The Veterans Administration (VA) is stalling in its work due to Senator Ruben Gallego’s refusal to act on key appointments for the agency.
Gallego and fellow Democratic members of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee have promised to prevent the approval of VA Secretary Doug Collins’ picks for chief financial officer, Richard Topping; general counsel, Lieutenant Colonel James Baehr; and undersecretary for Memorial Affairs, Sam Brown. All three nominees are veterans.
Collins directly blamed Gallego and ranking committee member Richard Blumenthal for the hold-up.
“Senator Blumenthal and Senator Gallego are blocking disabled veterans from coming to work at the VA. Shameful,” said Collins.
Gallego said he opposed the three appointees on the basis of Collins’ reducing the workforce size of the agency by over 80,000. These cuts would bring the VA down to the workforce size it had prior to the pandemic.
I blocked your 3 political appointees cause you are going to fire 83,000 VA employees. Thousands of which will be Veterans. You can’t explain how you came up with that number, or how it would impact Veterans.
— Ruben Gallego (@RubenGallego) May 16, 2025
During last month’s hearing to consider the three nominations, Gallego expressed doubts that cutting the workforce would improve VA operations. Gallego said the cuts were “not just laughable, it’s sinful.” Gallego specifically cited the Phoenix VA, which reportedly told him they would need to cut their staff by 15 percent.
Gallego said the cuts were “arbitrary” and accused Collins of being illogical and jeopardizing veterans’ healthcare.
“The only thing I have power to do is hold all of the nominations for any VA appointees moving forward because 83,000 VA employees being cut means 83,000 opportunities that we’re going to miss, probably, helping some of these veterans,” said Gallego. “Before this year, we had been telling everybody that we need to keep expanding and hiring more people to meet the demand and now we’re firing a lot of these men and women.”
However, Congressman Abe Hamadeh’s questioning of Collins during Thursday’s House Committee on Veterans Affairs hearing provided an indirect fact-check to Gallego’s claim. Collins indicated the workforce cuts would impact only those staffers imposing a greater burden and slowdown on the system.
“We’re not looking at doctors, we’re not looking at nurses. We’re looking at issues where we have payroll that’s being done at 60 locations, that was supposed to be centralized a long time ago, with hundreds of employees that we’re now looking to consolidate to see how we can run it efficiently and more cost effectively,” said Collins. “We don’t need them all over the place, we don’t need the issues we have with human resources being run in every location, again, with hundreds of employees.”
Collins also pointed out that the excess of hires citing the over 200 VA call centers as an example have done little to alleviate the health care provision backlog.
“Frontline workers should be the happiest at the VA right now because we’re going to be freeing them up to do their job and not get bogged down with paperwork,” said Collins.
Congressman Hamadeh asks @SecVetAffairs:
"Mr. Secretary, we've heard a lot of scare tactics, but I want you to talk about, once more, lists of services and jobs excluded from the hiring freeze." pic.twitter.com/QjQxah8GXQ
— Office of Congressman Abe Hamadeh (@RepAbeHamadeh) May 15, 2025
The national commander of the American Legion, James LaCoursiere Jr., urged the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee to act on Collins’ nominations in a Friday letter.
“We simply ask that the Committee give each nominee an opportunity to proceed with hearings and deliberations to ensure important leadership roles at VA are filled as quickly as possible,” wrote LaCoursiere. “Prolonged vacancies can hinder the delivery of healthcare, benefits, and other services that veterans and their families rely on.”