Doug Collins is a Southern Baptist minister, a former Republican congressman from Georgia, and Donald Trump’s appointee as Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He has confirmed that the VA plans to cut 72,000 employees He has assured the country, and its 16 million military veterans, that these cuts will not affect the core mission of the VA which is, as Abraham Lincoln put it in his 1865 Second Inaugural Address, basically “to provide for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan.”
The majority of American veterans served during the Vietnam Era, from 1964 to 1975. Nine million Americans served on active duty during that period, and 2.7 million served in Vietnam. I was one of them. Another almost 700,000 served in the Southeast Asia Theater during the war (in Laos, Cambodia, flight crews in Thailand, and naval personnel in the South China Sea.) Almost 7,500 women, 84% of them nurses, served in Vietnam. We comprised almost 10% of our generation. Peak strength in Vietnam itself was almost 550,000, in April 1968.
More than 58,000 died in Vietnam during the war. 61% were younger than 21. 11,465 were teenagers. 17, 539 were married men. More than 47,000 deaths were the result of hostile combat. Almost 11,000 were from other causes, e.g., accidents, disease, and suicides.) 75,000 were severely disabled, about 1/3r of them 100% disabled. More than 5,000 lost limbs and almost 1100 suffered multiple amputations. 2,338 of the Vietnam service members became MIAs, missing in action. Two of them were friends of mine, Jay Trembley, a Marquette classmate and Navy pilot, and Bill Mullen, a Marine pilot. Jay’s remains were eventually repatriated from China. To the best of my knowledge, Bill’s never were recovered from Laos, where he was shot down. After the war, countless thousands of the veterans experienced long-term deleterious physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual effects from their service.
To some, perhaps most, these statistics are just numbers, but if they were to spend any time at the VA Medical Center at 5000 W. National Avenue in Milwaukee, they would see some of these numbers incarnated. Some are in wheelchairs, some with walkers, some missing limbs, some tended by loved ones or caretakers, others showing no visible signs of their service but carrying indelible memories and sharing a bond with their fellow vets whose evidences of service are more visible. These old men and women, still living spectres from that largely forgotten era, are the people who will be affected by the cuts that Donald Trump (whose “bone spurs” kept him from service), Elon Musk, and Doug Collins propose to make in VA staffing levels.
In his video statement, Collins said “Our goal is to reduce VA employment levels to 2019 in strength numbers, roughly 398,000 employees, from our current level of approximately 470,000 employees. Now that’s in a 15 percent decrease. We’re going to accomplish this without making cuts to health care or benefits to veterans and VA beneficiaries.” Collins’s statement came after The Associated Press reported on an internal VA memo describing plans to cut 80,000 jobs as part of an “aggressive” reorganization of the agency this summer.
I can’t “get into the weeds” of where or how the cuts will be made; none of that information is public yet. I do wish to state however that Republicans have long wanted to privatize the VA, viewing it as a dangerous example of “socialized medicine,” i.e., government financed and managed health care. It is dangerous not because the health care is inadequate or substandard (indeed the opposite is true), but because its beneficiaries, its customers if you will, are very happy with it. Satisfied. Pleased and even grateful. Such a state of affairs is anathema to those who embrace Ronald Reagan’s view that “Government as not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.” So I state bluntly that the goal of the proposed cuts to the VA’s workforce is precisely to make the fulfillment of its mission and its motto “to care for him who shall have borne the battle,” impossible to accomplish in a way that meets the needs of Lincoln’s intended beneficiaries, the veterans.
Lest anyone who has had to patience to read this thinks I am just ‘blowing smoke’ and defending a bloated bureaucracy, I attach a copy of letter I wrote last Thanksgiving to the leaders of the VA Medical Center here in Milwaukee.
November 28, 2024
Thanksgiving Day
James D. McLain Andreea Anton, M.D.
Executive Director Chief of Staff
VA Milwaukee Medical Health Care VA Milwaukee Medical Health Care
Zablocki VA Medical Center Zablocki VA Medical Center
5000 West National Avenue 5000 West National Avenue
Milwaukee, WI 53295-1000 Milwaukee, WI 53295-1000
Dear Director McLain and Dr. Anton:
I have been receiving medical care from the providers and staff at the Zablocki Medical Center since 2017. I am an 83 year old former Marine and Vietnam veteran. I did not enroll in the VA medical program until I was 76 years old because I had some skepticism about the program and I had good health care from local private providers.
I write to tell you that I regret having waited so long to enroll in the VA program. It would be hard for me to overstate how grateful I have been for the highly professional care I have received not only from my primary care physician and the staff in the Gold Clinic, but also in the many specialized clinics within the Medical Center. It is hard for me to imagine receiving superior care anywhere else, though my long experience with private providers in the Milwaukee was, on the whole, excellent. I needn’t tell either of you what a great group of health care providers you have at Zablocki but I want to put my appreciation in writing, ‘on the record’, and, by copies of this letter, to personally thank at least some of the many professionals who have helped me over the last 8 years.
I am assigned to the Gold Clinic where my primary care physician for the last 6 years has been Doctor Kumkum Chattopadhyay. I have also received much help from nurse Kim Kitzke , pharmacist Jill Hansen, and from staff member Verniece Bearden and others.
I have also received much help from the therapists and staff members of the Outpatient Physical Therapy Clinic, from the doctors, nurses, and staff of the Physical Medicine & Rehab Clinic, from the Urology Clinic, the Dermatology Clinic, the Audiology Clinic, the Eye Clinic, the Pain Clinic, the Prosthetics Department, the Whole Health Program, the Rheumatology Clinic, and the Emergency Department. This list is not complete. I know I haven’t exhausted the resources of the Medical Center, but I sure have taken advantage of many of them over the last 8 years and I am grateful to all of them.
I especially want to mention another aspect of receiving help at Zablocki, an aspect that has been every bit as important to me as the professional care I have received. There is a spirit at this Medical Center that is unlike that at any other private or public hospital, medical center, or clinic where I have been a patient. I know I won’t succeed in putting it into words and I want to avoid getting maudlin about it, but I feel the spirit each time I come in for an appointment. There is a sense of kinship or fellowship with the other patients I encounter. It comes from the fact that all of us are military service veterans. I usually drive in from the Mitchell Boulevard entrance. I drive through the National Cemetery looking at the thousands of headstones, all the same size and shape, none larger than any other based on rank, length of service, or decorations earned. I drive through the historic Soldiers Home campus to arrive at Zablocki where I see so many vets, most of us but not all old, many of us in some stage of decrepitude. Some are missing limbs. Some are in wheelchairs, or are holding onto walkers. Some are carrying wounds no one can see. They were all young once and for a time wore a uniform. None was above serving, some in the worst of circumstances. Sometimes we talk with one another in an elevator or in a waiting room, other times we don’t. We sit quietly and await our turn. But when I see someone needing help with anything, I always see one or more of the other vets offer to help. It’s an unusual visit when I don’t see some act of kindness in the corridors, elevators, and waiting rooms.
The main point of my letter is this: I believe that the spirit of good will at Zablocki is due in very large measure to the generally welcoming and caring treatment the vets receive from the health care providers and staff at the Medical Center. If Zablocki had a different spirit, if we patients were made to feel like numbers processed through an indifferent government bureaucracy, the spirit in the elevators and waiting rooms would be very different. In the military, it’s called morale and anyone who has served in a unit with bad morale knows that it drags everybody down. The opposite is true here. So I say thank you to each of the hundreds of Zablocki workers who have smiled at me in the corridors, who have asked if he or she could help me find my destination, who have asked me whether I could use a wheelchair when I arrive, who have been patient with me when I am confused or troubled about something, or who have otherwise been kind to me and to the thousands of other vets who regularly rely on all of you at the Zablocki VA Medical Center.
I am an old guy feeling older every day and I’m not a Pollyanna. I know there are occasional problems at Zablocki, some misunderstandings, some employee and management problems, some patient problems, and some bad days. But I have had many hundreds of encounters with Zablocki workers, professional and otherwise, over the last 8 years and I am thankful that the overwhelming majority of those encounters have been positive and spirit-lifting. I’m grateful for that and thankful to all those who have eased and enriched my life and the lives of so many other veterans. Thank you to all of them.
Sincerely,
Charles D. Clausen
Exchange of texts with KAT: KAT: Hi Uncle Chuck. Is AG’s procedure done? How is she doing? Me: Hi, Sweetie. We just got back and got her set up on the sofa with her cold leg wrap. It’s been a painful experience, more than she expected. Now she has to urinate by midnight or I have to take her to the ER. She has physical therapy tomorrow at 11:15, and has to do PT over the weekend, assuming she is able. She just vomited so it’s been a rough ride. KAT: 🙁❤️
I think of the reality that every single thing and person has a story of connection with the rest of the universe. The wooden armrest on the chair was crafted by someone who followed a design made by someone else using tools designed and crafted by yet more people in order to satisfy the need of someone out in a community. It was made from the interior of a tree that grew from the soil beneath it which supplied it with the water and mineral nutrients that its wood, bark, and leaves needed to sustain its life and to grow to a size sufficient to provide beautiful and strong wood that could be used for the construction of a chair which sits in a waiting room of a hospital in Glendale Wisconsin which is warmed by the same sun whose energy powered the photosynthesis that sustained the tree, consumed carbon dioxide, and provided oxygen to people who conceive of, design, craft, sell, and deliver waiting room furniture to hospitals that provide health care to some people and a waiting room for others who need a place to sit and rest while nervously waiting for a loved one and seeking distraction thinking about how we are all connected with one another and with the universe.
