Veterans Affairs Sec. Collins Defends Efforts To Streamline VA Staffing At Trump's Cabinet Meeting

3 days ago

VA Sec. Doug Collins speaks at President Trump's Cabinet hearing.

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Transcript

00:00And we have quite a few of them.

00:03Would anybody else like to say something before we

00:05take some questions from the press, please?

00:07Doug Collins.

00:08The Press.

00:09Mr. President, I think one of the things that you

00:10have always told me is to take care of our veterans,

00:11and that's what we're doing at the VA.

00:12And one of the things, though, is you also have

00:14to know who your employees are.

00:15You have to know the very fact of who you are.

00:17We're 470,000, roughly, when we started this,

00:21larger than the active-duty Army, when you

00:23think about that and the perspective.

00:24But, however, this is an interesting point.

00:26When I first got there and we started looking at

00:27this, you know, how you take care of people, we

00:29didn't have an HR system that could actually give

00:31us a rundown who actually was working where, that

00:34we've had to work without working with our VA

00:36employees who are those liaisons.

00:38We've been able to put together an organizational

00:39chart, which we can start looking at that.

00:41But the interesting part about it is it's about

00:43taking care of veterans.

00:44And what you've told me to do is how do we get the

00:46people in the right places.

00:48And I think when we look at this, GAO has told us

00:50we were high-risk for years.

00:51The previous administration put literally

00:53tens of billions of dollars and tens of

00:56thousand employees over the last four years, and we

00:58saw our statistics basically go stay the

01:00same or go down.

01:01Backlogs went up.

01:03You know, maybe the question is not money and

01:04employees anymore.

01:05Maybe it's the organization and how we

01:07effectively deliver for the American people.

01:08And that's what we're going to do.

01:09The Press And, you know, one thing I want to add

01:12to it, it is not necessarily a very popular

01:15thing to do.

01:15You know, you're talking about employment.

01:17You're talking about people and the lives of

01:19people.

01:20And yet, I think the American public

01:22understands we're trying to save our country and

01:26make our country great again.

01:28I mean, you could say it, but we're trying to save

01:30our country from this extraordinary thing that

01:33was happening.

01:34What they were doing to our country was just a

01:37horrible thing.

01:38And I have no idea how it plays out in the public.

01:41I have, I guess you see poll numbers that are

01:44very good numbers, but I don't know what that

01:45means long term.

01:47But it's something that has to be done.

01:49If we don't do it, we're not going to have much of

01:51a country left.

01:52So we have to do it.

01:53So we're doing things that I think a lot of

01:55presidents wouldn't be inclined to do, but we're

01:57doing it to really, you know, I don't want to use

02:02cliche.

02:03I don't want to say we're doing it to make America

02:05great again because I say that on the campaign

02:07trail.

02:08But there's really no other words that could

02:10express it better than that.

02:12It's we're doing it to help our country.

02:16And our country was was riddled with fat like no

02:20country, probably anywhere in the world.

02:23And we're getting rid of the fat.

02:24And at the same time, we're bringing in we're

02:27going to be bringing in millions of very good,

02:29high paying jobs.

02:31And we're going to be taking in a lot of money.

02:33Our country is going to be very strong.

02:34We've been ripped off by every country in the

02:36world.

02:37Friend and foe.

02:39We were taken advantage of like nobody's ever seen.

02:43And you saw what happened today with Venezuela.

02:45We did something with Venezuela, which is long

02:49in the making.

02:50And it's very substantial.

02:53And we'll be announcing cars very shortly.

02:55And we already announced steel, as you know, and

02:59aluminum will be announcing pharmaceuticals at

03:02some point in the not too distant because we have

03:05to have pharmaceuticals.

03:06We don't make pharmaceuticals anymore in

03:08our country.

03:09And if we have problems like wars or anything

03:11else, we need steel.

03:13We need pharmaceuticals.

03:14We need aluminum.

03:15We need a lot of these things that we sort of

03:19don't make anymore.

03:19And yet we're equipped to do it all.

03:22So we'll be announcing some of these things in

03:25the very near future, not the long future, the very

03:27near future.

03:28And it'll brings it'll bring in billions of

03:30dollars, billions and billions.

03:32And it'll bring in, maybe more importantly, jobs.

03:35It'll protect the jobs we have.

03:37And it's going to be really, really quite

03:40amazing.

Veterans Affairs Sec. Collins Defends Efforts To Streamline VA Staffing At Trump's Cabinet Meeting

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