During a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL) questioned VA Secretary Doug Collins about unnecessary spending at the department.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Secretary, for joining us this morning. And I'm very grateful for your generosity and the time you've shared in meeting with us. You've got a monumental task ahead of you in reforming the largest government agency beyond the DOD. So I really appreciated your comments about personnel and money and that necessarily more isn't better.
00:19You know, unfortunately, and I get it, I understand where it comes from, but too often my colleagues on the other side of the aisle think that more money is a solution to every problem. And it clearly isn't. But I would tell you that as a veteran and one who's charged with representing the veteran interests of my constituents and those across the country, all I care about is the right solution.
00:38We want to spend every dollar necessary to make good on our promises, nothing more. We want as many people as it takes, but no more than that. The job of the VA is not to employ as many people as it can. It should only employ what's necessary to deliver for the veterans.
00:53But on that, a couple things I want to dive into. I know you're looking at a lot of these, but just to make sure that they're on your radar screen. Research funding. For example, some inefficiencies we've seen in the clinical trial processes.
01:06Medical and prosthetic research. Great topic. Great idea. Who would not want to spend as much money as is necessary to do the job there? We're spending northwards of $900 million a year. I think some across the aisle would say, great, let's spend a billion and a quarter. That would make it better.
01:21Unfortunately, from some of the studies I've seen, you may have seen some of these, as much as $550 million of that is wasted each year, not going to its design purpose. And the goal there is to achieve the end in mind.
01:34We see excessive spending on recruitment and third-party vendors. In many cases, we're spending $20,000 to $30,000 to recruit a veteran into a program, whereas comparable studies like that, clinical trials on the private side, may be $1,500 to $2,500 a patient.
01:51That's a waste. We see a lot of chronic under-enrollment in programs. You always hear the highline ones that are most egregious, but somewhere there's only a handful of participants in studies.
02:02These things are on autopilot. They go year after year after year. The people that are receiving money have no incentive to fix the system.
02:09They're getting their money. They're going about their way. Is that something you're looking at, and how can we reform this?
02:13Yes, we are. And just to go off, so there's been some concern about this, and let me just very clarify, because we're trying to get a good handle on what we're doing and how we're going about this.
02:22There's been no research trials have been canceled, period. That's just, it's not happened.
02:26But we are looking at how many we have going, because you sort of mixed two issues here.
02:31You got research that is going on in other areas, and in clinical trials, which are a little bit different.
02:36I appreciate you bringing them both up, because they need to be talked about.
02:39One of the things that concerned me as we started looking into this, and it's one of the reasons why I put a pause on our research in particular from digging into this,
02:49because we're trying to make sure we do it right.
02:50They all end at different times, different contracts coming up, is we wanted to get a good handle to make sure what was working and what wasn't working.
02:57Here's a, I know this may come as a surprise to some, but we had no, especially on the clinical trial side, let me go over to that side for a second.
03:03We had no good way of managing it. In fact, we have no centralized management of our clinical trials.
03:08And right now, I believe there's about 1,500 clinical trials going on, which is a lot.
03:14But also, I think taking into account here that clinical trials are not separating from health care.
03:19There's been some concern in some reports and others that veterans were being denied health care,
03:27and there was either because they were confusing clinical trials, which are extra and above the health care normal.
03:33So we're trying to get a handle on what we do have, what's working, what's effective, and how we make sure of that.
03:39Our research side is going to continue because we've had some of the, the VA is one of the world's leader,
03:44especially in prosthetics and other issues, polytrauma, those kind of things.
03:47And we're going to continue that emphasis as well.
03:49Okay. On the personnel side, last Congress I had the privilege to, to serve on the VA authorizing committee,
03:55we had whistleblowers coming to us complaining of sexual harassment.
03:58As we started digging into this, we were uncovering more and more where, when whistleblowers would come forward,
04:04investigation would start, rather than get to the bottom of them and get justice for those victims,
04:08people were being either allowed to retire or transfer, and then the investigations would be shut down.
04:14And in many cases, these people would leave the VA and then only to go to another government job in another agency.
04:20I've got a bill, a bipartisan bill, to try to address that.
04:22We're going to go forward with it.
04:23But from where you are, are you going to, can you give us a commitment that when people do come forward
04:28and they're courageous enough that we're going to root out the evildoers and get rid of them?
04:32Yes.
04:33That's one of my primary concerns right now, because there has been a culture, unfortunately, in many agencies,
04:38but also at the VA, and it's what I call fail up.
04:41Right.
04:41And that is they failed at a certain job.
04:43And I have an example of this in just very specific, close to home, in which a senior leader failed
04:51and was documented failing, and the answer was is to put them into the vision level in a sort of advisory role.
04:59When I found that out, I said, no, that's not what we're going to do,
05:01and we started the proper procedures, given all that needs to be, to put this person on administrative leave.
05:06They're not going to be a part of what's happening.
05:08I think this is the one thing that has been frustrating to all of members of Congress on both sides
05:13when we see egregious acts that we cannot take care of without going through a process that ends up many times
05:19not getting the intended result.
05:21But I will just make this commitment to everyone on both sides of this aisle.
05:24If you hurt a veteran and you're working for the VA, you will not work for the VA.
05:29That is not, that is my commitment, and I will take, there's a higher cost to keeping bad people in
05:34than there is ever a higher cost in getting rid of them.
05:36Right.
05:36Thanks, Secretary.
05:37And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.