Budzinski Presses VA Secretary Collins on Protecting Workers’ Rights and Modernizing VA Systems
WASHINGTON, DC— Today, Congresswoman Nikki Budzinski (IL-13) pressed Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins during a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing, raising serious concerns about the Department’s reduction in force, position on collective bargaining rights for employees, and ability to bring the new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system online to VA sites across the country.
“Mr. Secretary, when you endorse President Trump’s executive order stripping VA employees of their labor rights, I believe you devalue their work. Coupled with a threat of significant staff downsizing, I hear from constituents working at the VA in my district that they have increased fear and stress and there are deep morale issues at the workplace where they believe in the mission of serving our nation’s heroes,” said Congresswoman Budzinski.
Additionally, Budzinski questioned how the Department plans to successfully implement and expand the new EHR, given the planning underway for a reduction in force. As Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, the successful, efficient implementation of the EHR system has been a top priority for Budzinski.
WATCH: Budzinski Presses VA Secretary Collins on Modernizing VA Systems
Budzinski’s opening remarks as delivered can be found below:
Thank you, Chairman Bost, and thank you Ranking Member Takano. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, for being here today.
I appreciate your time, and I do want to take a minute to just address the claims that you’ve made about the VA’s performance has gotten worse from the Previous Administration. By many measures, I want to highlight the great work of the VEO, the ‘Veterans Experience Office’ within the VA that has been measuring specifically veteran trust scores. They have come up with a veteran trust score which is at an all-time high at 80.4% in 2024, which was an increase of 25% since 2016, when we first started recording this metric.
VA employees, many of them veterans, as you know have been stepping up to meet the demands, you referenced the PACT Act, which was a historic expansion of care. But now with more staffing cuts on the horizon these public servants are being asked to do more with less is my concern. Almost four in five VA employees are members of unions and collective bargaining rights give them a process to address their concerns in the workplace and ensure sound working conditions. I believe this helps both the employee and the veteran being served. Mr. Secretary, when you endorse President Trump’s executive order stripping VA employees of their labor rights, I believe you devalue their work. Coupled with a threat of significant staff downsizing, I hear from constituents working at the VA in my district that they have increased fear and stress and there are deep morale issues at the workplace where they believe in the mission of serving our nation’s heroes.
Of course we agree that improvements can and should be made at the VA and I want to say that despite testimony none of us on this committee believe that the VA is perfect, but improvements and changes I really do believe need to be done in a manner that is thoughtful legal and based on the input of stakeholders, which includes us in Congress.
I’m going to shift gears and talk about one area that you have touched on. I’m really honored to be the Ranking Member on the Tech Modernization Subcommittee with our Chairman Mr. Barrett, and so I want to spend a little time talking about the EHRM as well, which I think is one area that we can all agree is a place that could use improvement. Your remarks mentioned an accelerated roll out of this system, and I too really do want to see EHRM be successful and can acknowledge that there have definitely been stalls and not a lot of success seen to date. But I think it’s worth taking a minute to talk about the program and where it started and then where it is today. So, this program actually was started during the first Trump administration. In 2017, the VA signed a $10 billion sole source no bid contract with Cerner which some have said, the GAO has mentioned, that you know influenced by the so-called Mara Lago crowd. As Cerner struggled with the implementation then Oracle acquired them in 2022. So, as you know there’s a total of 170 VA sites that need to implement the new EHR system. Since 2020 VA has rolled out, and I think we could acknowledge, only six sites which is not great.
Now VA has announced plans to roll out EHRM at 13 sites by 2026, which is progress. But my concern is that that leaves about 151 sites left and so if we’re accelerating that to 20 by 2031, how are we going to get there? This is going to be a major undertaking, and I’m just very concerned with the staffing levels in particular if we’re not fully staffed how we’re going to meet this metric. So, in the midst of what I think is a massive reduction in force and then a barebones IT budget, I’m worried that this is going to set up the VA for failure. I completely agree with what you mentioned standardization – that is something we’ve talked about on our subcommittee and something we should be moving to. But some of the unique challenges as you know is that every VA has their own unique system and trying to get all of them to standardize is a challenge, but I agree with you that’s something we should be committed to looking at.
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