President-Elect Donald Trump’s new pick for Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Doug Collins, is going to make America’s heroes healthy again.
Just ask any veteran, they’ll tell you a horror story about the VA’s bloated bureaucracy and ingrained incompetence. Veterans wait months for appointments, going without needed treatment and medications, and endure the disgrace of national neglect for those who fought, bled and sacrificed for the freedoms of our nation.
The Department of Defense’s failed policies keeps our military community mentally unhealthy.
Last week, the Department of Defense released its latest Annual Report on Suicide in the Military, finding that active-duty military suicides rose 12 percent last year, despite a massive investment in prevention programs.
In 2022, Congress mandated that it set up the Suicide Prevention Response and Independent Review Committee (SPRIRC) to provide 83 recommendations for the Pentagon to address military suicides.
Since then, the Pentagon has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to tackle the rate of military suicide, and now hopes an “unprecedented investment” of an additional $261 million in the 2025 fiscal year budget will boost suicide prevention efforts. This request is just a portion of a larger $547 million effort towards suicide prevention.
In a statement, the current Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, said the department has completed only 20 of the 83 steps on their prevention to-do list.
Even the DOD knows their approach isn’t working.
Tim Hoyt, deputy director for the Pentagon’s Office of Force Resiliency, said “I think we’ve heard loud and clear the message from the front lines that previous suicide prevention training–whether slide decks or just videos that people watch without any facilitation–were not working.”
As you can see, all this time and money is being spent implementing failed programs to address military suicide, highlighting how the VA is in desperate need of reform.