Project 2025 and the VA
Five Sided Wind Tunnel
What does Project 2025 mean for military veterans?
Project 2025’s proposals for the VA calls for changes to veteran healthcare eligibility and disability claims.
PATTY NIEBERG
Project 2025, a policy guide that could be the blueprint for a second Donald Trump term, would revamp the Department of Veterans of Affairs with proposals to increase privatization, narrow the eligibility criteria for health benefits and replace civil service-style employees with political appointees in its ranks.
The document begins with an historical summary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, VA, and its current challenges meeting an aging, migrating population of veterans while modernizing and keeping costs within its budget. Chapter 20, which is dedicated to VA reforms, was written by Brooks D. Tucker, former VA Chief of Staff during the Trump Administration.
“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State,” the manual states. “The VA must continually strive to be recognized as a ‘best in class,’ ‘Veteran-centric’ system with an organizational ethos inspired by and accountable to the needs and problems of veterans, not subservient to the parochial preferences of a bureaucracy.”
Project 2025, among other very good ideas, recommends cutting one million Federal jobs with a significant focus on eliminating managerial bureaucracy. Chief among these are the unelected Senior Executive Service (SES) cadre. SES level employees serve in key Government positions just below top Presidential appointees. SES members are the link between these appointees and the Federal workforce and they operate/oversee nearly every government activity in approximately 75 Federal agencies. Project 2025 would replace the unaccountable SES’ers with political appointees.
Other suggestions for the military include lumping Flag Officers in the SES purge, expelling transgender service members and ceasing their service eligibility, reinstating troops separated for refusing to get the COVID jab and rescinding a Defense Department policy that covers the travel costs for troops who need to go out of state for abortions and other reproductive care.
Progressives are predictably, vehemently opposed to anything of the sort and see this as a tool for concentrating power and entrenching ideology instead of reducing the federal bureaucracy and adding accountability. I’m shocked too.
Category: 2024 Election, Big Pentagon
The idea that Project 2025 is something associated with Donald Trump is propaganda that the left is pushing, and they’re even distorting what it says. They’re THAT desperate!
Donald Trump has placed some of what he wants to do in what he calls “Agenda 47”.
Here are a couple of links that you guys could use to counter the disinformation from the left, first with distorting Project 2025 as if it would royally screw people over, and second with the attempt to associate this with Donald Trump.
Both links are searchable, with one link, press “Control F”. With the other, click on the search icon.
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR3MbBd7KN0S1r0o9yUTg9MkIgo3_uVkyt7gOat4ZVj7LVYbuhOW77CrOoQ_aem_H_R0fWXFgJ2ztu3YGK6PQw
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise
I fail to understand how replacing SES with a political appointee will help the VA or other government agencies? The idea is to keep the system efficient and not change each time administration changes. I think the term is continuity. If you are worried about worthless bureaucrats not accountable to anyone, then change the way they are evaluated and maintained. Many GOs become SES, so I applaud the plan to get rid of the bloated number of GOs, and culling the total number of SES, but not getting rid of them completely.
There’s too much bureaucracy in the VA and in the other departments for Project 2025s proposals to be taken seriously. Too much corruption among the bureaucrats for Project 2025s proposals to gain traction. The push pack from these folks would be epic.
https://www.vaoig.gov/reports/administrative-investigation/va-improperly-awarded-108-million-incentives-central-office
I agree about the pushback. But nobody since Reagan has even made the attempt.
“…. we’ve gotta protect our phony baloney jobs!….Hey, I didn’t get a HarRumph out of that guy.” The Gov.
You want to fix the VA? Again…put Kongress Kritters in that Health Care System. “Epic” to describe the push back is too mild of a term to use.
SES’s by by and large consider themselves to be unaccountable to anybody. Making them political means that if they’re not carrying out what they’re supposed to be doing, The president can dismiss them at will. This will dramatically cut back on the amount of resistance to imposition of new policy from the incoming leader.
Left/libtards will subvert that with their “who you know” BS eventually, don’t worry. /sarc
My dad became deaf from bombing missions in a B-17 during
world war two. Never even got a battery for his hearing aid
from the VA.
My mom said to me: “don’t be a fool like your dad. You go after
every benefit you earned”.
And my advice to veterans when they attain the proper age is to
go after every Social Security benefit you also earned as well.
Stay away from the VA healthcare system but use any disability
payments to purchase private healthcare insurance to
supplement your Medicare that you also earned.
When I apply for Medicare A & B, I’ll also apply for TRICARE for Life. I currently get free healthcare and prescriptions at the VA.
When I retired in 2007, I was on cobra for 18 months and was looking for va healthcare but was denied at the time because I wasn’t in Viet-Nam. Turns out that bush stopped some of the funding in 2003. I originaly got an envelope with to join, I had to list my wealth savings/anything of value. Later on, I heard that osama obama increased the funding and I would have to make co-payments. If I applied back in the year 1966, I would have been eligible but I had med insurance from my employer untill 2007 when I retired then went to united HC and at 62 in 2007 I had to lay out some bucks untill I turned 65 and went on medicare primary with united HC as secondary. My friend served in the Navy from 1954-1958 and never went to the va untill a couple of years ago and has to pay co payments. Am happy with like 6+ specialists to go to for medical care
From my grandfather, a World War II veteran, you’d never know the VA even existed– didn’t go near it, mention its name, have anything to do with it, etc.
Having served myself, I know why. VA and post hospital at Ft Bliss shared facilities while I was there– military medicine might treat you like a piece of equipment, but the VA was f*ck it, I’m on my coffee break for everything. They scared guys into staying in– re-used needles and spread HIV by not cleaning endoscopy equipment properly. Grandpa was right.
VA ain’t touching my ass. Don’t get me started on them handing out scads of addictive medications to people while not letting them talk to a shrink for PTSD for 6 months– gosh, what could go wrong?! /sarc
Hopefully they will start weeding out the substandard discharges and shitbags who soak up benefits and fuck it for everyone else.
The VA has medically saved my life 3 times, my soul twice and they are currently saving my daughters life in a shitstorm of a botched surgery from the UW Madison.
The VA will get you whatever you need, need, you just have to know who to ask, how to ask, when to ask and why to ask.
I’ve had many dedicated Doctors at the VA and although they have totally screwed the pooch on mental health care after Covid, it would appear that they are finally learning that we actually do pay attention…
Just because they haven’t given you what you want, doesn’t mean they are useless…
Any other health care system and I would not be alive today. But, I am…
I’m happy you’re alive and that you and your daughter are receiving the care you need. I can’t say I’m too disappointed in the performance of the medical professionals employed by the VA.
Sadly, that is not universal. I waited almost two years after medical retirement (largely, though not exclusively, due to a knee injury) before I ever even received an orthopedic appointment. Not life-threatening, but definitely far too long for something for which useful years are measured in single digits.
Incidentally, while I awaited that first ortho appointment in two years, there were about 30 minutes in which the PA system had repeated calls for a “code [whatever]” with no response. That was followed by about 20 minutes of the same voice repeatedly calling in a “code stroke” with similar lack of reaction. In the interim, I noticed many medical professionals casually walking down the hall, to and from the coffee kiosk; I was too afraid to ask what came of the call.
As a relatively young veteran (only 2 years beyond a 25-year career), I absolutely abhor having to go to the VA because it feels like Scrooge visiting the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come, and I refuse to waste their resources any more than I absolutely must – but there remain many issues facing that organization.
Like that you had good things will the VA. They might not be that way for evetyone– just sayin’.