Tag: Senators

Former Representative Doug Collins, an Air Force Reserve chaplain who defended President Trump during his first impeachment investigation, is set to testify in a confirmation hearing on Tuesday morning after being chosen by Mr. Trump to lead the Veterans Affairs Department.

Mr. Collins, a Navy veteran and fast-talking former pastor, is set to appear before the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee as the first potential cabinet official to face confirmation hearings after Mr. Trump took office. His hearing was delayed by a week because of an incomplete background check.

Like many of Mr. Trump’s other cabinet selections, including Pete Hegseth, his nominee to oversee the Defense Department, Mr. Collins reflects the new president’s priorities in filling out agency leadership for his second term, with personal loyalty central to each selection.

Mr. Collins is not expected to face a difficult confirmation fight, in part because of the bipartisan and apolitical nature of much of the department’s work managing a sprawling health system and veterans’ benefits.

Dr. David Shulkin, the former V.A. secretary who was the lone Obama administration holdover in Mr. Trump’s first-term cabinet before being pushed out of the job, said in an interview that Mr. Collins would most likely need to focus on the same priorities as his predecessor, Denis McDonough.

“Because the issues the V.A. deals with are systemic and complex, and unfortunately the same ones that were there when the last secretary was in,” Dr. Shulkin said.

Mr. Collins is in some ways an unusual choice. Previous V.A. secretaries have had long military careers, or held senior roles at the Defense Department or the Veterans Affairs Department itself. In the House, Mr. Collins did not serve on the Veterans’ Affairs or Armed Services Committees.

As a member of the Air Force Reserve, Mr. Collins deployed to Iraq, visiting with injured service members at Balad Air Base.

Mr. Trump’s experience fending off impeachment inquiries during and after his first term heavily influenced how he chose political allies. Other House Republicans who defended him in the first impeachment inquiry were also chosen to serve in his cabinet, including Representative Elise Stefanik of New York and former Representatives Lee Zeldin of New York and John Ratcliffe of Texas.

“You have been so great,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Collins in a packed room of supporters at the White House after the Senate voted to acquit him.

In 2019, before the acquittal, Mr. Trump pressed Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia to name Mr. Collins to the Senate seat vacated by Johnny Isakson. Mr. Kemp instead named Kelly Loeffler, a businesswoman. Mr. Collins ran against, and lost to, Ms. Loeffler in a special election for her seat in 2020. Mr. Trump chose Ms. Loeffler last month to lead the Small Business Administration.

Even with his zeal to protect Mr. Trump during his first term, Mr. Collins nurtured a reputation for working with Democrats, coauthoring criminal justice reform legislation with Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, now the top House Democrat.

Some of Mr. Collins’s duties at the Veterans Affairs Department may involve divisive health care policies. A second Trump administration may seek to reverse a Biden administration rule allowing the department to provide abortions to veterans when a pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or when the life of a pregnant woman is at risk.

But much of Mr. Collins’s portfolio will likely involve seemingly intractable problems that have trailed past secretaries from Republican and Democratic administrations, including behavioral health access.

A report published by the department last month showed that there were more than 6,400 suicides among veterans in 2022, fewer than 12 of the 14 prior years but a slight increase from the year before. The number of homeless veterans dropped to a record low under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., but remained above 32,000 between January 2023 and January 2024.

Dr. Shulkin said that atop Mr. Collins’s list would be a budget deficit that has caused the department to slow hiring. That has risked its ability to care for the nearly 900,000 veterans brought into the system through legislation signed by Mr. Biden that expanded medical benefits for veterans exposed to toxins from burning pits of trash on military bases.

“There’s a big backlog of demands and needs,” Dr. Shulkin said.

Like past secretaries, Mr. Collins will also likely need to tend to aging V.A. facilities with outdated medical equipment and record-keeping systems. The department oversees roughly 1,200 sites across the country that serve almost nine million veterans.

Mr. Collins on Tuesday is likely to be pressed about his views of private medical care for veterans. During Mr. Trump’s first term, the department began allowing veterans to seek medical care outside of traditional V.A. hospitals, an effort intended to give more flexibility to patients.

But critics have said that continuing to push veterans out of the V.A. system could compromise the integrity of its own health care.

“There’s this grass is greener on the other side of the field sensibility to it,” Joe Plenzler, a retired Marine Corps officer and veterans’ advocate, said. “What the data show is that when veterans get care at the V.A., they’re happier with it and get better-quality care.”

Were Mr. Collins to continue the first Trump administration’s push, Mr. Plenzler said, it could “turn the V.A. into an insurance company.”