Congress
VA secretary’s role in failed vets bill stokes new round of White House, GOP frustration
White House officials and House GOP leaders are increasingly frustrated with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, after they say he undermined a major veterans measure championed by Republicans, according to five people with direct knowledge of the matter.
The bill, which would expand benefits for tens of thousands of veterans, was abruptly pulled off the House floor earlier this month after a group of Republicans privately warned they would tank it. They were concerned they would end up being blamed for cutting benefits because of the way the bill proposed paying for the increase — and said that Collins’ VA hadn’t done enough to alleviate their worries.
“A self-inflicted loss at the hands of the VA secretary,” said one White House official after the vote.
The floor meltdown cost Republicans a legislative win just before the House departed for its summer recess — and scuttled a positive campaign issue ahead of the November elections. Johnson will now have to burn precious floor time in September if he wants to make another attempt.
And it’s just the latest move by Collins that has stoked backlash on Capitol Hill and inside the White House, after he irritated lawmakers by failing to give them advance warning about several high-profile changes, including staffing cuts and management reforms at the department.
Speaker Mike Johnson was so unhappy with the VA’s handling of the situation ahead of the veterans bill vote that he called the White House to press for a clarification from the VA about how it would change its rules to pay for the benefits expansion, according to three of the people, who, like others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive legislative dynamics.
Top Republicans involved said that the VA under Collins helped fuel opposition to the bill by issuing conflicting guidance about its own plans for veterans benefits. The VA ultimately issued a new statement to POLITICO just hours before the scheduled vote in an attempt to quell resistance. But it wasn’t enough.
Inside private meetings with GOP leaders ahead of the failed vote, key House Republicans said they had spoken with Collins about their concerns and he had at least in part agreed with them, according to three other people involved in the conversations.
Administration officials pushed back on the friction. White House assistant press secretary Olivia Wales said in a statement that Collins “is doing a great job and works tirelessly to deliver for our heroic veterans.”
VA press secretary Quinn Slaven said that officials have clearly outlined support for the measure in a statement of administration policy and in public statements. “Under the leadership of President [Donald] Trump, Secretary Collins is proud to work every day to make VA benefits better, faster and easier to use than ever before,” he said in a statement.
Senior House Republicans have relayed concerns to the White House about how both Collins and Don Bergin, the VA’s assistant secretary for congressional and legislative affairs, handled the matter.
Democrats and some veterans groups have strongly opposed the measure. Money for the expansion of aid for disabled veterans would be funded by cuts in future disability claims for tinnitus and sleep apnea cases, a rule change that has been planned since the Biden administration.
But officials from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Disabled American Veterans have attacked the plan as a dangerous precedent. Supporters, including House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Mike Bost (R-Ill.), have argued the savings will be returned to the U.S. Treasury if not used for other programs.
In the lead-up to the vote, VA officials had suggested that they may not go ahead with the changes, jeopardizing about $13 billion over the next decade that was slated to pay for the measure. Just hours before the House vote was pulled, department officials clarified that the sleep apnea and tinnitus revisions will move ahead in coming months regardless of the bill’s fate.
But several GOP members still expressed concerns about the uncertainty surrounding the bill. And after a blowup between the speaker, his allies and the GOP holdouts in his ceremonial office just off the House floor, Johnson had to pull the bill from the floor.
The normally even-keeled Johnson, deeply frustrated after the failed vote, said he and Republican supporters of the measure were battling “misinformation” swirling about the legislation.
Senior Republicans were especially upset that Collins appeared to be working against them even after the VA had a seat at the table to craft the legislation.
House Republicans who spoke with Collins about the legislation said he never directly told them to vote against the bill, but he discussed their and his concerns about the legislation in a way they felt okay remaining opposed to it, according to the three other people involved in the conversations.
But anything less than 100 percent endorsement from Collins was seen as a major blow to the bill — which GOP leadership and White House officials struggled to get to the floor and whip for weeks.
It was just the latest move from Collins, a former chair of the House Judiciary Committee who helped defend Trump through his first impeachment, that has rankled Capitol Hill leaders and officials inside the White House.
His reorganization of the VA, including an initial mass layoff proposal for 80,000 more firings across a roughly 480,000-person department drew fierce opposition from bipartisan lawmakers on Capitol Hill earlier this year, including from the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who said he was blindsided by the move.
“We don’t need to be reading memos in the paper about 20 percent cut at the VA,” Graham said at the time.
Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) also said at that time that while the massive department is “in need of reform,” efforts to downsize “must be done in a more responsible manner,” Moran, who had been in close contact with VA, Collins and White House staff about personnel issues for weeks, added that lawmakers “need information” and that the numbers need to be “justifiable.”
Collins has also triggered the anger of Republican appropriators on Capitol Hill — he agreed to testify before House appropriators in May only after lawmakers voted to withhold funding for the agency if he didn’t. A VA spokesperson at the time denied GOP lawmakers had to pressure Collins to appear.
Collins’ handling of the veterans’ bill has also shaken his relationship with some White House officials — who are tracking how many days a week Collins is in Washington versus his home state of Georgia, according to two of the people involved in the conversations.