can go sit in front of a committee all he wants and complain that, well, the secretary's not including me.
And maybe it's not time for the secretary to include you.
Because as we've seen, A lot of these folks went back to work.
Judges are trying to order them back to work and all this other stuff.
And Mr. Collins will tell you, yeah, we sent some people back to work.
And so if that's the case, and so far, what was it, like 2,400 people, probationary layoffs?
Why would the head doctor of the VA be involved in that yet?
None of them are doctors.
None of these people are medical professionals that see patients.
Makes sense to me that he's not involved in the conversation yet.
I don't know.
Maybe I'm stupid for thinking that way.
I don't know.
I'm sure somebody will tell me in the comments that I am.
But let's continue.
Whether your plans to fire 80,000 VA employees would harm health care for veterans.
I will not speak for anyone else who gave that testimony.
She had just asked him why he hasn't included the head guy.
We'll say this, in VHA, VBA, and NCA, they all have working groups.
They all have it.
The senior leadership have been working on this process.
Well, this doctor...
Yeah, well, but he told us.
Okay.
Recent reporting states that the Department of Defense may cut the Army's active duty force by up to 90,000 soldiers.
To cut the force by that much, we could reasonably expect that thousands of soldiers will end up leaving active duty and returning to civilian life, meaning that they will lose their military healthcare and will almost certainly turn to the VA.
How is the VA preparing to care for those soldiers, and how does firing and 80,000 employees support that proportion.
Here we go, 80,000 again.
You know, again, the interesting part is they will be taken care of as every veteran who's earned the benefit going forward.
I cannot state this enough, and we can continue this process with everybody who wants to ask, and I get it.
But there's not been 83,000 people targeted for firing.
There's been a goal to look at our restructuring and putting 15%.
It's a nice talking point, but we've not done anything yet.
Mr. Secretary, it's your talking point.
It's 15%.
It is your talking point.
It is our goal.
We're quoting you saying that's the goal.
It is our goal.
Okay.
The goal is not a fact.
Do you want to reach your goal or not?
The goal is not a fact.
Most people, when they state a goal, decide they'd like to reach it.
If you don't want to reach 80,000, revise your goal and tell us what you want to do.
Talk to us about the analysis you've performed.
You've got a lot of knowledge.
Give the guy time.
What do you mean?
Reanalyze your goal.
Refine your goal.
Bullshit.
They haven't worked through the process, apparently.
To be able to refine the goal.
How many of you have ever been part of a working group or been a manager on a project or anything like that?
And there's some metric, right?
There's some metric for success.
Yeah, well, we got to, well, social media, right?
We got to hit, just for conversation sake, we got to hit 1,000 views today.
Okay, well, how are we going to do that?
I don't know.
We're going to figure that out.
Especially if I'm the new guy on the block, right?
I need to be able to look at what's been done historically, what's been done in the recent past, take a look at the groups of people that we have working on this problem, let them do their analysis of their departments or their offices or whatever it is that they oversee,
come back together, have probably Four or five days worth of conversation in some conference room with fancy lunches and shit.
I'm sure all those guys are eating great on workgroup days.
Okay.
But how is he supposed to provide these answers when he's telling you we haven't worked through it yet?
Our goal is 15%.
Not necessarily 83,000, but that doesn't mean that through the process of looking through all of these things and doing all this other stuff, that we can't refine our goal.
So for her to call on him to refine his goal and then update his percentage, his target percentage of layoffs, is asinine.
The guy can't do that for you yet.
Maybe it's a reasonable request and...
In nine months later, or give them a year, give them six months even, to provide some kind of, like you said, ma 'am, some kind of analysis, some kind of metric to be able to go off of.
I think that that's reasonable.
Let's finish this up here.
Both sides of this aisle want to serve veterans.
It is our primary honor and privilege as Americans to do it.
And we are asking to engage with you in a way to reform the VA, improve care, but make sure that that health care and those services are there for veterans.
And just tossing out big numbers and cutting before you're measuring is not the way to do it.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Can I finish that?
Because, again, this is the part.
Secretary Collins.
Yeah, I mean, this is the problem that we have.
And this is the problem that I saw when I was in Congress.
It was a problem that I've seen everywhere.
When we go into something and you look at it, you have to go in and look at the process to start with.
You start with a goal, you start with what you're looking for, and then you use the data that you find from your organizations to make the best choices you can without a meat cleaver approach.
But when you also start with the premise that is not true...
A premise that is not going to...
And basically saying things that we're not looking at, because I'm not sure how we get around the fact that we're not cutting the primary health care of people who are getting it or cutting their benefits.
That is not helpful in a collaborative process to say, are we working?
The question I have is, the VA is not working in the way that it should work.
I am trying to get it to a point where it can work for all veterans, and the workforce is a part of that.
So, I mean, some think the VA is working.
Undoubtedly, as I've heard this morning, it was perfect before this year.
That's not true.
And Mr. Secretary, that is unfair to the members of this committee and you need to stop characterizing it that way because that is not what a single person on this dais thinks.
Senator Cassidy.
So, Mr. Chair...
Yeah, yeah, okay.
That's not nice.
Senator Collins, or Secretary Collins, it's not nice.
You just, you just, these people for two hours, they spent two hours kicking this guy in the nuts.
And then he has some comment about, and I agree with him, all of these lefties in this committee, they all talked about how great the VA was back in the day, in the recent past.
So I agree with him.
As he heard there today, the VA was running great before he took over.
So it's not acceptable.
It's not acceptable for him to...
To crunch the numbers and do investigations and collect data and make a plan.
Make a plan that makes sense.
The main thing to take away from the last of that there is that the secretary has identified that the VA is not working the way it's supposed to.
It's not doing the job it's supposed to be doing and hitting the metrics that it was meant to do, meant to hit.
And so part of fixing that, As he says, apparently, is workforce.
We have to make some changes in multiple areas.
Or these 90,000 soldiers who are going to get released from the Army at some point soon, apparently, if we don't have the money to pay their benefits, if we don't have the money to bring in better doctors and medical personnel, These 90,000 soldiers aren't going to get nothing anyway.
Keeping a bunch of claims processors, it's important, having those people is important, right?
Because we want to get our claims adjudicated in a timely fashion.
But when we're in a place where we're hemorrhaging money, we can't necessarily afford to stay down this path, well...
Maybe the trade-off is we're going to have to go back to a little bit more extended wait times.
But maybe not.
Nobody's even said that either.
So, my closing thought is this.
The Secretary of the VA needs time.
He needs time to work through all the information, to make a plan, to talk with his people.
And then, of course, he's got to present all this to the President.
He's got to sell him on that plan also.
Make no mistake, Doug Collins was selected to be the Secretary of the VA with a specific mission in mind.
The President gave him a pretty specific mission.
If I had to go out on a limb and guess, I would say that Donald Trump gave Doug Collins a mission to complete.
Is there collateral damage?
Yes.
Does it suck?
Absolutely.
Is it fair?
Maybe not.
But the question we need to ask ourselves is, is it necessary?
Is it necessary for the future of veterans in this country to continue to get good care?
Or to even start getting good care for many people?
So again, this is all political theater, in my opinion.
They invited him here.
Or subpoenaed him or asked him to come or however they sent for him to come and testify.
And they had this preconceived idea that they were going to hammer his ass.
And they did.
But I think he did a pretty good job.
Stopped them in their tracks.
Told them he wasn't going to let them talk that way.
He's not going to let you scare our veterans and my employees.
Knock it off.
Hopefully it's effective.
And hopefully, hopefully he does the job he says he's going to do.
And hopefully he completes the mission that the president gave him.
And hopefully the VA will grow and continue to grow to be a place that is an amazing place for veterans to go and get the care that they need and deserve and earned.
Most importantly, they earned it.
So it should be pretty damn good for the services that were rendered for that VA care.
It better be fucking good.
That's all the time we have for tonight.
Have a great night, guys.
We'll see you next week.
We'll see you next week.
There's nothing we wouldn't do for our pets.
They're like our children.
Our friends at Pet Club 24 /7 have developed natural products that contain the most potent strain of a mushroom that's been used for thousands of years to help support the immune system.
So, visit their website today to discover how they're changing the way that pets and their parents are being treated for the better.
Thank you.
As Christians, in a Christian country, we have a right to be, at minimum, agnostic about the leadership being all Jewishly occupied.
We literally should be at war with fucking Israel a hundred times over, and instead we're just sending them money, and it's fucking craziness.
Look at the state of Israel, look at the state of Tel Aviv, and look at the state of Philadelphia.
You tell me where this money's going, you tell me who's benefiting from this.
I am prepared to die in the battle.
Fighting this monstrosity that would wish to enslave me and my family and steal away any brights to my property, And if you've got a foreign state, you've got dual citizens in your government, who do you think they're supporting?
God, right now, would you protect the nation of Israel and protect those of us, not just our church, but every church in the world and in this nation that's willing to put their neck on the line and say, "We stand with them!" We stand with you!
You can look at Trump's cabinet.
You can look at Biden's cabinet.
It's full of Jews.
I have a black friend in school.
I have nothing against blacks.
She has nothing against me.
She understands where I'm coming from.
Excuse me, I'm a Jew, and I'd just like to say that, you know, in our Bible it says that you're like animals.
▲
Export Selection