The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee on Thursday easily advanced Doug Collins’ nomination to be the secretary of Veterans Affairs, setting him up for a full Senate vote that is likely to be uncontentious.
The panel voted 18 to 1, with the lone “no” vote coming from Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), who said Collins’s plans for the VA were “not in line” with what she believed was right for veterans across the country.
Among her concerns was the potential for Collins to overturn a Biden administration rule that allows the VA to provide abortions to veterans for a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or when the life of a pregnant woman is at risk – even in states where it has been largely outlawed.
Collins, a former Georgia congressman, Navy veteran, Air Force Reserve chaplain and former pastor, during his confirmation hearing did not commit to upholding the two-year-old rule after being questioned by Hirono.
“It is something that has been looked at here as what the law actually says, and the original law from 1992 says the VA does not do abortions. Two years ago, that was a decision that was looked at and decided. I will tell you this, we will be looking at that issue when I get in there to confirm that the VA is actually following the law,” Collins said at the time.
But Collins received support from the panel’s ranking member, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), who said he was impressed by many of his answers and commitments to veterans during his nomination hearing, particularly around the expansion of the Pact Act — which expands VA health care and benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxic substances — as well as upgrading the VA facilities and preventing veterans homelessness and suicide.
“I’m hopeful he’ll be the kind of advocate that we really are going to need in this era when the challenges will be greater than ever before fiscally, and the pressure to scale back to cut costs, to pursue harmful policies that may negatively affect our veterans will also be greater,” Blumenthal said ahead of the vote.
One of the federal government’s largest agencies with more than 400,000 employees, the VA has been struggling with expanding its health care delivery system. Major costs and long wait times for care for former service members has been at the forefront of its struggles, which Collins pledged to tackle should he be confirmed.
“At the end of the day, the veteran is getting taken care of. VA care is going to happen. . . [but] there’s different expressions of how we make it better. We don’t do the same things 40 years ago that we still do today,” Collins said. “Our newer veterans deserve every access to finding care where they can.”
Collins’s nomination is set to be easily passed by the full Senate, with a vote expected to come next week.
