After President Trump signed an executive order aimed at enhancing care for veterans, improving accountability, and establishing a National Center for Warrior Independence for homeless veterans, Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins issued a statement.
"Under President Trump, VA is implementing a host of important reforms to improve care and benefits for our nation’s heroes," said VA Secretary Doug Collins. "This executive order builds on the progress we’ve made so far and puts us on a path to fixing some of the department’s most vexing problems."
Collins highlighted past issues with the VA's West Los Angeles Medical Center campus. "After decades of mismanagement, VA has been leasing parts of its 388-acre West Los Angeles VA Medical Center campus to a wealthy and exclusive private school and the University of California, Los Angeles, baseball team. Today’s executive order will enable us to ensure VA’s West Los Angeles Campus is being used as intended: to benefit Veterans. Our goal is to turn the campus into a beacon of hope and a destination for homeless Veterans from across the nation who can travel there to find housing and support and start their journey back to self-sufficiency."
Collins also addressed accountability within the department under previous administrations. "Under President Biden, VA failed to hold its employees properly accountable and actively fought congressional attempts to make it easier to fire poor-performing workers – even as health care wait times and benefits backlogs increased. With this executive order, VA will become the most accountable agency in the entire federal government. We’re going to celebrate the vast majority of VA employees who do a great job every day, hold employees accountable when they fall short of the mission and work to fix the wait-time and backlog issues that developed during the Biden Administration."
The statement also noted plans for New Hampshire. "New Hampshire is the only state in the contiguous United States without a full-service VA medical center. In response to this executive order, we will develop a plan to ensure that is no longer the case."
Further announcements regarding the implementation of this executive order are expected soon.
