President Trump’s Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins submitted his agency’s proposed $441.2 billion FY2026 budget to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs on Tuesday at the budget hearing.
U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Ranking Member of the subcommittee, questioned Collins about the proposed budget which, as Ossoff pointed out, was not submitted prior to the hearing, and was presented in a 26-page PowerPoint document.
When Ossoff pressed Collins for specific numbers of how many doctors and nurses the VA plans to employ (the budget proposed included a $17 billion cut to medical services), figures that would normally be included in the VA’s budget request, Collins said “we’ll have more information as we go forward.”
Ossoff asked Collins: “How have you calculated the money you need for personnel without having yet decided how many personnel to employ?”
Collins said, “At this point, I’ll have the numbers for you that we’ve not provided yet. We’ll be providing those numbers.”
The lack of specific numbers and reasoning behind the budget prompted Ossoff to suggest that the committee reconvene after it receives the full budget request.
Ossoff told Collins: “You have in your PowerPoint here $17 billion in cuts to medical services. This is a 26-page PowerPoint to justify the budget. I don’t know if we have to reconvene after they send us the materials, but I think this is insufficient.”
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