Opinion: Trump’s Veterans Administration from D+ to A-

One of the top priorities of the first Trump administration was to fix the Veterans Administration (VA). When he first came into office, there were over four hundred and fifty thousand veterans on the waiting list for various treatments. And by the end of his first term, he was able to drive that number down to twenty thousand. A monumental feat if you know anything about how “efficient” the government is. 

Enter the installed Biden administration, and the old way of doing things comes back. Spend more money, hire more people to ensure you have more votes to keep government waste going, and get worse results. 

In four years after hiring over fifty thousand people, the waiting list number went back up to over two hundred thousand. Correct me if I am wrong, but you did not hear a single congressman or senator complain. 

This is the difference between a businessman and a politician. The politician will say, “Hey, we gave you more money, shouldn’t you be happy?” but a businessman will take the time to look at the results. 

Did you know, for example, if a war were to break out tomorrow, the VA could send more people into battle than the Army? Now that is a stat that should make even the most ardent hater of DOGE sit up and say, wait a minute, we need to do something. 

Look, the people at the VA are doing their best, but they are caught in a broken system. Let me give you one example. 

A friend of mine went to the local VA clinic because he had what looked like dermatitis on his ankles. Strangely, it would flare up when he went to the beach or worked in the yard. 

Since we don’t have a dermatologist in our area, he had to go into the community care system. This required him to get another appointment just to get pictures taken that would be sent to the Biloxi VA for review. Which, of course, took another two weeks to get done. 

Then he had to wait for a dermatologist to review the pictures and then for a community care representative to call back and tell him they would do the paperwork to approve his visit to a local dermatologist. 

Which, of course, did not get done until he called them back a week later to say he had not heard back from them. Of course, it then took another three weeks to finally get seen. 

As you can see, this is a broken system, and Congress needs to act. And when they do, they need to take care of our wounded veterans. 

There is no reason for groups like the Wounded Warrior Project to exist. If we have veterans coming home with missing limbs, the government should build them a home, they can live. 

Here is a thought Congress, zero out all Section eight housing and use that money to build homes for veterans.

www.RexLeeReid.com

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