In this episode of The Richard Leonard Show, we break down the growing firestorm around Doug Collins, the VA, and the latest Senate claims about wait times, staffing cuts, and “destroyed morale.” Stripping away the political theatrics, we focus on what the data actually says, what veterans on the ground are really experiencing, and why reforming a massive, broken system inevitably collides with bureaucracy, waste, and partisan outrage. From firsthand VA experiences to hard questions about accountability, budgets, and care, this is a reality check on whether veterans are being failed—or finally being told the truth.Show more Brought to you by Cortez Wealth Management! Proudly supporting America First values 🇺🇸! Looking for retirement and asset growth strategies from someone who shares your values? Check out Cortez Wealth Management, led by a proud Christian husband, father, and patriot. 👉 http://cortezwm.com/
Pet Club 247 is your trusted source for affordable, high-quality pet products delivered to your door. Shop now at https://richardleonard.petclub247.com/ and get Wholesale pricing, Auto-ship convenience, Premium pet nutrition, and wellness. Support your pets and wallet by partnering with us. Join the Club!
PATRIOT-APPROVED HEMP PRODUCTS. Tired of woke wellness brands? So are we. At AmericanHempHub.com, you’ll find CBD & hemp products made in the USA with no globalist garbage. Pure. Lab-Tested. Freedom-First. Relief without chemicals. Trusted by patriots who think for themselves 👉 Visit: https://AmericanHempHub.com Because your body deserves real health from real Americans. Show less
Well, it appears that Doug Collins is on the chopping block again, or at least he's sitting in front of the firing squad yet again for the statistics and the data that apparently has been collected on VA wait times and staffing.
They are still trying to roast his ass for trying to fix the VA.
We're going to go through.
I found an article talking about these wait times, what's being done, what could be done better.
And I am the first person to admit that there might be some things that could improve as it relates to wait time, access to care, staffing issues at VA clinics and hospitals.
And so let's go through them and just see.
We'll just see if they make sense.
If there's things that can be fixed, well, then let's talk about it.
I am certainly not the type of person that thinks that someone like Doug Collins is all-knowing and the Messiah and Savior of the VA, especially the VHA, the Health Administration.
Those are the people that are responsible for getting us in to see doctors, getting us appointments, making sure that the quality of care that we have is up to par or exceeds the standard.
So let's go through it.
We'll talk about it today and hopefully we'll solve this problem for the world because that's what we like to do here.
So stick with us.
Don't go away.
We start now.
Hey everybody and welcome here to the next installment of The Richard Leonard Show.
I'd like to thank you for being here.
If you're new here, thanks for stopping by.
We hope that you will come back and participate in the conversations by leaving comments below.
You can get a hold of the network on any of the social media platforms in which we are on, or you can do it here in the show.
If you are a returning viewer/slash listener, thank you for coming back.
We really appreciate it.
We are going to continue to strive to do our best to bring you content that is somewhat informative.
Sometimes I think that it's clear that here, especially on this show, that we get down GOAT trails and things like that and sometimes get off topic.
But I think that it's usually pretty good conversation because the topics that we choose to discuss here, in many cases, are pretty complex.
And there's a lot of things that goes into solving them or the reasons why they are the way they are or whatever.
And so I think that it's good.
One of the things I wish we had was just more time that the show could be longer so that we could really dive deep into some of this stuff.
But we will strive to work within the time constraints that we have been giving.
And usually I don't do a very good job on keeping to that time.
I often run over.
So anyway, thank you for being here.
Before we get started on the conversation, I'd like to tell you about how the lights are kept on here at the Richard Leonard Show.
And that is Cortez Wealth Management.
Get on over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com.
That website is full of information, videos, literature, contact info for Mr. Carlos Cortez Jr. and his staff over at Cortez Wealth Management.
So go over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com, get everything you can, digest the information that is there for you, and contact them, get a hold of them.
Carlos and his staff want to help you plan a tax-free retirement plan.
They want to make sure that your money is invested with America First businesses, people that share the same views and ideas that you might share, that you might have.
And it's a great place to put your money so that you can trust when you need it.
It'll be there.
Women's VA Experiences00:15:22
And hopefully, for everybody, it has multiplied several times.
But you'll never know if you don't put it out there and you don't search out the information.
So get on over to AmericaFirstRetirementPlan.com, check out what they got for you, get a hold of them if you have any comments, questions, or concerns, and set yourself up with a tax-free retirement plan, or at least as tax-free as possible.
So check them out.
Okay, Doug Collins, the VA clinics and hospitals are all under fire, mainly Doug Collins, along with President Trump.
The Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs and their all-knowing power are attempting to roast Doug Collins again for his initiative, for his ideas on how to fix the VA to make it better for the people that need to use it, make it better for the men and women who chose to put on a uniform and serve this country.
And I think that sometimes it's a political witch hunt.
I think that sometimes there are reasonable concerns that need to be addressed and done so by the legislators and the people that are responsible and the arbiters of the VA for the men and women that need to use it.
So I think it's a double-edged sword, right?
There's so many things that go into operations of the VA system.
It is a huge monster and it is probably pretty cumbersome.
And the question is: is any of that a good excuse?
Are any of those things a good excuse for veterans in this country to go without or to go with subpar care or subpar access to care?
And I think the answer to that question is no, it's not reasonable.
But also, I think it's important to take into consideration that when something is broken, such as the VA has been for years, I mean, we've heard about it for so many years, how broken the VA system is.
The wait times are too long.
Veterans are dying waiting for care.
The care that they do receive when they receive it, a lot of times is not up to par.
It's not great.
The quality of care is pretty low, allegedly.
And now, as a person who uses the VA, such as myself, I can honestly say that I have had some pretty shitty experiences at the VA.
I mean, we've talked on the show before about how the VA almost killed me by giving me Basically, a half-gallon milk jug full of liquid morphine after I had an operation and put on the bottle the wrong dosage.
And so, after a week, week and a half, when my liver was shutting down, and I was as jaundiced as the stars on my cap are yellow, I had to go.
I had to go and be admitted in the hospital for four or five days till they got my liver function under control.
And all of it was a mistake made by the doctor or whoever put in the prescription for me to take home after my operation.
But I can also say, on the other hand, some of the best care I've ever received in my life has been at the VA.
There's never full disclosure before we get into all of this.
I can say that it has been an extremely rare occurrence, and in some instances, has never happened that I was mistreated, that I felt the time I had to wait for an appointment was unfair.
Sometimes they are long.
But if you really dive into the dichotomy of the VA, you will learn that it's probably pretty static across the board as it relates to VA patients' access to care.
Now, is that a good answer?
Probably not.
It's probably not a good answer, but it's the truth, it's the reality.
And part of all of this upheaval in the Senate between Senator Blumenthal and Doug Collins, or just the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs against Doug Collins, sometimes they're right on.
Sometimes their critiques and the evaluation and the critique of the VA is pretty accurate.
Sometimes it is.
Sometimes, though, however, it is, in my opinion, completely off base.
And it is clear that sometimes politicians, such as the ones, some of the politicians that sit on this Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, sometimes it seems like they're bitches and their asks and the things that they want to see done with the organization aren't always the best option for veterans.
And that's not always a great solution for the men and women that use the place.
And it appears at times that this is some kind of stunt or some kind of show to gain publicity, to gain a follow-up, whatever the case may be.
At times, when these politicians get super wrapped around the axle about what's going right or wrong at the VA, it seems as if it's for some kind of personal political gain.
And maybe that's just the nature of the beast, right?
I don't know that anybody, I don't know that anybody at this point would be surprised to hear any of that.
But I think it's the truth.
And so, although there are many things that could be a whole lot better in the VA system, there are many things that could be handled better, they could be handled a little more delicately and things of that nature.
It's a monster.
It's a beast.
And I believe that when President Trump took over and appointed Doug Collins to be the secretary, I believe that Doug Collins inherited one hell of a mess.
And did the VA secretary before him create that mess?
Probably not all of it.
But he probably didn't help a whole lot either.
And so it's all up for debate.
At the end of the day, I think the important questions to ask are of the consumers.
I think the important questions to ask are of the men and women that use VA services.
It's important to ask them.
It's important to ask their spouses or their supporters, the people that are driving them there or spending the day with these folks at the VA, getting them, making sure they're at their appointments on time, that they remember to take their medications, all of those things, all of your support system that you as an individual have at any given time.
It's important to ask them because I can tell you that as a person who uses the VA on a pretty regular basis, things seem to have gotten better in the last year.
Let me just lay it out for you.
I use the VA for my mental health care.
And my therapist, she's great.
The one I had before her was probably the best mental health professional I've ever worked with in my life, but she retired.
And the woman that I see now is amazing.
She's great.
One of the things I like about her the most is that she doesn't hesitate to call me on my shit.
If she thinks I'm overreacting or I'm being unfair, she's the first person in the conversation to pump the brakes and tell me things like, are you sure?
Are you sure that's the way it is?
Are you sure that's the way you want to go about it?
Things of that nature.
And I really appreciate that.
And so I can say that when I see her, because she is also a manager, she manages other mental health professionals in the clinic that she works in, which is the polytrauma clinic, the TBI stuff.
My wait times usually were a month to a month and a half.
And now they're a couple weeks, sometimes even just a week, which is fantastic because this particular professional that I see is only allowed to keep a limited base of clients because her other duties require time out of her day to be the manager and to be the decision maker and all of those things.
So she's only able to keep a limited amount of clients, as best as I know.
At least that's the way it was explained to me.
And so because of that, wait times were a lot longer last year.
And it's gotten a lot better.
I can say that the VA hospital in Minneapolis seems to be a little, it's cleaner.
It doesn't smell like piss anymore.
There are a lot of positive changes.
And maybe I don't use the VA enough to see any negative changes.
But I can say that in my experience, and I go regularly, at least once or twice a month, I can say that things have improved.
But that's just for me.
And full disclosure, I don't use the VA for as many medical services as I have in the past.
Since I retired from the United States Army, I do use my medical insurance from my service.
for most of my physical care.
Like the stints I had installed in my brain, I did not do at the VA.
I did them at the Mayo Clinic and used my insurance.
But for the things I do use the VA for, I believe things have improved.
So for whatever that's worth, that's just my experience.
And I'm aware that everybody has a little bit different experience.
So all of that being said, let's get through some of this art.
I don't know that we'll get through the whole thing, but there are some things in here that seem a little peculiar.
So let's go through this and we'll stop and discuss as we go.
This article was put out on January 22nd, which I believe was Thursday of this last week.
And it is titled, VA Leaders Policy.
I'm sorry, VA Leaders Policies, Delaying Care and Destroying the Workforce, says a report.
Okay, so under the Trump administration, wait times for mental health care at the Department of Veterans Affairs has increased while morale among employees has plummeted with the loss of 40,000 people, says Senate Democrats.
And they released a new report the same day, so this last Thursday.
Actions taken by President Trump, VA Secretary Doug Collins, and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOE, in the past year have affected services and research at the VA, harmed workers, and delayed care benefits to veterans, said Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, and he's the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
According to the report, appointment wait times for new patients for mental health care now average 35 days and have grown in 15 states to more than 40 days, twice the VA standard, with veterans in Maryland waiting the longest with an average of 54 days wait time to see a mental health professional.
At one Ventura, California VA clinic, wait times for behavioral health treatment rose to 121 days after seven of its 12 mental health providers left following, get this, 12 mental health providers left the VA following the mandate to return to the office.
The VA has also lost 40,000 employees in the past year, 88% of whom worked in the Veterans Health Administration, according to the report.
Beginning last year, the VA originally targeted 80,000 jobs for elimination through voluntary retirements, resignations, and layoffs, but later said it would trim 30,000 through attrition.
Okay, so what this means is earlier this year when Doug Collins took office, they had talked about getting rid of, I think it was roughly 80,000 jobs, just going to eliminate them from the books, from the VA.
Now there was a lot of pushback.
Senator Blumenthal lost his mind.
Committee started scrutinizing this plan and that it was going to substantially diminish the quality and access of care for veterans in the country.
But right away, right away, the secretary said, We're not getting rid of doctors.
We're not getting rid of nurses.
We're not getting rid of people that provide frontline care to the men and women who use this facility or any of our facilities.
The plan was to get rid of redundant positions.
Eight To Clean00:13:44
If we have facility maintenance workers in a building and the building requires eight custodians, facility engineer, whatever it takes to keep that building lit, water running, heat or air conditioning going, and comfortable for the people that use it.
If that building, because of the size, requires eight people, but that building has 16 people doing that job.
Well, eight of those guys got to go.
And see, because it becomes an issue of money, becomes an issue of whether or not the department can afford to employ all of these people, but yet it doesn't take all of these people to do the work that is needed to keep the agency running effectively.
And so, as consumers or as onlookers from the outside, it's easy for us to say, well, wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
We can't cut all these jobs and put all of these people out of work.
That's not right.
And maybe in conversation and in theory, it doesn't seem right.
But if we have a finite budget for veteran care in this country and we're spending way more money than has been allotted for facility maintenance workers or been allotted for cooks in the cafeterias of the hospitals,
if we're spending more money than what was allotted for the volunteer programs, now you're going to say, well, people volunteer, it doesn't cost anything.
Yeah, but they also have a space.
They also are given a vest to wear that says they're a volunteer.
It takes money to run a volunteer program.
And it's great.
It's a great thing.
They got these older veterans or spouses or college kids or whoever, whoever decides they want to volunteer, they send them out through the hospital and they'll push these old vets in wheelchairs to and from their appointments.
They'll help them navigate the hospital, give them directions, show them where they can get a cup of coffee, where the elevators are, where the nearest bathroom is, all of those things.
And are they important?
Absolutely.
Absolutely, they're important because it helps with the whole experience.
It helps with your whole time at the VA facility.
And to be quite honest, a lot of people are going in there and they don't want to hear the news that they're about to get.
They don't want to continue to deal with the ailments that they have going on.
And as we know, not that It's all that much different from any other dangerous profession in the world.
But we all know that veterans, for all tents and purposes, have some pretty complex issues.
And for a lot of people, it's draining.
And it's tough to get out of bed in the morning for some people because of the things that they got to deal with throughout the day.
The amount of energy that it takes people to accept and navigate their day with some of these serious conditions or diseases or ailments or whatever you want to call them takes a lot for some folks.
And then on top of that, you add all the discourse and all the bullshit going on in our own communities.
Here in Minnesota, it's fucking 30 below zero.
Like the cold is offensive.
Mother nature is being offensive right now.
So then you got to deal with that.
And then you got to get your kids to school and to soccer practice or to swim practice or dance.
And then you have ailing parents that you got to deal with.
And then you got to worry about coming up short on the mortgage and shit, man, we need groceries and blah, blah, blah.
There's all kinds of problems.
There's all kinds of issues and things that need to be dealt with that take up your time, your attention, and your bandwidth.
And so being able to go to a place like the VA hospital or a SIBA clinic and have a good experience just helps make that burden of hearing bad news or having to deal with bad news a little bit easier.
And so I say all that to just to just prove the point that all of these things are important.
Nobody's arguing that.
But I think what the point is, is we need to cut jobs.
We need to cut some people because we can't afford to pay them all.
We can't afford to fund all of these programs and all of these initiatives and all these things to bring veterans better care and then pay out salaries to job areas within the VA that are redundant.
Let me ask you this.
If you bring your car to the local shop to get an oil change or your brakes done or a transmission flusher, just some routine maintenance thing, and it takes one mechanic to do it, right?
It might take him an hour, hour and a half, two, three, depending on the job.
Now, if somebody told you, if you bring your vehicle here, we're going to have three mechanics work on it.
We're going to get it done quick.
It's going to be accurate.
It's going to be right.
It's going to be fine.
Three people working on it.
But that same amount of time, the hour, two hours, whatever it takes to complete your job is diminished a little bit, right?
Because two people can maybe do it faster, but it's going to cost you an extra $50 an hour in labor.
Are you going to do that?
Or are you going to say, well, hey, thanks.
I'll try this garage where I only got to pay one mechanic.
I only got to pay for one person to work on my car.
And so if the amount of time it takes to do the job is the same or slightly less, but it costs you almost double, are you going to take that?
Are you going to bring your car there?
And it's a similar thing with the VA, at least in theory, the way that it's presented.
If it takes eight people to clean the Minneapolis VA hospital, which we know it takes a lot more than that, but just for conversation's sake, if it takes eight people to clean the Minneapolis VA Medical Center, but we as the taxpayers and the VA and the federal government is paying 20 people to be able to clean the VA Medical Center, maybe they can do it half an hour faster than the eight people,
or maybe they can do it a whole 45 minutes faster than eight people.
But that time that it takes for the 20 people versus the eight people to do the same job is going to cost us triple the amount of money for a little bit less time.
Are we going to do that?
Because remember, the VA has a finite budget every year.
And I'm sure that they go over, and I'm almost positive they never spend less than what they're given because the trick in the federal government is you spend everything in your budget or you're not going to get that same amount next year or more than that.
You're going to get less.
And so that whole thing is part of the fraud, waste, and abuse conversation, maybe.
But the point is that an organization with a finite budget and hundreds of facilities and clinics and hospitals and offices and whatever else they got, research centers, it's all pretty expensive.
And if we're paying 80,000 or 30,000 or 20,000 more employees to do some of these jobs than it was originally intended for, or that we can prove as an organization that the VA can prove as an agency they're paying too much for building maintenance, for example, just for conversation.
If the VA said, well, we're paying $4 million a year above what we were allotted for building maintenance.
Well, what's the answer to that?
The answer to that is either you cut the budget and cut the staff, or you keep the same budget, you cut the staff to a reasonable size.
And that extra money that's not being paid out in wages, in medical benefits, in whatever else is allotted to federal employees, depending on your position, that money goes back into the kitty for the VA to reallocate elsewhere.
And so this outrage about cutting jobs at the VA, and well, you know, there's so many veterans that work for the VA.
How could we put veterans out of work?
Well, that's a horseshit argument.
How many people protested and threatened to burn down Target Corporation, their big-ass skyscraper in downtown Minneapolis when they laid off 10, 20, 30,000 people, I don't know, five, six, seven years ago, whenever it was, they did this massive layoff.
And hundreds of people, if not thousands of people, lost their jobs just because we're downsizing, we're restructuring, we don't have the money to pay you.
Was there outrage then?
I guarantee you there were veterans in that group.
Did Target get roasted because they laid off some veterans because they were downsizing?
I don't know.
Maybe they did.
I didn't hear about it, but I don't know everything.
And so that all just plays into this, right?
It's not just an isolated argument.
It's not just, well, you know, Donald Trump and Doug Collins fucking hate veterans, so they're going to cut employees out and they're going to diminish the capacity of the VA so that veterans can't go get care.
Donald Trump and Doug Collins hate veterans.
It's the dumbest fucking argument I've ever heard.
If anybody would stop to just read, I know, I know that nowadays, asking somebody to research and read and learn and then construct your own thoughts about it.
I know that's a tall order.
In today's day and age, asking somebody to read, in some cases, is probably offensive.
Tell somebody, well, you know, if you would just read the information, you might see it a little bit different.
And maybe not.
Maybe if you read it, you might still feel the same way.
But at least you could take some comfort in knowing that you've done some digging.
You can feel confident in your decision, in your view, and why you think and feel and say the things that you do.
And if that's the case, cool.
I mean, I'm not sitting here saying that anybody has to agree.
I'm not sitting here saying that I'm right.
I'm just saying that there's a lot more that goes into running a facility, but not only a facility, the whole agency.
And if we're paying out too much of our budget, I shouldn't say we because I don't work for the VA.
If the VA is paying out too much of its budget to wages and healthcare costs, retirements, allotments for equipment, whatever it is, that is unnecessary, that is what is hurting the VA.
That is why they can't hire enough people.
And as we'll learn when we get through here, there's also a lot of people that are just saying no.
They're applying for the jobs they're offered and they're saying no.
And a lot of them are doctors.
A lot of them are surgeons.
A lot of them are nurses.
A lot of them are those frontline staff that the VA is saying, yeah, we need them, but there's other hurdles there.
Loss Of Sponsorships00:06:18
So let's take a break because we've run out of time in the segment, as I stated earlier, a little too long, but we'll be right back.
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 Stew 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 Stew 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 stew crew one, 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.
Some 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 Stew Crew, get exclusive access to behind-the-scenes footage, all kinds of extra content that'll 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 stew crew member.
So if you join the stew 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 Stew Peters locals page.
You can also go to stewpeters.com and sign up there as well.
But it is easier to just go down and hit the red button there that says Stu Crew 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.
What these researchers found was that vaccinated children had 4.29 times the rate of asthma, 3.03 times the rate of atopic disease, 5.96 times the rate of autoimmune disease, and 5.53 times the rate of neurodevelopmental disorders.
A number of different diagnoses, including diabetes and ADHD, and a number of them, in the unvaccinated group, there were zero.
In other words, all these chronic diseases that we're accepting, the reality is maybe 99% of it don't have to exist in children.
That's not the way God made us.
They looked at over 47,000 Medicaid claims between 1999 and 2011.
Those who are vaccinated versus unvaccinated, I say an odds ratio would be like 2.8 to 1.
2.81 to 1.
So that would be 181% increase.
Epilepsy seizures, 252%.
Learning disorders, 581%.
If you look at all these different diagnoses, they're all higher.
For example, I'll just give you one example.
Learning disorders in the full term is 581%.
In the preterm, the ones who are vaccinated, 884% increase.
Every single vaccine has an excipient that is human toxin.
Human toxic.
Human toxic.
Forget everything you think you know.
The power players pulling the strings, the ones hiding in the shadows, are trembling because the fuse has been lit.
And this December, the truth is detonating.
For months, we went underground into the trenches, tracking a story built on secrecy.
We spoke to voices kept out of the spotlight.
We followed the trails others were too afraid to touch.
And what we uncovered changes everything.
You want proof?
You want to witness what they thought would stay buried?
Introducing vaccination.
The unfiltered, uncensored, unapologetic truth about the price a nation paid its families, its children, its freedom.
This December, everything they hid comes crashing down.
Watch the explosive docuseries, Vax a Nation, only on StuPeters.tv.
Exclusive access for local subscribers hey folks welcome back here Let's finish out the show here.
VA's Hidden Job Cuts00:02:22
I want to get through more of the article.
I know we're not going to get through the whole thing.
It's too long and we only got about 20 minutes left.
But let's continue here.
According to this report, appointment wait times for new patients for mental health care now average 35 days and have grown in 15 states to more than 40 days, twice the VA standard, with veterans in Maryland waiting the longest with an average of 54 days.
At one Ventura California VA clinic, wait times for behavioral health treatment rose to 121 days after seven of its 12 mental health providers left following a return to office mandate.
Okay, so we read that already.
The VA has also lost 40,000 employees in the past year.
And I believe that these losses were either to attrition or people choosing to leave.
These weren't, I believe, these weren't firings or layoffs.
The VA has also lost 40,000 employees in the past year, 88% of whom worked for VHA, the Veteran Health Administration.
And according to this report, beginning last year, the VA originally targeted 80,000 jobs for elimination through voluntary retirements, resignations, and layoffs, but later said it would trim 30,000 through attrition.
In this last December, the VA announced its plans to cut an additional 26,000 jobs from the Veterans Health Administration through attrition this year.
So what that means is when they're losing people through attrition, folks are either retiring or taking early retirements or choosing to leave for whatever reason.
And I'm sure that some of those reasons, if we're being honest, is because of uncertainty.
People were uncertain at the beginning of the year when the changes were made and it was announced that we are going to make the VA better.
It's going to be something that's easier for veterans to access.
There's going to be more resources for different procedures or different testing or different research or different whatever.
And some folks decided they wanted to leave.
They don't support it.
Or they got nervous because of all the rhetoric between Doug Collins, the Committee on Veterans Affairs, both in the House and the Senate.
A Lot of People Hate Him00:02:35
And then, of course, the massive disdain that some people have for the president.
And truth be told, and this isn't just isolated to the VA, but I think that there's a lot of people.
There's a lot of people that, for whatever their reason is, whether it's justified or not, They are going to do and say whatever they can that is the opposite of what the president and his administration are looking to do for this country just because they hate him.
They hate him for whatever their reason is.
Maybe the reason is they hate him because he's not letting up on this ICE thing and this immigration thing.
Maybe they hate him because the way that he speaks or the way that he articulates how he views other people who are causing a problem in this country.
Who knows why people hate him so much?
Now, could he maybe choose to just shut his mouth at times?
Absolutely.
He could.
Is it a problem that he doesn't, in my opinion?
No, it's not a problem.
It's not a problem because when he is up there saying shit that maybe he shouldn't, maybe he should keep his mouth shut a little more, he's also doing the work that he said he was going to do.
When the man was campaigning, he told us, the constituency of this country, that he was going to fix this infestation or infiltration that we lived through the past four to six years or whatever it was.
This mass migration of people coming to this country.
He said he was going to fix that.
He was going to fight that.
And he's doing that.
And, by the way, with some pretty staunch opposition.
And is that justified?
Maybe, maybe not.
I don't think so.
I think that this is what I voted for.
I think that a lot of veterans voted for this.
The Soldier's Dilemma00:03:56
I think when, and kind of off topic now, but I think that when men and women who spent however long, two years, four years, a whole career, 30 years in the military and dedicated their life to serving this nation and sacrificed everything in defense of this nation.
Whether you agree with why they were sent to do what they did or not, that's not on the soldier.
That's not on the veteran.
If you don't like the reasons why we fought in Iraq, if you don't like the reasons why we fought in Afghanistan, if you don't like the reasons why our military did anything across this globe, and you're going to place blame the backs of the soldiers and the veterans is not a good place to put it, not in my opinion.
I know for with a thousand percent certainty that when I chose to join the military of my own free will, it was my choice, it was my decision.
I knew what the stakes could be.
I knew what the outcome of me joining was probably going to be.
When I joined the military in 2002, it was apparent.
It was apparent that we were going to war.
It was apparent that we weren't going to just let what happened on 9-11 happen with no response.
Now, we can, as a nation, as citizens of this country, as a group of people, we can discuss, we can debate, we can agree to disagree on the reasons why the United States military was sent anywhere in this world to complete any mission they were given.
But I don't believe that it's right to place the blame or the onus on the men and women that did it.
Because when you join, and as everyone knows, I'm not saying anything new, you don't really get a choice where you go.
You don't really get a choice what the day's activities are.
You get up in the morning, you ship, you shower, you shave, you do PT, you eat breakfast, and then whatever the training schedule says is what you're doing.
When you're assembled as a unit in the company AO somewhere, and you're given a warning order, you're given an order to deploy, you're given an order to do this, that, or the other thing.
Well, that's what you're doing with your day.
That's just how the military works.
So I don't believe that it's a reasonable thing to place blame on the soldiers.
And so when we talk about the fixing of the VA and the budget issues and the staffing issues, and this is not right, we can't put veterans out of work.
Okay.
Well, if that's the case, then the regulations for hiring at the VA, the regulations for attrition,
Wage Caps and Staffing Issues00:14:33
the regulations for keeping people in their jobs and keeping them happy and all of those things, none of that can get better if there's no funds, if there's no resources to pay people what they deserve to be paid for the job that they've been asked to do.
And in many cases, in many job titles, we already know that the difference between what the VA pays someone and the private sector pays someone is vastly different.
It's vastly different.
And if you want to know, I have here on my screen there, I looked up, I did a little bit of research and a little bit of reading.
I can tell you what the differences are.
And we'll talk doctors, right?
Since the big argument is about, well, we can't cut frontline staff.
We got to keep our doctors, we got to keep our nurses, we got to keep our MSAs.
Those are the people that call you and schedule your appointments with you, that check you in, that make sure all your administrative stuff is accurate so that when you do go into the office to see a doctor, you can talk about business.
You don't have to talk about any other bullshit.
The difference in wages might also be an issue.
So it says here, for example, a VA physician, just a general physician, like a primary care provider at the VA makes anywhere from $230,000 to $300,000 a year, plus performance bonuses, whatever that means.
Maybe the more patients you see, you get some bonuses.
A VA specialty physician can make up to $400,000 a year.
But now, here's the important part: the federal government puts a cap on wages.
There isn't a federal government employee that makes $400,000 according to this information.
That's the wage ceiling for any federal job.
There's nobody making more than $400,000 a year.
Now, a private practice general physician, primary care doctor, the person you go to when you got a cold, when you think you got strep throat, when you're playing men's league softball and twist your ankle and you need to go see the doctor and get a brace and some other bullshit, just a general physician in private practice, on average, makes $300,000 to $350,000.
Now, the low side of that wage deal is $300,000.
That was the cap for a VA general physician.
Now, private practice specialists, and these are like the people you like a neurologist or a cardiologist or any of those specialty things that you need.
In private practice, those people's wages on average start at $400,000 and go all the way up to $800,000.
So let me ask you a question.
Let's just say for conversation's sake that you, the person watching or listening to this podcast right now, let's just say you're an electrician, right?
Let's say that you're a plumber or a carpenter or a janitor or just a general maintenance worker.
If you can make working at the VA, let's just say, and I don't know what their wages are, but let's just say for conversation's sake that an electrician at the VA hospital makes $55,000 a year, right?
Just pick a number.
Do you think that that same person who has done the training, went through the school, probably has some other work experience somewhere else?
Maybe not.
Do you think that they're going to come and work for the VA for $55,000 a year when they could go start their own business, their own practice in this instance, or go work for somebody else or go work in the private sector as an electrician and make $80,000 a year?
What do you think that that person, who in this instance is highly skilled, has some experience, has the ability to prove that he has a positive work history, people like him, they like his work.
He's good at customer service, making sure the customer is happy with the work that he did, answering questions, fixing any mistake that maybe he made.
You think he's going to come work for you for 55 Gs when he can go do it for himself?
And when you work for yourself, you can set your own schedule.
You can set your limitations.
You can set all kinds of things.
But at the end of the day, for your work, you're getting a whole lot more per hour.
Getting a whole lot more.
Your annual income is almost triple what you can make at the VA.
Are you going to take a VA job?
Is it reasonable to assume that somebody like a cardiologist is going to come work for the VA for $400,000 when he can work two miles away from the VA maybe, or maybe you're right next door to the VA and doing the same exact work for $800,000?
So we don't ever talk about that.
That never comes up in the Senate committee hearings.
All they talk about is that, well, we hate veterans.
The government hates veterans, and so they're just going to cut all these jobs and put people out in the cold.
And it would be naive of me to assume and to say that it's cut and dry, right?
It would be irresponsible of me to say that this discrepancy is fair, right?
It would be unreasonable for me to say that the only reason that we're having these shortages and these staffing issues and these long wait times and veterans going without a good quality of care or even good access to care is just because Donald Trump being reasonable for sure.
To blame it on Trump or Doug Collins or anybody.
I think that in this instance, as it relates to doctors and nurses and all of that, maybe that's something that needs to be looked at.
How can we assume that we're going to get quality physicians, that we're going to get quality nursing staff when any of them can go elsewhere and make double the money?
At that point, we're just relying on the goodwill of the doctors, on the goodwill of the nurses.
If you can show me anybody who would take a full year's salary and pay cut to work for the VA or go work anywhere else and reduce your salary by 50%,
I would be dumbfounded if there's anybody that goes, yeah, sure.
You want me to come work at the VA for half of what I could make elsewhere?
Yeah, I'll do that.
And then there's people out there that are going to say, well, you know, the only reason they're not doing it is because they don't like veterans.
The only reason that they're cutting all these people is because Doug Collins hates vets.
Has anybody ever stopped to think that maybe Doug Collins and the administration are looking to cut some jobs to free up some resources, to free up some resources to pay better doctors or to pay more nurses?
The people that excel at their jobs and have a track record of excellence, they're not going to come work somewhere when they can make double just down the street.
So maybe that's part of the problem too.
Maybe part of the problem is that the federal government is not willing to pay these people what they're worth.
Maybe, maybe that's it.
I'm sure that that's not the only thing, but it certainly to me seems a little more plausible than just to say, well, they hate veterans, so they're going to downsize the VA.
That's some bullshit political rhetoric.
The trend we are seeing is frightening and deeply alarming because it will have negative impact on our veterans.
Senator Blumenthal said during a press call with reporters on this last Thursday: it rings a bell for all of our veterans and all Americans that we will be diminished.
We will see a diminished and greatly reduced VA if it continues on the current trend line.
On the contrary, Senator, I think if we keep going the way we're going now before we make changes and reductions, we're going to see a greatly diminished VA because the agency can't afford to pay all of these people and a lot of them doing redundant work, not that they have horseshit work ethic, not that they're not doing their job, not that they're not showing up to work.
But the question has been: is there enough work for all of these people?
And if not, we got to cut some of these jobs out to save money.
Because we just talked about it.
Healthcare is expensive.
I mean, shit, what are you paying for your health care premiums?
What are you paying for medical services?
What are you paying for diabetes, medications, and supplies?
What are you paying for dialysis treatments?
What are you paying for all of these things?
It's all very expensive.
And it's only reasonable to assume that because the services are very expensive and the supplies and the medication and all this shit is so astronomically expensive that the people that are there to give it to us and prescribe it to us and send it to us and check us out to make sure that it's working properly and that our ailments are being healed or at least managed properly, they're expensive too.
And so it's really difficult to get somebody to believe that the quality of care is diminished because Donald Trump hates veterans.
Because Doug Collins is power hungry and just wants power and control and wants to get his praise and his pets from the president for doing what he's doing.
And this is the problem.
This is the problem with the mainstream media and all of that shit because they don't dig deeper.
They tell you what's going to hit you right in the fefees to get you feeling whatever type of way their goal is.
They want to get you pissed off.
They want to make you sad.
They want to get you irritated and frustrated and aggravated.
But there's more to the story, folks.
And as I said before, there's probably quite a few things that need attention that Doug Collins could fix, that the president could talk about a little more and find a different way to fix it appropriately.
I'm sure.
Nothing's perfect.
Nobody's doing a perfect job at anything.
None of us are.
But if we want to spin the narrative that Doug Collins and Donald Trump and the Republican Party fucking hate veterans, so they're just going to, they're just going to fire 20, 30, 40, 80,000 people just because they hate veterans and they want more money for their pockets And they're trying to fulfill some agenda that someone else laid upon them and promised them some power and money and control and all that stuff.
Does that make any sense?
I don't know how you can just hear that narrative and then believe it as if it's the gospel.
If you believe that the reason why veteran care is, as they say, being diminished, if you believe that that's being done because President Trump hates veterans and Doug Collins is just power hungry and he hates veterans and all they're trying to do is serve their own self-interests,
I think that you should dig deeper and then ask the questions because there's a chance.
Maybe you're right.
There is a chance that you're right.
There is a chance that Donald Trump hates veterans.
There is a chance that Doug Collins hates veterans and just wants to have more money and power and control.
I don't buy that.
But is there a chance?
Dig Deeper, Folks00:05:05
Sure.
Anything's possible.
But it makes more sense to me that when you stop and you look and you read the statistics and you look at numbers and wait times versus the amount of people that are there to do the work, and then you read further and you find out that the places where the wait times are the longest are the places where people were told, hey, man, it's time to come back to work.
And folks don't want to go back to work.
They want to stay home.
They want to work for three hours and get paid for eight.
They want to do all that stuff.
And so they chose to leave their job.
Can you imagine leaving your job because your job or your boss or your manager told you you had to come to work?
Hey, the circus is over now.
The COVID circus is over.
It's time to come back to work.
We got work to do.
We got people to help.
Come back to work.
No, fuck you.
I'm not coming back to work.
I'm quitting.
Bye.
And then we blame that on the president and the management and the administration or the secretary or whoever just doesn't seem reasonable to me.
We've run out of time.
In closing, I'd like to say: dig deeper, folks.
There's a deeper story to just about everything you see on the news.
Is there people doing the wrong thing in government offices, not in government offices, out on the street, everywhere?
Yes.
Yeah, there's people that aren't doing the right thing.
And sometimes, sometimes there is some truth to what you read, but you'll never know that if you don't dig deeper.
If we just let them form our opinions and thrust them upon us, then we buy them and we believe them as if it's the gospel, then they're always going to control what you think and what you do, how you feel.
Wake up.
Wake up and do something for yourself.
Maybe it'll change your mind.
Have a good night.
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 side of Israel.
Look at the side of Tel Aviv and look at the side 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 rights to my property.
And to take away my God, go fuck yourself.
Will I submit to that?
And if you've got a foreign study, 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?
You go to Trump's cabinet.
You go to Biden's cabinet.
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 just like to say that, you know, in our Bible, it says that you're like animals.
The Jews crucified our God.
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.
Crush Your Morning Grind00:01:02
Tired of the same old buzzkillers, ditch the drama and dive into the real deal with American hemp hub premium hemp straight from the heart of the Midwest.
We're talking pure, potent power that hits different, introducing the entourage line, inspired by the entourage effect, that killer synergy where cannabinoids team up to amp up the good vibes and crush the crap ones.
Three exclusive blends to unleash your inner rebel.
First up, low rider, kick back, melt away stress, crush pain, and keep your mind sharp as attack.
No fog, just flow.
Need to own the day, grab focus.
THCA and CBB tag teaming for that uplifting edge.
Crush your morning grind or afternoon hustle without the crash.
And for the wild nights, High Flyer, your party's new MVP, dips the hangover with our canna mixers, seltzers, lemonades, and pops.
Refreshing, booze-free blasts for epic and unforgettable find.