Best of the Program | Guests: Russ Vought & Sec. Doug Collins | 6/6/25

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Wow, what a program for you today.

We cover the,

I don't know, did anything happen yesterday in Washington?

White House, the Big Beautiful Bill, and Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

Holy cow.

We tell you why that's important, what I think is really going on, and we get some latest news from that.

from Russell Vogt, who is the head of the Office of Budget and Management at the White House.

He talks to us also about the Big Beautiful Bill, why it's important.

Stu and and I kind of go in depth on that and really try to track down what's important,

why it's important that this bill passes, even though I disagree with the budget part of it, and what is the best approach to get things moving so we can actually get our country back on track and healing and growing as a nation economically.

Also talk to the head of the VA about our

veterans hospitals, our VA hospitals.

They are so far off track, but wait until you hear the progress that has been made just in the last 100 days from Doug Collins.

And bananas.

Can you build a banana in America?

Well, we'll give you that strange, strange, strange answer all on today's podcast.

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You're listening to

the best of the Glenbeck program.

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Now, let's get to work.

Okay,

now let me

tell you the real timeline of what happened yesterday.

No more space alien talk.

No more

joking about what really happened between the two of them.

This has been building for a while, but yesterday it just kind of got, it just really kind of got crazy quickly.

So when you look at

what happened, let me see if I can find this here.

In chronological order, this is what happened because Elon had been calling to kill the big, beautiful bill.

So, first thing yesterday, Trump is responding to Elon's criticism.

Here it is.

Listen.

Thank you, Mr.

President.

The criticism that I've seen, and I'm sure you've seen, regarding Elon Musk and your big, beautiful bill, what's your reaction to that?

Do you think it in any way hurts passage in the Senate, which, of course, what is your seeking?

Well, look, you know, I've always liked Elon, and it's always a very surprised.

You saw the words he had for me, the words of, and he hasn't said anything about me that's bad.

I'd rather have him criticize me than the bill, because the bill is incredible.

It's the biggest cut in the history of our country.

We've never cut.

It's about 1.6 trillion in cuts.

It's the biggest tax cut.

Tax, you would say

people's taxes will go way down, but it's the biggest tax cut in history.

We are doing things in that bill that are unbelievable.

So, Russ Volt, by the way, is going to be on with us here in about 30 minutes.

So, So that was the first thing.

And I think that's really mild.

I mean, he's just responding to Elon's criticisms.

Look, I'd rather have him criticize me than the bill because we disagree on it, blah, blah, blah.

And then Elon responds, whatever.

Keep the EV solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil and gas subsidies are touched.

Very unfair.

But ditch the mountain of disgusting pork in the bill.

In the entire history of civilization, there has never been legislation that that was both big and beautiful, and everyone knows this.

Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill.

Slim and beautiful is the way.

Then, Elon re-opt a bunch of old Trump tweets where he denounced raising the debt limit, and then he made a poll.

Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents 80% in the middle?

Yes or no?

By this point, now Trump, who was showing tremendous restraint, has to respond.

He writes, Elon was wearing thin.

I asked him to leave.

I took away his EV mandate that forced everybody to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted.

He knew that for months that I was going to do this, and he just went crazy.

Then, he writes, the easiest way to save money in our budget, billions and billions of dollars, is to terminate Elon's governmental subsidies and contracts.

I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it.

Me too.

Well, Elon responded by threatening to decommission his

SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

He says, in light of President's statement about cancellation of my government contract, SpaceX,

SpaceX will be decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately.

Now,

this is crazy.

This is crazy.

Then,

Elon, after he lost a lot of people on this, he writes, time to drop the really big bomb.

Real Donald Trump is in the Epstein files.

That is the real reason they have not been made public.

Have a nice day, DJT.

Why would he do this?

Why would he do this?

Elon says, mark this post for the future because the truth will come out.

Now, Trump, again, who I think was pretty restrained all day compared to Elon Musk, I don't mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago.

This is one of the greatest bills ever presented to Congress.

It's a record cut in expenses, $1.6 trillion, and the biggest tax cut ever given.

If this bill doesn't pass, there will be a 68% tax increase.

Things get far worse than that.

I didn't create this mess.

I am just trying to fix it.

This puts our country on a path of greatness, make America great again.

After that, everybody starts to calm down a little bit.

Do you happen to have the Linda Yaccarino and David Sachs tweet?

Because they both kind of stand up for the Big Beautiful Bill and saying

it needs to pass.

Now, Yaccarino is, what, she's a CEO, isn't she?

Or is she the president of

X.

CEO of X.

And David Sachs is a good friend of Elon Musk.

And they're both saying, no, no, no, we've got to pass the Big Beautiful Bill.

So

then you have Bill Ackman stepping up.

Now, the White House said that they were trying to schedule a call with Elon sometime today to work this out, which if you look at the actual facts, Donald Trump was more restrained than I think I've ever seen him.

Would you agree with that, Stu?

Yeah, he did not.

I certainly didn't go nuclear like Elon Musk did.

No.

No.

I mean, he did address it.

He did, you know, he started getting a little more critical about Elon, but it was

it seemed to be ramping up slowly, and all of a sudden, someone dropped nine nuclear bombs

onto the battlefield.

Right.

Bill Ackman writes, I support real Donald Trump and Elon Musk, and they should make peace for the benefit of our great country.

We are much stronger together than apart.

Elon writes,

last night at 9:27, you're not wrong.

So hopefully this is over, but look at the damage that this has done.

This has given the left all kinds of ammunition,

you know, nothing but talking points.

Elon Musk is never going to be re-embraced by the left.

I don't think he really cares about that, but he should

care about, you know,

We need the guy to survive.

He's one of the greatest minds of our day, of our lifetime.

He's probably the greatest scientific mind

as far as putting things into practical use

since Tesla, the first Tesla, you know, the real Tesla.

And we have to have that guy, but we also have to have Donald Trump, and we have to have a country.

Now, I want them to cut more out of this budget, but

let's not blow this damn thing up.

Let's not blow everything up out of the water.

This is not good.

Who does this chaos serve?

Certainly not the country, not the Republic, and not anybody who is trying to navigate these crazy waters.

Glenn, can we talk for a second about the specific allegation of him being in the Epstein files?

Yes.

Hey, we've already known that, by the way.

Yeah.

Number one, it's, of course, technically accurate that he's in there.

They were friends.

Yes.

If you're looking at everything that,

like every flight on Jeffrey Epstein's plane,

you know, Donald Trump flew on the plane.

Now, I don't think there's any evidence that he went to the island.

Certainly no evidence that he did anything illegal with Jeffrey Epstein.

They were friends before these accusations came out.

So technically speaking, Elon Musk is saying something that has been well covered in the media already and

might protect him from legal consequences because of that tweet.

I mean, if they really had a falling out, I mean, Trump, you know, Trump sued CBS over their editing of the Kamala Harris interview.

Being called a pedophile, basically, on the internet, would, I'm sure, merit a lawsuit if they really had a falling out.

But technically speaking, Musk probably would survive that, likely because, of course, Trump is in there.

It's something we've known about for a long time.

There's also, by the way, we should note, probably dozens of other completely innocent people that would be in those files.

Doesn't mean that everybody that ever interacted with this guy slept with children.

So Musk was releasing these videos of him

and Epstein.

And nobody denies that he was around Epstein.

Nobody denies that.

But what nobody cares to recognize is that as soon as Donald Trump, you know, had an inkling of who this guy was really and had one of the women

at his club abused by Epstein, he cut the friendship off, kicked him out and said, we're done.

Get out.

I mean, you know, he was the one guy that I know of, the one guy with moral spine around Epstein.

Right.

And

let's not forget that there's Elon Musk pictures with Maxwell.

So, I mean, is that even true?

That's a very small circle.

Hard to know how many, what's being photoshopped in the end.

I don't even know.

Oh, gosh, are you kidding me?

Is that really?

I don't know.

I just don't know.

I've seen photos of that, but I honestly don't know.

My

I always assume they're fake until I know, but who knows?

Again, everyone has pictures, you know, especially famous people have pictures.

Famous rich people hang out at the same parties, and so who knows?

That proves anything.

And honestly, like, if there was something here, and you mentioned this earlier, Glenn, quickly, that

if there was something that Donald Trump, there's evidence that he did something wrong with Jeffrey Epstein, I can assure you the Biden administration would have found a way to release that.

And it even speaks poorly of Musk in a way that if there was terrible evidence here, I mean, was he going to just go along and not just he'll be quiet about Trump's sexual abuse of children if the cuts came through the spending bill the way he wanted them?

I mean, all of it is absurd.

We all know it's not real.

It's a couple of guys throwing insults at each other.

In this particular case, Trump is much more restrained than Elon Musk, I would argue, even though, you know, again, lots of positives of Elon Musk, but he's the one that really went nuclear here.

And I do hope that cooler heads can prevail because it's good for the country, Glenn.

Because I know you've

really done your homework on Elon Musk, and

he has moments where he is not,

where he's more manic.

Is it possible that this is a manic episode with Elon?

I have

no evidence, not

to be clear, I'm not accusing anybody of anything.

Um, but you know, to look at,

if you read, you know, like the biography, the Isaacson biography about him, yeah, yeah, yeah,

there are periods through that time, you know, times where he's sleeping on the floor of the of the factory, um, you know,

that type of period, if you remember that period, Glenn, where uh it does appear that he goes into what you might call, you know, a manic state and makes a lot of poor decisions, decisions that wind up really hurting the stock price, price,

tweeting out things that he winds up getting sued for.

There are a lot of periods in Elon's life where that type of stuff seems to happen.

Add on to that,

the New York Times, and again, take it for what it's worth, Elon Musk has a lot of enemies inside the White House.

That's something that you should know.

And so we don't know where this came from, but lots of accusations of drug use and things of that nature as well.

When you say drug use, it's really ketamine, isn't it?

Ketamine was one of the, well, it was more than just that.

I can pull the article up.

But one of the interesting notes in the article is

one of the ways the New York Times claims that they

made this available to actually be reported, and it wasn't just a rumor that somebody told them, was they had photographic evidence of these pills.

Now, go ahead.

How many times has someone that you know taken pictures of your pill box or your pill bottle?

Oh my gosh, that happens all the time.

This is not something that occurs to normal people that don't have enemies around them, right?

Somebody around him.

Correct.

My speculation is somebody around him saw him taking pills, took pictures of them, and sent them to the New York Times.

Supposedly, now the Times is like, oh, his friends are concerned about him.

That's their excuse.

I don't buy that at all.

Nobody has friends at that level in Washington, D.C.

Nobody does.

Yeah,

especially that would be like, you you know what?

I'm concerned about Elon.

I'm going to leak these photos of his pillbox to the New York Times.

Like, there's no friend of his who would do that.

It's absurd.

No.

It's somebody who hated his guts or wanted to destroy him and wanted these bad things to come out about him,

in my estimation.

So, you know, could that be true?

There could be some truth to it.

I don't know.

Could it be that he's in some manic period?

Could it just be that he's really frustrated and this is how he operates with everybody else?

And it's not that big a deal.

Most people shrug it off because it's just normal internet drama.

When you're doing it to the president of the United States, it takes on a totally different shape.

Not good.

Yeah.

Here's the thing.

Just pray for both men and pray for our republic.

This is not good for any of us.

We need them both to get along.

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Now back to the podcast.

Russ Vogt, how are you, sir?

I'm doing well.

Thanks for having me.

You bet.

It's great to have you on.

Yesterday was a tough day.

Do you know, has the president had his phone call yet?

Are they coming back together?

Well, I think the president

made some comments to the press this morning that, you know,

he's not looking to have a phone call anytime soon.

But, you know, I think he expressed disappointment yesterday with regard to

some of the comments made by Elon.

But look, Glenn, we're moving forward, and Elon's been an important ally and patriot throughout all of this.

And we've got a job to do, and I think that's where we're most focused right now, is making sure we can get the word out on this bill, get it across the finish line, make improvements where we can, but get this thing home for the American people.

So I agree with both the President and Elon Elon Musk.

I know that there are things in this package that are really important.

And I know, you know, I think the president understands it and Elon doesn't understand that, you know, politics are involved here.

And I don't know why Elon wasn't going after the Democrats and saying, why don't you care some more?

Come on, come on, help us.

But the president is now putting in a rescission package.

What does that mean?

And what is that going to do to this bill?

Well, again, two things I would say, just going back to your kind of initial comment there, I think that the argument that the fiscal challenges of the country are so bad and we need to do as much as we can, I think there's alignment.

There is a total agreement.

I think the issue is how much and this gets to your second part, how much this bill this is not a budget bill.

People get confused because they think it uses a budget process.

It is an agenda bill that uses a budget process.

It's not a budget resolution.

It doesn't give you a comprehensive fiscal picture.

It cannot by law include cuts to discretionary spending, which are all the Doge permanent cuts, right?

So that is something that has to be considered elsewhere, and we are in the process of doing that.

So we just sent up our first rescissions bill.

We will send up more.

This one is $9.4 billion.

Why is it so small?

It's small specifically because of the politics that you mentioned, which is that Congress hasn't passed these bills, and we can do a lot of things ourselves that we don't need Congress.

But procedurally, and this is where

you have new people come into the party and the coalition, they don't know the procedures of government.

If we don't if Congress doesn't pass a resilience bill, we lose the ability to just not spend the money and to use some of our tools that this President is now talking about that we are polishing off that haven't been used since the nineteen seventies to just not spend the money.

And so we have this whole side of effort on discretionary spending, making the doge cuts permanent, a lot of different ways to do that.

We're in the process of doing that.

That is another piece of the puzzle fiscally that you would not get from this reconciliation bill.

So

why are, I mean, because,

Russ,

I know you know this, and I am

an infant compared to the way your understanding is.

So please help me understand.

But

we are up up against the wall with a gun to our head when it comes to printing more money or borrowing more money,

and we've got to cut this budget.

Can you explain to the audience

why

we have to be careful on this?

We can't just go in, and maybe I'm seeing this wrong, but I don't think we can go in and just

take an axe to everything until we get the economy to light the match in the economy.

Am I wrong on this?

I don't think you're wrong.

I think we can do both.

But I think for people, I think it's why the bill is so important.

So you cannot have a conversation about reducing debt and deficits when the economy is not going.

Period, end of story.

It is vital foundation.

Does economic growth get you all of the way?

to where we need to go?

No, it does not.

But the notion that you're ever going to reform these big programs like

that are welfare and the social safety net without a growing economy, you can't impose a work requirement when there are no jobs.

So this bill, and this is where our main thing that we're trying to correct factually, if you adjust for CBO's artificial baseline that assumes tax relief will expire, they don't assume that, they assume spending is eternal.

So Green New Deal is

and spending through that is assumed to continue or the appropriations process, all the woken weaponized bureaucracy all of that but if you have tax components all of those are presumed to sunset right so that is

a fundamental we've known this for decades the way that DC screws and miss and misasses our bills so you've got to pass this otherwise we're going to have a recession that said

this bill actually cuts spending It has $1.7 trillion in savings, reduces the deficit by $1.4 trillion.

It is the biggest mandatory savings proposal in history.

In the 1997s, we were only talking with the work requirements and Bill Clinton and the Republican Newt Gingrich's House.

We were talking about $800 billion

in savings.

Has the problem gotten worse?

Yes, it has, but this is historic levels.

And that's not even talking about the Doge cuts.

And so I think we can do all of them, but we've got to kind of figure out what's this bill doing?

What's the maximum that we can do it?

The Art of the Possible is a three-seat majority in the House and the Senate.

We are willing to go further, but we also know the bill has to pass.

And

those are small majorities.

This is not 20-seat majorities.

And that's a real political constraint that you reflected earlier.

But I'm very bullish.

Glenn, I think at the end of this year, if this bill passes, and the cuts are maintained in it, we can end the year with a paradigm shift on mandatory spending and a paradigm shift on discretionary, we might have the first chance to actually cut non-defense spending by serious levels through the ability to just not spend money or to send up rescions that don't need a congressional affirmative vote on through pocket rescissions.

That would dramatically change.

And here's the thing: it would lead to results.

What has caused the problem we have is fiscal futility.

Nothing can, we can only get any wins, let alone big wins.

This is giving us big wins, and I think it's why we're going to be able to change the trajectory this year.

The argument against that is it's raising the debt ceiling by $4 trillion.

So why do you say we can raise the debt ceiling, add another $4 trillion in debt, and yet, at the end, have a big win by the end of the year?

What is in this bill that is not connecting here?

So any bill that you would have ever had, your Republican Study Committee budget, Rand Paul's budget, whatever, no matter what bill you cut cap and balance from yesteryear, any of those bills act over a 10-year period.

And so over that 10-year period, you're getting to these low balance levels, right?

In the immediate, you all of them assume that in the short term, debt limit, the debt is going up while you make progress.

And so the debt limit, the debt ceiling, is a warning sign.

It itself does not create debt.

Now, it is something that historically has been used, and the president has views, and we agree, but like we haven't gotten anything out of the debt limit in 20, 30 years.

And so the notion that it should be done outside of reconciliation and Republican votes is something that we have been challenging as an administration.

It's just like, this is not serving our interest.

This bill extends the debt limit, but it does include what historic, if you ever historically got anything from the debt limit extension, it would be what is already in this bill.

And that's why we're so excited about this bill.

You know, I saw something from Goldman Sachs last week, and they said we are dangerously close to not being able to sell our debt

and then having to finance ourselves and raise the, you know, the,

you know, the interest that we're having to pay.

Do you know of a number?

Do you have any idea how close we are to that number before this thing?

Because I think we're just really on the edge here.

Where is that number?

How close are we?

I don't think anyone really knows, and I don't think that's you can ever know.

And I think the fiscal storm clouds have been with us for a long time and we obviously see the extent to which it's a problem.

No one is arguing back against that and no one's arguing that back to the critics of debt and deficit at all.

But I think what I would push back a little bit, and I'll add Moody's to the list as well, is that the meta point is true.

It's also one that you've been making for 20 years, and

the conservative movement's been making, this president's been making.

The point is true.

The timing of these analysis are, I think, are for a purpose.

And so, Moody's could have made that determination 15 years ago in the Obama administration.

They chose not to.

They chose to do it right before House passage on an agenda bill that has incredible importance to the American people.

And I think the president's getting Liz trust

in that vein.

And the notion that Goldman Sachs doesn't have a sense about the way the baselines work in the watchdogs is also not true.

And so I think what you have going on here is

the reality of our fiscal situation and people continuing to rightfully educate on that.

But I think in the financial community or some of the watchdogs, there is a timing aspect that is specifically designed to use the

legitimate concerns to take down a bill that is otherwise fantastic

on a dishonest basis, and that's one of the reasons we're working so hard to get our message out.

I know your time is really tight.

Can you just tell me quickly, what are the things in it specifically that you say are fantastic that maybe people don't know?

I think the biggest thing is the level of welfare reform that's in this bill.

The Medicaid reforms, the work requirement in Medicaid to get people back into the workforce, the food stamp reforms, both tightening the work requirement and giving states a share of the cost of that program,

$1.7 trillion in mandatory savings.

And then the second aspect of it is you talked about the Doge

recisions.

And the only spending in this bill is spending that is specifically designed strategically that is conservative and we would do it it like border security, right?

If that's an appropriations process, we're headed towards a shutdown.

It looks like the first term, we can't actually have a non-defense fight over cutting because we're fighting for the wall.

This bill includes that type of spending so that it clears the field strategically for us to have a massive fight on non-defense spending in the appropriations process.

We talk very rarely about that dynamic, but I think it's one that your audience will find very exciting.

Russ, I so appreciate the fact that you are there with the President.

The President has earned the right to get his, I mean, we're, what, 120 days or something into his first term.

I think he's earned the right to get his way.

I am worried about the debt and the deficit, but I do trust you, and I give my support to the president.

I hope that we can get past yesterday and move to get things moving in Washington, because I think if this doesn't pass, I haven't heard a better idea from anybody.

I've just heard no's, but I haven't heard a better idea.

We've got to get moving on this, or we're in trouble, deeper, deeper trouble than we are already in now.

Thank you, Russ.

Well said.

Thanks, Glenn.

Appreciate you.

You bet.

Russell Vogt, Office of Management and Budget.

I have to tell you, this is a really,

this is a really tough thing.

This is,

you know,

i don't like some of the things that are in this i don't like some of the things that are are

happening but as i just said i haven't heard anybody address the issues in a way where they where we can get it done you know it's one thing to stand here and say i won't vote well okay

but by not doing anything by not moving um and by by collapsing this

what do we have instead?

We have more chaos and more trouble.

And I hate this.

I hate this.

But I really truly believe our back is up against the wall on this debt and the deficit.

And

if we don't get these tax cuts passed,

I wanted bigger tax cuts, but I'll take these.

If we don't, That is going to dramatically affect

our lifestyle, and the world is in enough chaos.

Let's just pray that everybody does the right thing.

Whatever that is, Lord, let your will be done.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Doug Collins is joining us now, U.S.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

Doug, how are you, sir?

I'm good, Glenn.

How about you?

Really good.

I can't thank you enough for everything that you guys are doing at the VA.

I mean, I just think

there are so many of our veterans that have been treated so miserably.

They're killing themselves like they've

never done before.

I mean,

I know that you heard some of the things that we've talked about here where, you know, people are just killing themselves

trying to make a point that we got.

The VA

is in dire need of transformation.

So thank you for caring and thank you for doing everything that you are doing to transform it.

I appreciate it.

I appreciate it.

It's a lot.

Can we get out of this at all?

I mean, is there how can we get and privatize as much of this as we can?

Well, I think the issue of privatization

is probably not the right

answer in this.

I think what we have is we have the tools that President Trump and I, frankly, I'd worked on when I was in Congress back in a few years ago was actually beginning to make this system much more less about the VA and more about the veteran.

And that is getting the care out of the centralization services all the time of everything having to do with coming to our hospital, coming to our client, but using our community doctors and others.

One of the big issues that's always brought up with privatization, and

it's a valid discussion, it's something to talk about.

It's not something we're looking at, mainly because

The thing that gets separated so much from the VA is that the VA is just like, has the other issues and same issues as the private and the public hospitals, and that's in recruitment doctors, a lot of other things that's going on.

But then the specialty nature of a lot of what we do with them.

So the big thing we can do is, one, I think we can streamline this issue.

We can save money.

That's what we're looking to do.

We're cutting literally hundreds of millions of dollars out of bad contracts, bad stuff, but at the same point, getting the veterans, especially those that you just talked about a minute ago, which are on my heart, that are coming to a system that is not listening to their needs and then in turn believing that there's nowhere else to turn for for them, and many of them are taking their own life.

And that's just something that this is not going to be acceptable in anything.

But we're finally asking the right questions and putting the you know the community and our private doctors, our public doctors, and our VA doctors to help get these veterans the help they need.

Okay, so let's talk about a couple of things that you are doing.

You know, you had a

massive backlog of cases, and

you've brought that backlog down over over 25% in a hundred days.

What did you do, and what does it mean to the veteran?

Well, what it means is a several of them.

What we did was just leadership.

Then, what gets measured gets done.

Okay, I think that's an accountability factor that we have, and I brought to us now an accountability factor that says you're either going to do your job or you're not going to work for us.

And so, 260,000 backlogs.

Let me explain what that means: is that's the 260,000 cases of people asking or applying for for benefits through disability benefits that it went over 125 days okay it should never have been there some are growing longer 260,000 we've cut that to under 200,000 as you said within 100 days we've also begun because that is now freeing up work we're now actually processing more

if you remember the the dreaded scenarios that all the mainstream media the New York Times and the Post and all the unions were saying if you brought people back to work it would be terrible and be awful and you know doing this we've actually are processing more claims per day right now than we ever have in our history.

We're actually processing more than we're getting in for the first time in a long time.

What it took was simply saying, guys, you're going to do this.

It's not a choice anymore.

When I inherited a department in which however you feel sort of like if it feels good, do it.

They were everybody just sort of operating on their own time zone.

And I said, we're not going to do that anymore.

The VA is going to actually be about the veterans.

So that's how we've done it.

And it makes the difference in it now that a veteran is not calling their congressman, they're not calling everybody else.

They're getting what they've earned, and we're fulfilling that promise.

So help me out on this.

You know, we reached out to you and your team after I interviewed a dad from San Antonio last month whose son Mark took his own life in April right in front of the VA hospital

because he believed he didn't receive adequate care for pain, that he was having mental health issues, et cetera, et cetera.

Speak to the dad who feels like the VA has failed his son and what you're trying to do to make this right

I will just as I did one night I actually was on with him and this shows you a difference then I go in any area I can to say look when we're doing it wrong or we're doing an issue that we need to at least address

and in this situation I think it's something we need to address and I did this with him before is I

my heart hurts and I think it shows that the the problem that we have in our system that has drug itself into a point in which we have just sort of handled the mental health crisis, we've handled the traumatic brain injury, the PTS issue

in such a way that we just sort of said this is sort of the lined up way we do it.

And yet, I've got

the I'm telling our doctors, I'm telling our folks that we partner with nonprofits and others saying we've got to try something different here because we're not moving the needle.

Since 2008, the suicide number has not changed in this country.

And we're spending $588 million or more every year to, quote, prevent it.

But yet, in our services, we're still treating it many times with medicine.

We're still treating it in times.

We've got to do a better job of getting more counseling in there.

We're getting more clinicals.

But also, something that is that I've took from and we've been looking at from many of our veteran groups and others, including folks that you've been dealing with, but Bobby Kennedy are well at HHS, is we're looking at alternative medicines.

We're looking at hyperbaric chambers.

We're looking at possible use of psychedelics along with counseling.

Anything we can to get them the help that they need so they don't feel like the VA is not listening to them or they're getting just handed a bottle of pills.

And that's something that we don't need to be looking at.

They need to be getting help and not just a medical condition.

I mean, it's interesting to me that the Germans looked, you know, handed a lot of their soldiers bottles of pills so they could just fight and fight and fight and fight and become animals.

And we train our people differently or humanely, but we humanely, but we train our people to be able to go in and pull the trigger when they have to.

But is it fair to say we spend all that money doing that, but when they come home, we don't spend enough money and enough time to try to deprogram that, to bring them back into our society

and how to deal with all of the stuff that they were trained to do?

Is that fair?

Yeah, I think it's a fair assumption.

And I think it's also the changing face of warfare.

And in a quick, just a moment here, I mean, in World War II, I had, you know, I've had World War II friends.

They went with only two things in mind.

They were either going to win or come home dead.

They had no time frame to come home.

They were just going.

As war has progressed and now up until the last two, you can bring that all up way up into the last 20 years, the GWAT generation,

less than one, about 1.5% of the population.

have participated in foreign soil in this battle, but yet we've done it over and over and over again.

And so what we're having is these folks who are in four to six to eight years who have all of this stuff built up.

We sort of broke them down to become

the soldier, Marine,

airman, sailors that we needed, but the machine, and then they come back out.

And then when they're going so much, they never have time to process.

And for some of them who get out within four to six to eight years, this is something that's not enough time to get in the system

to say, here's how I cope.

And so you've hit it exactly in the sense that we're not spending the time in a transition.

This is why Secretary of Defense and I, on an unprecedented level, this has not happened that we've found before where us as secretaries sat down and said, we've got a transition problem.

And so it's owned by DOD.

They do the transition of folks coming out, but yet if anything happens in it, I get blamed for it.

So I just told Pete, I said,

We got to fix this.

We've got to start working on this.

Maybe you may own it, but I'm getting blamed for it, and I'm not going to get blamed for something I can't do.

So right now, we're working on getting that transition better so that we have a warm handoff, especially for those who are hurting already, to come into our system and receive almost white glove treatment where they're coming in warm handoff so that we have a better chance of affecting change.

And here's another aspect.

I'm opening it back up to where we're going to partner with nonprofits.

We're going to partner with foundations.

We're going to partner with groups that are already doing good stuff.

And instead of us wasting money on things that we don't need to be on, I'm going to use other groups that are already in this

arena to say help us here and connect them with them.

Yeah, it always kills me when you have something like, for instance, in a different subject, but you have something like AA, that works.

That always works.

And then you find these people who are running these centers who are like, well, we're going to change it and we're going to do our own thing.

It's like, no, but that works.

Why not just do that?

It's free.

Why not just do that?

Oh, it's amazing.

Glenn, you'd be amazed at what I see here of just red tape issues that we're already starting to fix.

And so, I mean, we're taking out, we put best medical interest so that our doctors aren't having to go through a second opinion or a third opinion to get somebody to the help that they need.

We're now actually going to be taking amputees who need, and I have the real experience of this, my daughter's in a wheelchair, that we were making them go to their primary care to possibly an orthopedic, to a PT, to an OT before they could just get reset for a new chair.

I said, that's bullcrap.

We're cutting that out so they get a better experience and we give them the earned respect that they have.

You know, a lot of critics, Democrat lawmakers especially,

look at the proposed 15% staff reduction that you

are championing here.

And they're saying that's going to lead to a shortage of doctors and nurses.

How do you plan to protect the frontline health care services for veterans and cut 15% of staff?

Well,

first off, is 15% is a goal.

And that was come from the president.

He said, well, I'll look over all agencies, see what you can do.

And if you don't set a goal, nothing gets done, Clint.

You know that.

And your listeners know that.

So this is a goal.

They said, okay, 15%, can you do that?

And if you can, how do you do it?

But what we did, because we knew, and the president knew this, that the VA is a really a unique organization in government.

We're the only truly everyday facing department that we have dealing with this medical kind of issues we deal.

And so what we did early on was that we're not even going to put in jeopardy doctors, nurses, which the Democrats and others are lying about, you know, being we've protected over 300, over 300,000 positions within our health care system and our disability rating system that said, look, you're not even eligible

to take an early retirement.

You're not eligible to do this up because we're not going to cut the very things that we need.

But I've got literally thousands of other employees on duplicative HR processes, contracting processes,

you know, human resources processes.

I mean, I was amazed here, and I talked about that permissive attitude.

We were supposed to centralize our payroll several years ago.

The previous administration said, nah, if you want to do it differently, I found out that we had over 60 locations doing their own payroll

and that was hundreds of people at a lot bigger expense.

So this idea, look, here's what has come up.

Everybody's rocked about the VA.

GAO has said for 10 years we've been high-risk lift.

The Democrats, Republicans, everybody on the Hill, and I've said this in my hearings, all of you, I can show you comments where you say you want efficiency, you want the VA to work better, and yet the first moment I start saying, here's some change in eBay, then all of a sudden it's about the worker.

Well, I believe our VA workers are great folks.

The VA is not a jobs program.

The VA is a service organization.

And we're changing that mindset.

Have you thought of, I'm sure you have, but have you thought of doing things like in a private company, you know, I like to incentivize people and say, hey, we are way over budget or

we're trying to make this a better process one way or another.

Just tell us, and then we'll give you, the employee, you know, a kickback or a bonus or whatever if that works and it came from you.

Have you thought about incentivizing the people to streamline and to save?

Yeah, we're looking at that.

I've been saying it everywhere I go.

I've been in 16 states over 50 of our facilities that I'm not even close to halfway yet.

And everywhere I go,

that's exactly what I'm telling them.

Unfortunately, unlike private enterprise, I'm bound on how I can offer incentives and stuff

for that.

But what we're also offering is saying, hey,

how can we make this better?

I found that you empower American workers, Glenn.

You empower our people to do good.

They're going to do good.

When you believe in them, like I believe in them, and say, I want you to go be the best that you can be.

And if you see something stupid, you let us know and we'll fix it.

They're going to go out and do things.

And also, here's the other alternative.

Also, good people will not work where bad people are tolerated.

And we're making it very much of an emphasis to get rid of bad people who are not wanting to do good things.

It used to be a culture of failure up here or failure sideways.

If you fail, we just put you up somewhere at the top.

That stopped the minute I came in.

And we're getting rid of people who can't do the job.

Doug, I really appreciate it.

I love the fact that you're a servant of the Lord and, you know, and you're, so I know your priorities are right, and that's on people.

So thank you for what you're doing.

We appreciate it.

I appreciate it.

It's always good to talk.

Anything you need to let me know, okay?

You got it.

Thanks.

Doug Collins, U.S.

Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

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