SATN Episode 368 with Peter O'Rourke

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Get things in the back.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of stew and
the Nun. Just Stu here again tonight. None is busy
running his business down at Cabo, but we are here
at episode three sixty eight, and I want to welcome
a new friend I've made recently. We've had a few
people from my trip to the inauguration in DC, and
Peter was one of those. I was lucky enough to

(01:57):
by happenstances happened to run into down there a Peter,
thank you so much for joining us tonight.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
No, it's great to be here and great to be
on your show.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Yeah, awesome. Now you were the former You were the
secretary of the VA under President Trump's first term. Is
that correct?

Speaker 3 (02:16):
I was the acting secretary for a period of time
in twenty eighteen, in the transition between the first secretary
he had picked and the second secretary that he picked.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
Okay, and now have you been you been active in
politics most of your life? Have you been?

Speaker 3 (02:34):
No? Fortunately, No, No, that was a later in life
entrapment that McBean basically in about twenty eleven. You know,
i'd been out of the service for a while and
I was working in the private sector and worked for
a guy who wanted to get involved in politics, and
I was like, yeah, you know, I got a poly
side agree once upon a time. Why not see what

(02:56):
that's really like. So ran his political or organization and
a few early primary states during that presidential cycle. And
as I tell folks, going to politics carefully because once
you're in, you it's hard to get out. So I
have been around it ever since.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Well, a lot of people get polycide agrees, not too
many actual people who actually get to use it towards something.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
And I won't say that I have either. Maybe a
few of the books that I read have been useful.
Probably The Prince by Machiavelli was probably the one that
has been the most appropriate. But other than that, my
son actually suggested that he wanted to get a polycide
degree and I said, oh, that's fine if you want
to pay for your own school, because I'm sure not
going to contribute to that.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
So do you put it right there? Theater and liberal
arts like basketball, you know.

Speaker 3 (03:49):
At some schools, you know, like maybe Hillsdale and Free
College down of Florida, poly side degrees are probably worth something,
but in most places it is, especially now and you know,
I went through school in the nineties and it was
kind of in doctrination back then too, so I can
only imagine what the typical state school it's like now.
So hopefully that'll change, but for now, yeh, go go

(04:10):
get something. You can do something with an engineering degree
or something, and just just go and listed like I
did first, and just don't make the mistake of going
to school after it.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
So there you guys. So let's talk about your Let's
talk about some of your military service and background. Sure,
let our viewers and listeners know a little bit about
like what you joined, what you did, and and how
was that experience. I think you were in a couple
of different you were a couple of different branches.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
I was. Yeah, so started in that one working on
F Fourteen's probably the best job I ever had. Enlisted
right out of high school, became a structure's mechanic and
then a HYDRAULX mechanic on the F fourteen, did a
couple of westpacts on the Abraham Lincoln, and then then
got out to go to school. So yeah, it was

(04:54):
the best four years of my life.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Awesome, Okay, learned were you mechanically like inclined and kind
of what you did, and.

Speaker 3 (05:03):
The Navy taught me everything I needed to know, which
was probably good. You know. It's it's sort of like shooting, right,
You'd love to get somebody who's never shot before you
can can teach them all the good habits and none
of the bad. Learning how to you know, flatt and
rivets the right way and and cut the aluminum and
you know, join stuff was definitely what the Navy taught.
I mean, still still keep today. Loved working on cars

(05:24):
and stuff like that. So it was definitely something that
that that provided me. But but you know, really since then,
it's it's just been an admiration of aviation. I've gotten
a chance to work in that industry a couple of
the times since then and still just just love it.
So it was it was definitely a great start. And
you know, when I went in, the first Top Gun

(05:44):
movie had just come out, and so it was cool
to be at n A s mermar in San Diego,
and so definitely I got to ride the wave of
that and then as a as an older guy, you
get to see that all come back. So that especially
over the last few hours, the memes on f fourteen
have been pretty epic. So been really enjoying, uh enjoying that,

(06:05):
do you I mean, it's sad that we bombed or
somebody bombed, but happy to see that they were still
on their wheels and at least ready for something.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
They had to be a little weird seeing that, you know,
black and white flear footage and just watching that they
just get ripped apart.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
There was there was a lot of you know, sort
of like the scene in Star Wars. There was a
lot of a lot of a lot of cries around
the country when the last uh sort of operational F
fourteen's were were put to bed. So, yeah, you know,
it is what it is.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
Yeah, the uh and I think that was that there
one of I mean our last swing wing plane we had, right,
we only had a couple of.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah, F one eleven uh F fourteen on the n
evy side. And yeah, I don't think the Air Force
really you know, other than the F one elevens that
they flew once upon a time, that was about it.
So yeah, that the variable wing technology still is, you know,
still works, but now with what we've got in the inventory,
it's yeah, it's a still still actually but not not

(07:01):
usable as much anymore. But anyway, but then went to school.
After that, went to the Air Force. Uh not really
for any other reason other than the fact that they
offered me a better deal than the Navy did, which
is typical as folks know from from recruitments. So I
went in there, got a commission, and then went into
logistics and supply chain stuff and uh, again, interesting times

(07:25):
to be in the first kind of deployment was with Bosnia,
and then then I was in England and nine to eleven,
so pretty much deployed about a month after that happened,
and then came back to the States. They decided to
send me to grad school and and then they decided
they had too many of us and let me go.
So yeah, it was really kind of an interesting ride,
uh you know, from uh from the military perspective. But

(07:47):
I've loved being in it. I loved loved you have
to do love, gotten loved having gotten the chance to
do it, and then stayed very close to it since then,
you know, whether it's contracting or or just being being
around the the services. And I lived about ten miles
away from the Pentagon, so it's it's always close.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
Yeah. Yeah, So in the air. It's kind of interesting
you got into the Air Force because what I understood,
at least back in my day, was the Air Force
was not big on taking a lot of prior service
people for other branches, like you had to have a
very special job. Maybe it was just they were not
hip on taking army guys except for a very couple
of things, you know.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
It was It's My career has been weird, because I
won't say weird, it's been interesting from a timing perspective
because I have entered and exited two different services. On
the the low point when they needed people, and then
the high point when they thought they had too many people.
Both times I left, I enlisted in eighty nine people
they were just taking everybody they could take. Got out

(08:49):
in ninety four ninety five when they were saying, oh
we got too many people. We got to get folks out,
and they were asked, you know, offering early outs. Commissioned
in ninety eight and then got out in two thousand
five into two thousand and five, two thousand and six,
when the Air Force has said, oh we have too
many we have too many officers, so we need to
you know, can you can you please leave. And uh,
you know, whenever somebody offers you a grad degree and

(09:10):
then a three year active duty service exemption, you take it.
So they said they didn't need me, so I was like, Okay,
I'll be here if you need me, but otherwise I'm
gonna go do go, do some other stuff. So it
was it was rewarding.

Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yeah, thanks for the Gradschal appreciate that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Well, at the time I heard rumors that they were
they were letting seniors at the academy graduate and then
you're done, You're you're welcome, no no activity service commitment.
You could just go now. I was a rumor. I
don't know if that was true, but they were. They
were pretty desperate to get people out at the time.
And you know, but it's no different. The services do that.

(09:51):
Every seems like every decade.

Speaker 2 (09:53):
They go up and down. Yeah, I gotta say they
they probably had too many or didn't know what to
do with them, because I know six I was surprised
at the number of Air Force people that were attached
to US in Afghanistan doing all the support positions and
or and Navy and they'd be like, oh, aren't you
long way away from the water.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
I mean if I mean, I remember those days. I
was at the Air Force Material Command headquarters and you'd
see some of these requirements come in, and you know,
from an Air Force perspective, it's like, oh man, you
know what's going on. You'd hear the discussions about the
army and you know, the the ops tempo and the tasking.
And I knew some folks in the Special operations world,
so I knew I knew some of that, you know

(10:33):
what that looked like. But there, you know, it's kind
of expected. But then since then, you know, I've had
a chance to talk to some folks about what those
years really were like and some of the stretching that
we were doing. Honestly, I wonder how sometimes we actually
made it through there. It was definitely much worse than
I think. Folks really knew. The deployments, and I saw

(10:54):
that at the VA. After the fact, you start talking
to veterans that you know, you just start listening to
their stories about, you know, their deployment cycles and what
they were going through and that kind of stuff. And
the combat was the combat we knew, we know what
that is and we accept that, but just everything else
that that it took to stick it, you know, to
stay through and survive those years from you know, two

(11:17):
thousand and three, two thousand and four all the way
through you know, the teams. So it definitely gave me
a different perspective from the VAS from the VA side,
looking back at at what you know, pretty much everybody
that's served during this period of time has really gone through,
whether they're in combat or not.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, right, right, So let's talk about it. So you
got you have this unique opportunity, you got you were
selected as the interim VA secretary for a little while
during President Trump's first term. When you first come coming on,
how just curious, I mean, how were you on the
inside track?

Speaker 3 (11:53):
Did you know that that happened? Right?

Speaker 2 (11:55):
Yeah, I mean how do they like?

Speaker 3 (11:56):
Yeah, you know, I mean it's funny, right because because
now I've got some great friends that have been involved
in like the VA for decades, you know, back to
the Bush years, President Bush years and that stuff. But no,
you know, so I don't tell the story often, but
I you know, having had some experience in politics, right,
the first time I had met now President Trump at

(12:16):
the time, it was just Donald Trump, was in twenty
ten down in West Palm Beach. He spoke at a
rally down there, and there's rumors about whether he was
or wasn't going to run. And part of the work
I was doing at the time was identifying candidates and
talking about you know, specific issues around the debt and
deaf set issues, you know. So I met him and

(12:39):
it was really interesting and as anybody else would probably
meet him at a time, but I didn't really know
him that well. And then subsequently after that, I was
doing a kind of a convention meeting kind of thing
with political folks in South Carolina, and we invited him
to come speak in January of twenty fifteen at our
little conference and it was Myrtle Beach, South Carolina group,

(13:01):
just wonderful group of folks, just dedicated grassroots folks, and
and he came. And so this was January of twenty fifteen,
So this before you know, the Golden Staircase all this
kind of stuff. And got to meet him again. And
and by that point I had done this this little
meeting with these this pretty pretty uh, the same group

(13:22):
of people for a few years, so I knew how
they responded to folks. We had had every every political
candidate you could imagine that it's spoken to these folks,
so you kind of see how they respond to them.
And when Trump came and spoke to him, all I
could say it was different, Like it was a different reaction,
It was a different the way they listened was different.
And so I remember coming back to DC because I

(13:44):
was living here at the time, and I remember telling
some folks that this is just different. Now, I wasn't
working in politics, but you know, you live around here,
you get to know folks. I was working at some
large consulting firms and doing work with DD and things,
and I just said, look, I mean, I don't know
if the guy's going to run, but if he does,
it's going to make a difference. There's going to be
an impact because he's different, and the way people react

(14:06):
to him as differently. Now it's commonplace, right, I mean,
now I think people understand that, even people that are
resistant understand that at this point. But at that time,
it was it was still new. And you know, he
then announced, and you know, I was I was pretty
confident in the spring of twenty sixteen that you know,

(14:29):
he's going to probably win the primary, and you know,
if he wins, this is really going to be interesting.
But for me personally, it was, well, if I want
to be on board this train, there's really only two
fell in my mind at the time, there's only two
ways to kind of join a new administration simplistically that
I of what I knew at the time was you

(14:51):
either you know, write big checks, or you work on
their campaign. And so in the summer of twenty sixteen,
I quit my job and I had a friend that
was working on his campaign. I said, hey, is there
you know well that by that point he was the
nominee and I was like, hey, is there something I
can do? So I did. I end up doing advance
setting up events and doing stuff like that for him
and for Vice President Pence, and I said, okay, well

(15:14):
I've done my part. And so then he wins and
we're all excited, and I got to go up to
New York and got to you know, see the whole thing,
and it was all great. I wasn't on the transition team,
so I kind of just hung around. I was waiting
for a phone call, and people had asked me, you know,
what do you want to do? And I said, well,
you know, I'm I'm a d D guy. Or you know,
maybe VA you know something around the military, and didn't

(15:35):
didn't hear from anybody. So Christmas goes by, and now
I'm getting a little work. So I'm like, well, there's
a good try, but I guess I got to go
ahead and get a job. So I'm I'm throwing my
resume out there trying to get a job the worst
time a year and what I now realized is probably
the worst time to try to get a job, which
is during transitions if you're not going in. And about
three weeks before the inauguration, I got an email from

(15:57):
our senior White House advisor at the VA and U,
a great, great guy named Jakelin and cooogle and he
and it was just as simple emails that hey, uh,
you're you're on the v A v A beachhead team. Uh,
you know, welcome board and sorry we you know, you're
kind of the last guy picked because we only have
like this one position. It's kind of lower level, and
you know you're you're probably not you know, you're probably

(16:18):
up you know, above that, but you would you take it?
And I'm like, well, yeah, I need a job. So
so it began. I let's say, by chance I mean,
I'm sure I was on some list and it was
just a matter of time for those things to get
sorted out. But uh, but it kind of felt like
the last minute again. And so I showed up at
the VA on inauguration Day, swore in, and began the

(16:39):
process of trying to find a job inside the department.
It was, as you can imagine, very I think most people,
especially on the government side, were just purely in shock
at the time. I mean I even ran across later
on in my work at the v A they had
most agencies had already planned things for President Clinton. I

(17:01):
mean that I like presentations, and people had already picked
with jobs they were going to have, and you know,
follow the stuff. So that was a little humorous, but anyway,
so so just kind of kept my head down, did
my job, tried to learn as much as I could
about what was going on. I knew a little bit.
I'd done some projects at the Veterans Benefits Administration beforehand,
so I kind of knew some stuff. But you know,

(17:24):
it's good to be in the right place when the
right time comes around. And I you know, there was
an executive order to set up a accountability office because
you know, the President had campaigned on getting bad employees
out of the VA. So I had made friends with
a guy that was there that was kind of liaisoning

(17:44):
with the White House, and he gave me the executive
order and he said, hey, come up with an operational
plan about, you know, how we would do this. And
I'm like, okay. So came up with a white paper
on how to create basically what was what became the
Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection, and the White House
liked it, and so they said, okay, go set it up.
And uh, I got to learn firsthand, which we would

(18:08):
need about six hours to talk about how to set
something up new in a federal government and a federal
department when no one there wants it to be set up.
And it was, oh my goodness, it was. I mean,
you make some mistakes. You you do some right things,
you make some mistakes along the way. I definitely do
it differently than I did it before, but but it

(18:29):
definitely resulted in a lot of change. Some people lost
their jobs.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Yeah, would you say there was a swamp in the VA?

Speaker 3 (18:37):
Oh? I mean yeah. So I don't want to be critical.
I mean, there's no agent there's no department in the
federal government that that more exemplifies kind of what we
talk about when we talk about accountability and and you know,
how you can change government based on you know, voting

(18:57):
and things like that. I try to explain folks, and
there's a REO, and I think most veterans, you know,
when they really think through this, and especially when their
interactions with the VA, they'll they'll start to probably understand this.
Because I actually spent some time to research going back,
you know, because in eighty nine is when President Reagan
elevated the VA to a cabinet level position. Before that,

(19:18):
it was you know, the three administrations. We had the
Health Administration, Benefits Administration, they operated independently, they had commissioners,
all this kind of stuff. So I went back and
read the congressional testimony that was going on when they
were coming up with the authorizing language for a Department
of Veterans Affairs, and you know, I mean, I don't

(19:40):
know if I looked at it through political lens, but
I just sort of maybe had a bias that it
was like, well, you know, the Democrats were probably against
it or Republicans for it, And I was absolutely wrong.
Sindor Glenn was the ahead of i think government reform
or government operations at the time, and he was kind
of leading the conversation, as you'd expect from somebody like him,
about setting this up. And he was actually very much

(20:03):
kind of against the idea. He thought that it was
going to make it too you know, political, and it
was going to become a you know, just an issue,
you know, keep it where it needs to be. But
but then when you go back further and you read
like with General bad Bradley wrote about the VA, I
mean he even said, look, you know, the VA needs
to be a temporary institution. We're going to help these

(20:24):
guys out, you know, we're going to reacclimate him, you know,
reintegrate him. And you know, he thought about five years
and then you're out of the VA system and you're
back in the in the US's social safety net of
social security, medicare, medicate all those things, because you know,
we had all that back in the fifties, and so
he always saw he saw the VA as a temporary thing.
I think Cinder Glenn had some of the same ideas,

(20:45):
but by that point it had been around for a while,
so they didn't really think they were going to get
rid of the VA, but they you know, they didn't
want it to be political, so they created a VA
that is almost immune to political influence, which you'd think
would be a great thing, right, I mean, i'd be cool.
We don't want a politics plain in this except for well,

(21:10):
what can you and I do about as voters, as citizens,
what we can do about changing the VA. Well, we
can't vote for anybody to change it because the people
we vote for can't seem to change it, you know,
whether it's the executive side or the legislative side. And
so you kind of get into the sticking point where well,
if we expect you know, a President Obama who tried
to change some things about the VA, or a President

(21:30):
Trump or or you know, President Bush or any of
these folks to hey, we elected you, go make the
VA work better, they're kind of like, well, what am
I supposed to do? I mean, I can't fire anybody.
I can't you know, I could barely hire the people
I want to hire in there. There's only you know,
there's a you know, you think about the number of
political appointees that you can put in the VA. It
hovers somewhere between thirty five and forty. For an organization

(21:53):
that pushes a half a million employees, you can't really
you know, implement your agenda and somewhere like that. And
I mean that either, right, if I'm President Biden, I
can't put enough people in there to make a change either.
So but again, I mean, is that the fault of
it not being you know, not the political side, or
is there some other kind of institutional or the way

(22:13):
we've set this up that's wrong. And so you know,
I fortunately I got spent a lot of time thinking
about it, and half since then. I mean, once you've
worked there, once you've once you've gotten a chance to
do little incremental pieces of helping the VA get better,
and most of the time they're never really noticed. Not
because you know your effort wasn't good. It just the

(22:34):
institution's so big that it's hard to Sorry, my light
went out. It's hard. It's hard to change it. But well,
you know it's you know, I think we've got some
we've got choices to make.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
It VA soon, right, I mean you think about it.
B a CDC NIH organization that prior to twenty twenty
not bea but the other ones specifically, but all those
are ones that you know, but definitely prior to twenty
twenty you would never think would be by would have
political leaning right, would be? They would they would be
You know, when the CDC puts something out NIH or

(23:07):
or FDA or whatever, you'd be like, Okay, this is
based on science, this is Legit doesn't matter who's in office, right,
you think it wouldn't we lean one way or the other.
But the problem is when you have no accountability, right,
and the all thing I do is wait you out right,
all I have to do is is so that's that
takes one of my questions. Obviously well after your time there,

(23:30):
but you know the impact of doge right that obviously
has been out for the last six months and really,
as far as I can consider, the first time ever
in our country's history where we really tried to rain
something in and hold people accountable, regardless of how people
feel it was done or the method or who did
it right and all that kind of mess. But just

(23:53):
kind of curious from what you know. I know it's
kind of outside looking in, but you have a lot
of insight most Americans. What do you do? Yeah, the
v has been good.

Speaker 3 (24:04):
So I think probably you know, and this is you
know again, I will preface this, this is my own opinion.
This is from my own observations of what's going on.
But frankly, at VA, I mean, dose has been a scratch.
I mean, it's not really gotten to the meat of
much much there just yet. I mean the impact and

(24:27):
for a couple of reasons too. I mean, and I
think depending on the agency does's impact has been has
varied based on what it what it can do right.
And you're talking about some folks that are very good
at putting data together and finding things with places like Treasury, Wow,
you can make some big deal, you know, big differences

(24:47):
some of the other agencies when you're just filtering through
hundreds and thousands of grants and that kind of stuff
and you start seeing we're payments great stuff. I mean
at VA, I mean you're trying to find the you know,
where services are disconnected from spend, like we're spending taxpayer

(25:07):
dollars and it should be going, you know, every dollar
should be going to a veteran service. Like how how
do you crack that through? Because the BA is very
good at well, I won't say they're very good, like
there's some ominous thing. But but you know you're talking about, well,
I'm going to spend money on healthcare. Well, who's going
to argue with where that money is being spent and
should it be spent this or there or whatever else?

(25:27):
Or is this contract dragmen? That's not something that you
can just bring smart folks in that look at contract
language and go okay, well we need to cut this contract,
because it's you got to have folks that that are
that are much more knowledgeable about what's there. So so
that's why I say it's it's not been negligible impact,
but it's just not been the same kind of you know, dramatic,

(25:51):
Oh we're cutting billions of dollars of stuff. I have
heard of many contracts that have been cut, and frankly,
I'm kind of supportive of a lot of it because
there was a lot of you know, professional services contracts
at VA for staff support and things like that. Those
are kind of easy to say that's not supporting you know,

(26:12):
veteran healthcare or claims processing or those kind of things.
That's you know, Uh, there was one that I you know,
if I had went back in, I would have I
would have cut on, you know, within the first hour,
and it was a you know, a tens of millions
of dollars for innovation and it was specifically tell us
how we should innovate. And I'm like, well, and I'm

(26:34):
kind of a kind I guess part on this, like
if I need to hire somebody to tell you how
to innovate, I need to hire somebody differently for the
job that you're in because that's what you should be doing. Like,
if you can't contribute that, why am I hiring somebody
else to tell you how to be innovative. If you're
in a job that requires you to be innovative, then
you and you can't be, well, then that's a bad

(26:56):
hire on my partner. I need to find somebody that
can do that better. So we had we had some
of that, but you know, once you kept those, they're
done and then you know, you kind of have to
go to the other real The bigger issues of VA is,
you know, how do we improve access? You know, how
do we make sure that we're we're providing veterans what
they need and we're not just a sieve of cracks

(27:17):
and crevices that veterans just fall through. Every day, right,
And unfortunately that's more of what I deal with now
is folks that fall through the cracks and I try
to find noise to get them plugged back in. And
but yeah, I like that job.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
The Accountability Office, so obviously was the first thing that
that got a lot of praise from from the veteran
community that that that President Trump was even trying to
do that, because anyone that has been myself one of
them that has been you know, uh, you know, part
of the BA and has received benefits and has gotten
healthcare and that kind of stuff. I mean, we've all
seen it. We all know the terrible stories of people

(27:53):
dying while waiting on service or getting bad treatments or diagnosis. Personally,
people close to me that you know, things got dragged
out and the cancer eventually got him even though the
v knew they had it or words. Yet people took
their own lives because they got so frustrated, right, which
is this this is the worst thing of all. So
the Accountability Office got a lot of praise. It's awesome

(28:14):
that you were you were a part of that. Do
you see you do you have you seen or heard
is Doug Collins bringing something like that back as President
Trump trying.

Speaker 3 (28:23):
Yeah, so the yeah, so the account So the good
thing about the Accountability Office was so the presidential executive
order that came out in May of twenty seventeen was
the precursor to the legislation that came out soon after that.
So about three months later we had authorizing language in statute,
set up the office. Here's how we're going to do
with that kind of stuff. I mean, I appreciate that

(28:46):
that the veteran community thought it was very positive at
the time, because it immediately got attacked as soon as
we went into operations by Democrats on the Hill. And
I had to say Democrats because they led the charge
against it. I mean, because what we ended up doing
was we ended up showing because we actually had a
had two missions. Part of this one was the whistleblower

(29:07):
protection piece, which I didn't realize how much of a
and this isn't whistleblowers the industry around this of just
how problematic that is. And we've seen that play out
in other and other agencies and things like that. Afterwards.
I mean, we took the approach because if if somebody
came to me with a whistleblower disclosure that was criminal

(29:30):
in nature. I didn't have eighteen elevens, I didn't have
like like law enforcement investigatives authorities, so I had to
basically just send that to the IG. And so you know,
we got lots of different disclosure of people doing really
bad stuff. So I would just you know, passed the
IG and send it to them. But what we thought
we could really make an impact on was all the

(29:52):
you know, all the and whistleblower. I hate the connotation
of it because everybody has some mysterious kind of thing,
but it's like, hey, I've got to you know, there's
a better way we should be doing operations, or there's
something that's working that's not you know, not working. Well,
who do I tell? And sometimes you've got a good
manager that you can talk to, and unfortunately a lot

(30:14):
of times you don't, especially in our system. So we
wanted to be that kind of clearing house for everything
from a good idea to hey, I don't want to
I don't anybody know it's me saying it, but this
is not right and it's not and it falls below
that criminal level, and then we could go figure it
out and make it work. Because most of the time
those whistleblowers just want to see things work better. They're

(30:35):
not trying to you know, get and get in the paper.
They don't want to go testify in Congress. They're just like,
you know, let's just fix this, and that's all. Really,
we were authorized in many ways to do anyway. So
we tried to set that up. You know, we had
had you know, got to remember this is twenty seventeen.
All the whistleblowers from the Phoenix scandal, from all these

(30:56):
other things were still still testifying Congress those kind of things.
So we had a big credibility gap to get over,
both internally and for the administration to get those folks
to just say, look, look were we are trying. The
president's trying. He's direct us to do stuff, work with
us to make this better. So really, I think I

(31:17):
think probably how I scared some people, probably in the
IG and and maybe on the Hill, was one of
the first folks I hired, was one of the prominent
whistleblowers in the Phoenix gid and I got. I got
connected to him through one of our one of the
other folks on the political team who knew him and
had worked at the Concerned Veterans for America and they

(31:38):
had worked with him on his case, and so I
got to meet him, and I was like, and he
you know, he came in as you can imagine. I mean,
he had been under attack and had been discriminated against
and treated like crap for a lot of things, but
he'd hung in there. He was a marine, so he
was just pushing through it. It took an effect, but
he was pushing through it. And so it was like
he came made a presentation to tell me how bad

(31:59):
everything was, and and he was he wanted to help,
and so I I and he really expected me just
to like listen to him and be like Okay, thank
you and send him on his way. So at the
end of his presentation, was like, well, you want to
come work for me, And that's what he really wanted
to do. He just didn't. I don't think he thought
that he'd get that opportunity. And so we brought him

(32:20):
in and he was basically the guy to tell me
how whistleblowers think. I was like, well, I need to
know that. I mean, I've not been a whistleblower myself.
I've not been treated like that in this sort of situation.
So I can empathize with these folks, but I can't
really understand what they're going through, so I need some
interpretation of that. And then he introduced me to the

(32:42):
reporter that had, you know, basically busted that case open
in Phoenix, and so he introduced me to her, and
so I offered her a job too. I think when
I hired her, they really got worried because now I
had an investigative reporter working on the inside of the VA.
I hired her because she ask good questions. I figured, well,
you know, we're supposed to be investigating things, so why not,

(33:05):
you know, why not have somebody that knows how to
really form good questions and has got already has some
understanding of these issues. So so anyway, so.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
And all that kind of oh yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
So it was so it was a fun kind of
initial setup. We hit some roadblocks, I mean just right
in the face that we We did some outreach to
the to the to the unions, went to some of
their training sessions to tell them, you know, what the
office was going to do, and you know, because they
all thought we were just gonna come fire a bunch
of union folks. I'm like, look, I'm not trying to
fire anybody. I'm trying to find, you know, bad people

(33:40):
doing bad things, and we'll fire them because we have
these new authorities. But you know, the institution then took
it as an opportunity to go fire people as well.
And there was just there was just a lot to
work through leadership that the BA wasn't what it should
be at the time. So we were kind of off
on our own a little bit, with which you know,

(34:01):
that first year in the Trump administration was was really interesting,
but I learned a lot, and you know, we were
successful to get the office set up. And so then
when you know, the chief of staff was retired or
let go, however you want to look at it. Then
I got the phone call from the White House. To
be little It was funny because a friend of mine

(34:22):
who was working in the White House called and said,
you're going to get a phone call in fifteen minutes
to ask you if you want to be the chief
of staff. What are you going to say? And I'm like, well,
of course I'm going to say yes. Ten minutes later,
I got a phone call and said, hey, going to
be chief staff. So I had to pack up my
box of stuff and walk across the street and go
get in the chief of Staff's office. It was empty
at the time. And then you know, a couple months

(34:42):
after that, the President fired the secretary and brought in
mister Wilkie from d D and he was the acting
for a little while, and then they nominated him and
then they said, okay, we want you to be the
acting until he gets confirmed. I said, okay, little odd
because we did have a deputy secretary at the time,
but the White House really didn't like him either. So

(35:05):
I got the uncomfortable situation of having to credit, you know,
respectfully ease people into making decisions that they need to
make for their careers. So but but it was a
great experience.

Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah, definitely. I mean you've seen all different parts of it,
and it's just like say, being involved with the Accountability
Office and and all that VA Mission Act and and everything.
You know, it's that's always been the big complaint about
the VAS holding people accountable. Do you feel it's gotten
better having worked inside a deal after I retired, having

(35:39):
to work as an inside of our Army Material Command
and in that part of the Department of the Army.
I mean, I've definitely seen people too that I would
just walk out of their office and I'd be like, well,
they're just stealing oxygen for the rest of us. Like,
you know, so when I saw Doge cuts and I
saw that, I'm like, there's so much the americ people
don't even know that. It's just oh yeah, there maybe

(36:00):
some innocent there may be some casualties of war that
shouldn't be let go. And I've had some of my
friends that have had that happen. But uh, you know, fractors.
But I'm like, there's so much waste that they could
get rid of. Do you feel the Accountability Office and
UH is now doing what it should be and has
you know, solidified itself to be able to have some

(36:20):
authority to do those things.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
No, I mean it as as most things it I
won't say it got politicized, but in the Biden administration,
it just it kind of just fell away from what
it was supposed to do.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
They're they're really need you know, he's got authority.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
You know.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
I struggle on that piece because I always think it's
the intent of you know, it's commander's intent. When you
when you get to those kind of things, if you
put somebody there that intends to follow the law and
do it, and you support them. The statute is there.
You know, we we got resistance from the IG and
and from the Senate, but we still did our job

(37:00):
and we just pushed through it. And maybe naively I
kind of think that sometimes, but I was like, you know,
I'll do the right thing and then you know, if
somebody wants to tell me I'm not, then we can
have that conversation and we'll just see how that plays out.
But you know, the intent that I think the President
had was to get rid of bad people. Now we

(37:23):
have a different you know, what ended up happening was,
you know, we hired another one hundred thousand people a
VA basically over the last four years. And so now
it's not as much you know, good people, bad people,
you know kind of thing, it's what's the right way
to run the VA. Yeah, and you know, we started

(37:44):
having that conversation with the Mission Act in twenty eighteen.
We started to just you know, lay the groundwork for
we need to have a serious conversation about what the
VA needs to do because just like Secretary Collins says,
now we've been doing the same things for a while
and it ain't work. It like, the suicide rate hasn't
gone down, you know, the homeless rate has gotten worse.
That's it. I mean we're still seeing three to six

(38:05):
patients a day on average. If the VA I mean
utilizations nowhere near it needs to be, community care, enrole
or in eligibility is not done correctly. I mean, none
of these things are being done well. So what problem
do we really have at this point? I don't know
focusing on I mean, you're always gonna have bad people

(38:26):
and you're gonna need to take care of them. To me,
that's almost secondary to really aligning the VA to be
what it needs to be. But I think you have
to start by saying what does it need to be? Like,
that's that we finally need to decide that.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Focus on core principles or what it was originally built for.
I mean, that's what it sounds like, is get back
to the basics for I mean, it's a cliche thrown
out there a lot, but I mean you're there to,
like you say, provide service and benefits to veterans. Everything
else just put off to the side for a second
and does it directly or indirectly accomplish that mission, you know,

(39:00):
in that.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Sense that you know, this this team that's there right
now has been doing a good job at that. We've
set aside a lot of the distracting not you know,
not veteran care related issues, or just pushed it off
to the side. Gotten a little resistance, but it's been
helpful to have you know, you know, at least a
majority on your side. We'll see what happens after the
midterms for them and how uncomfortable it gets, you know,

(39:23):
I was, I was the acting secretary for three months
and I testified in front of Congress at least three times,
which was a little unusual, but at the time it
was you know, they were they wanted to beat up
on somebody, and I got to be the guy to
do it, which I actually appreciate it because there's nothing
it's scary, but it's nothing cooler than you know, going
up there and having to be you know, having to
go up there and sit for testimony and stuff like that.

(39:44):
So it's, uh, it's kind of fun. Never never would
have expected to ever get to do stuff like that, but.

Speaker 2 (39:50):
At fourteen, mechanic get up here to do this.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
Yeah, no, getting right, how did you get there? Well,
I'll tell you just to brag me. One of the
you know, one of the things that folks so don't
always realize. So when you see Air Force one flying around, right,
you know the way that those flights are funded in
most cases, not like the White House has a budget, right,
it's more like what we'd see on the on the
D O D side, where you know, the the organizations

(40:15):
that are using that maybe it's a cargo flight or
whatever else, they typically fund those things. And so you know,
the way the president flies to events in the US
or whatever, I'll be funded by an agency that that
that event maybe is for. And so we flew him
to uh, I think a VFW event in Kansas City,

(40:37):
and so I got you know, so so you you're
paying for the flight. It comes out of your budget.
So they say, okay, well you can have a couple
of people come on the plane with it. That's your
that's your payoffs. You get to go. So I got
to go. But the fun part was is it was
in July, and my birthday happens to be in July,
and it happened to be on my birthday, So I
got to I got to fly in Air Force one
on my birthday. So I was like, you know what,
there's really nothing else I can do. I'm done. I

(41:00):
should if I could just retire, I just retire because
it's about the coolest thing I could do. I've done
some cool stuff so just on the military side, but
nothing like that one. So I'm sure I'm pretty happy
about that.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Sort of having him sing happy birthday to you on
Air Force one. That's about the only.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
And may or may not have a picture with them,
but you know that's so. But no, it was that
was cool.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
Yeah, that's a long way from you know, playing beach
beach volleyball at Miramar, you know.

Speaker 3 (41:27):
Following eighteen chains up to the flight deck to you know,
go through the south Chenna see before they blow the
planes out the deck. Yeah, that's uh, that's it's come
a little come a little further than that.

Speaker 2 (41:37):
I went the top gun route. I tried to mess
with you on that with the volleyball.

Speaker 3 (41:41):
Hey, my my Barracks was right by that volleyball court
from the movie. So I got there.

Speaker 2 (41:47):
I got to.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Miramar in ninety ninety one, spring of ninety one. And
so when you see the movie and they're playing those
those buildings right next to it are actually enlisted birthings
for you know, for us. And so I was, I
was right there, so I said, I don't remember if
I played volleyball there up, but I'm sure I did
something there. But the Classic Store was like the right

(42:10):
and next to that, so who knows.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Good good he did something there. The Classics was right
and by so yeah, yeah, for those that are watching listening,
probably can put those two two and two together.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
Oh yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
But so you talked about Secretary Collins. So one question
we have in the chat is what advice would you
give Secretary Collins to Day if you could, or maybe
you already have.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
I don't know, but I would not you know, I
think one of the things that you learn, I mean
I have things I would say that I hope he does,
and that kind of stuff. An orange tree will. But
I mean, there is, you know, just like any other
job I think you have, especially you know, especially if
you've been in the military and you you've kind of
gone through the ranks. Whether postering listed really doesn't matter.
You always gain perspective of what you thought. Maybe you know,

(42:53):
when I was an E three and man that five,
why did he do that, and why did he downgreen?
And then you get to that physician You're like like, oh, now,
I now I understand that, So I would I don't
think i'd ever presume to like, oh you know, oh Doug,
you should do this that now, I mean, I understand now,
just even even in the short amount of time I

(43:14):
got to do it, the pressure and the you know,
the the utmost responsibility, and frankly, i mean, i'm sure
being you know, I'm sure p D set the DD
is like, yeah, it's really cool to be the d
D secretary, and I'm sure other other agencies, but at
v A, it is it does feel differently, not always
good different, but it always feels different because you really

(43:35):
do have I mean, there's lots of agencies with big
missions and stuff like that, and like DoD right, you
have you know, two million or so people out there
that are depending on you every day to do your job. Well, VA,
you've got it like nineteen million that are you know,
interested in what you're doing, either possibly or actively depending
on whether they're you know, they're in healthcare or getting benefits,

(43:57):
and so it's it's it's a it's a little there's
a little more weight to it, so I would say
I think, I mean, I really appreciate what he's done
from a communications standpoint, and knowing some of his comms
team there, and I have to give them a shout out.
There's some of the best comms folks I've worked with
kind I've got a chance to work with them both
in the VA and outside of it, so I know

(44:19):
he's getting good support when it comes to him pushing
back on media, you know, because that was something we
had to fight every day. I mean, and it's one
of those funny things, right, I Mean, we're all we
all know Barrack's rumors. We've all been around like, oh,
I've heard that in this and Barrack's lawyers tell me,
this is the way you know, this is how you
get you one hundred percent all this kind of stuff, right,
we we we kind of intuitively know this, so we

(44:40):
can appreciate it. The media is worse than that than
for the most part, than anything else. And it's not
that they're I mean, I won't say they're bad people individually,
but it's just so easy because you're dealing with so
many different issues at VA, most of them aren't great.
I mean, you know, you're talking about conditions that are horrible,

(45:02):
statistics that are always horrible. Nothing, there's no great stories
about VA. It's always just how to help people through
really tough situations, and so the media will take advantage
of that. So I'm really happy with the way that
he's really just said, look, we're going to get the
truth out there or at least going to you know,
dismantle some of these arguments. But he's got a challenge, right,

(45:24):
I mean, he's got to turn around an organization that's
been resistant to what the American people have said it
once from its VA for a good solid decade now,
I mean ever since twenty fourteen. I mean, we talked
about this earlier, about the political influence on VA and
how hard it is to do. I mean, we've had

(45:44):
bill after you know, legislation after legislation, you know, law
after law get passed, pushing the VA toward having more access,
more choice for veterans on how to get their healthcare,
telling the VA it needs to change the way it
does business, and it's been resistant to it. And I
understand some of the arguments, and I get it, but

(46:06):
but it's time now to make what the American people
want obviously what President Trump wants really what other you
know presidents have wanted as well, and that that's a
VA that works for veterans first. Like and I know
it's kind of cliche, but you know, think about what
the what each individual veteran needs first and then design
whatever they need around that. And I've heard the arguments that, oh, well,

(46:30):
you can't do that because you know, you just can't
do it. Well, no, no, if you're a for profit
healthcare system, you're you're absolutely right. You've got to create
a suite of services and then have people come to
it and you want to mature. Yeah, but when you're
at the VA and we're spending another twenty percent this year,
I mean we're going to have a a half a
billion dollar No, no, we're gonna have a half a

(46:50):
trillion dollar budget soon. There's no reason why. I mean,
our our population in the VA is small compared to
most I mean, we only only have nineteen million veterans
depending on how people count them. That's it, Like, that's
the total population. We only serve about eight million of those.
This is where the numbers and they always tell you

(47:10):
not to talk about numbers, but I mean, there's only
what nine and a half million people enrolled in VA healthcare.
They're only seeing about I mean, there's only about seven
and a half or so million veterans keeping all the numbers,
but seven and a half million veterans that are actually
getting some care at VA. And when you go to
the veterans that actually get one hundred percent of their
VA care, I'm telling you that number is very small

(47:33):
in comparison. So there's no reason why we can't provide
with the billions of dollars we spend that we can
provide what we need. Now, it's gonna be hard choices
to bake. I mean, we're gonna have to figure out
maybe different ways of delivering that care, maybe not through
a main VA hospital, maybe through community care and others,
and maybe some states that don't have large veteran populations

(47:55):
don't have VA hospitals. But now, you know, now you
grab the political third rail, because everybody wants to have
a VA hospital in their state and all that kind
of stuff, and I get.

Speaker 2 (48:04):
It, but that's the bell, right, But the politics people
want just care. So if it means that they can
go to a well now or an urgent care or
a local hospital. Right, the VA should be able to
take care of that. And I would imagine if they
broke down the cost. I mean, you know, you look
and I'm sure you just ran through the numbers. But
if someone and they have taking the cost with the
VA costs every year, divide that by the number of

(48:26):
veterans that they even half serve, Right, maybe it's a
seven and a half eight million the amount they're spending
per veteran. Again, you're spreading it across peanut butter style.
I mean, you could let a person go to a
local chain hospital chain and get care and just submit
that bill to the VA, just like that hospital submits
that bill to every major healthcare insurance provider. Right.

Speaker 3 (48:49):
Yeah, when you start doing simple when you start doing
simple math on the VA budget in total, which isn't
fair because that's you know, benefits and healthcare spend all
that stuff together. But when you do that with the
nineteen million vetter trends, you're like, wait a second, I
could get I could write a check to every veteran
for this amount. Well, wait a second, I don't worry
about I mean that's interesting. What I look at is

(49:10):
the actual oriial tables for veterans, which in twenty forty,
you know, it's it's projected that we'll have about twelve
and a half thirteen million veterans. Now, I mean that's
just because of those are just numbers, right, I mean,
that's that's the you know, Unfortunately, a lot of veterans
pass that kind of stuff, And so I'm just looking forward, going,

(49:31):
are we still going to have a just you know,
are we still going to have a half a trillion
dollar budget for VA when we're serving you know, basically
the population of inner city LA. But I don't know.
I mean, I don't know if we can do that.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
It's like the guy say, the government never short of
President Trump in the first aministration, but the government never
takes regulation away. All they do is keep adding regulation.
The VA being a not being a not for profit institution,
has no motivation to cut budgets and streamline, right, And
uh yeah, if less congressations, you're not getting it. You're

(50:06):
you're serving. Let veterans figure out how to make it happen.
But then you get into the politics of people not
wanting to be a hospital in their area that they
represent to be shut down and so on and so forth.
But uh, I want to ask you real quickly a
little bit let time left. I want to ask a
couple of things. One is the community care you know,
veteran myself, veterans and my family, uh, people that have

(50:27):
taken part in that, that seems to be very successful.
Has that continued to grow? I mean, because if that's
it's really helped get the wait times down, get care,
especially care that's you know, not acute care that's not
necessarily need to get into a hospital at er because
if you can't get an your primary care, you just
go sit in the basement at the vat in the

(50:48):
er for hours and hours to see about something that's
really minor. Is that community care really off because it
seems like.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
Any Yeah, it's I mean, so community care is never
going to go away, and in its current form because
it is in statute at this point, right that was
the process that started in twenty fourteen, established in twenty
you know, twenty eighteen. I mean, there's some bills on
the hill right now that would push that even further
onto the choice side because now, as you know, I mean,

(51:16):
you need to go in and get a referral and
kind of work through the VA, and they have some
control over that that still needs to be worked out.
It's you know, I would encourage everybody to if you
want to get smart on something, get smart on community care,
eligibility rules and what the VA is supposed to do.
So if you hear something different from your local VA,
push back because they will probably fold really quickly. But

(51:40):
that's that's I think now is the point where people
are trying to decide what do we do for that
long term solution for veterans. And you know, I the
VA can do some really great things and I've been
to some VA hospitals that are that are you know,
the potential is amazing. But like you said, I mean
without competition or motivation, accountability, whatever we want to describe.

(52:06):
That's it's it's tough, right because you're just in your
own bubble. You measure yourself and you know, if you
if you decide today I did a great job, well.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
I did it.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
I guess I did a great job. And you're not
comparing yourself to the hospital down the street that saw
fifteen times more patients than you did from a volume perspective,
which means more people got care. You're still sitting with
a waitlist or a backlog of people want care. And
yet you're saying, well, we did we did good today,
you know, feel good about ourselves. I don't. I don't
want to try to make people feel bad about themselves.

(52:36):
But what I do want them to feel is motivated
to see, you know, to truly serve all veterans, not
just the veterans that are lucky enough to make it
through the door and get an appointment. I think the
only way for that to happen is going to be
a competitive environment between community care and and you know,
our VA hospitals to encourage them to get better or

(52:57):
at least maybe even get specialized in things that they
do really do well. And we start just you know,
pushing pushing regular stuff out of the community. But I'll
tell you the thing that I work on now and
I'm more interested in, is I think we can be
so much smarter on the VA side. I mean, you know,
if you have private insurance right now, you do, and
those veterans that do have private insurance, you probably notice

(53:18):
your insurance company saying, hey, you know, we notice you
have a back issue. We'd love for you to, you know,
go get some you know, chiropractor or do some other things,
and it's like, oh, wow, that's really great, you know,
Blue Cross call and they want me to take care
of myself and that's that's that's nice of them. No,
it's actually very cynical because they don't want to pay
for that fifty sixty thousand dollars surgery in five years

(53:39):
that they know you're going to need. Because now with
the tools that they have and population health and you know,
predictive you know healthcare, they can tell you, oh, based
on your you know, your current condition, here's all the
stuff that's most likely going to happen to you. So really,
all they're trying to do is defer cost or push
cost off as far as possible. Now it seems cynical,
but really it's let me give you a better quality

(54:01):
of life, because that's the only way I'm going to
push off these kind of things that are there. I mean,
we've got a huge opportunity with the amount of data
we have with veterans, the amount of let me say control,
but the amount of interaction that we can have with
this population, we could be the gold standard. I mean,
veterans could get the absolute best in population care or
population healthcare management where we're preventive care. Absolutely, that's a

(54:24):
better word. And I just see it like, I think
we're just missing the opportunity because it's right there for
us to take. The tools are getting better and better.
When we get this new health record online, I mean,
we'll have every capability that we need to have, and
I just frankly just don't want to miss the opportunity
because we could set the standard again for everybody else.

(54:45):
But it also I think pulls in folks that I
mean because the VA has a trust I don't say
a trust issue, but it's just like, look, I don't
want to deal with it. It's too hard. I mean
I had never done I had never been to a
VA hospital. I had never done a disability claim before
I actually worked at the VA. Actually I didn't do
it till afterwards because it was just I had heard
from other people. It's like, don't even bother. I feel fine,
I don't need to go to the VA. Don't don't

(55:06):
even mess with it. And when I was growing up
in Tennessee, Memphis, that there was having a whole bunch
of issues in Memphis was back eighties VAS and that
was a place I mean that was the you know,
you went there and you died. You could go in
healthy and you just you died there. Like well, there's
a weird story.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
The running joke is always you know, you know what
do you what do you call it? Doctor graduates bombing
in the class and people say doctor were like no
va doctor, right. I mean, it was just, you know,
there was there was always a run a joke that
that's they they were not the ones that were the
top of the class. But I want to go back
to something you mentioned real quick about the predictive predictive stuff.
It's funny you mentioned who actually has built the company
and stuff, but using AI is working clinics and stuff

(55:46):
like that, and he has built a system and a
service that he sells the doctor's offices and insurance companies
that does that, and they they import, they get the
patient records, all that stuff signed off. It imports it.
The AI engine runs and spits out tells the better
it tells about It tells the patient, tells the doctor,
and tells the patient exactly what they're what all of
their records are, all their lab work and tell and

(56:09):
can predict to them what they're probably gonna face in
the next couple of years, months or whatever. Uh, in
a very human readable, non doctory kind of language. So
it's out there and when you think about and.

Speaker 3 (56:20):
When you think about it, you look at I mean,
I just had a I got a note about a
brother that took his life in the last forty eight
hours and he was dealing with kind of pain every day,
surgery every year, all that kind of suff he just
he was just living with these issues. Now, maybe this
doesn't solve it for him, but I'm like, with all
those folks and all these kind of issues, if we

(56:42):
really wanted to try to solve those, we can't. We can't.
I mean, the technologies, there's those kind of stuff. It's uh,
I mean, I don't want to be smirching anybody's motivation
or any of those kind of things, but it's we
can do better. And and there's getting to be very
little excuses for not.

Speaker 2 (57:00):
To let me ask you this real quick. This is
something that's been on my mind working around the VA
that I have with a lot of different aspects, and
I kind of sat back and looked at it from
you know, the education benefits, healthcare, all the benefits of
the VA provides and and I just kind of had
this epiphany and maybe maybe they're out there and I
don't know, but I haven't seen that the VA assigns

(57:23):
a case manager to a patient. And I feel like
that's where we're missing it. And I say that for this,
they're gonna give this scenario, right, a young young soldier,
young veteran, they're going through stuff, they're there, maybe they
file the disability claim, they've got some percentage of disability,
they're getting VA healthcare, but they also don't know what's
happening on the education side, and they don't know that

(57:43):
these benefits are available in this because there's not a
case manager like there are in the civilian world that
is looking out for that patient, if you would, but
or the veterans who's enrolled in the VAS everything that
they need to know that the VA provides. And I
know this because working with a state veterans claim officer
who used to work be one of my soldiers who

(58:04):
now does that talking to him about certain new education benefits,
He's like, I have no visibility into that. This dude
works disability claims and disability claims only and does a
great job at it. But I'm telling him about other
stuff and he's like, I have no visibility into it.
And that's when I started thinking, is that what we're missing?
Should that be what the VA has or do they
have it? And I just it's only at a certain level.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
Well now is the controversial part of the show, because
as you can see with the poster behind me, so
about two years ago I started getting involved in the
private sector benefits side of things, mainly because I just
kind of want to see what was it really about

(58:48):
that kind of stuff, because i'd heard about and even
in the VA, you know, you hear about these folks like, oh,
we'll get you your disability claims, we'll do this kind
of stuff, we'll help you with that and the other,
and you know, if you don't go through it, you
kind of you always have that little bit of like
what are you trying to do? And you know, I
knew pop folks like dad, just pay me some money,
I'll take care of it for you. I wanted to see,

(59:08):
you know, is it for real? Is there some legitimacy here?
Is it just a bunch of bad guys? What is
going on? And kind of started to I just kind
of went and headfirst into this whole industry and started
realizing that you're right, there isn't really the VA does
have more of a we have all this stuff, you figure.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
It out, yep.

Speaker 3 (59:30):
And that's and that's kind of this. And then we've
got Veteran Service organizations and I'll just say it. I mean, honestly, now,
I don't know where the VA starts and the OR
ends and the Veteran Service organizations begin. They all seem
to be kind of part of the same group. And
and it's not that I I bump heads with VSO's
a lot right now, but it's not that I don't

(59:51):
like them. I'm just like, guys, can we just focus
on what's best for veterans because we all have a
piece of this and we could solve it, but we're
we all want to policy fights, and we all want
to be more influential in the V I didn't understand
that part of it. And then I talked to a
lot of Secretaries of Veterans Affairs at the state level

(01:00:11):
or commissioners depending on how their states set up Veterans
Service officers at the state level, at the county level.
Incredibly dedicated folks, I mean, but they only know what
they know, and so they're doing they're kind of on
the same journey of like, well, I'm gonna go try
to figure all this VA stuff out, and they're gonna
wake up one day at about seventy realize that they've

(01:00:33):
got this huge annotated disability you know, claims book that
they've worked with and they're still not current and they're done.
They've got to retire at some point. There's got to
be a better way to do that. I think. I
think there's some great private sector options for that, as
long as we have some good guardrails around that. The
VA needs to help. And I just don't see the

(01:00:53):
VA as being I mean think about it. I mean
I went through TAPS twice. I couldn't tell you that
it ever had any impact on me at all in
a positive way or a negative way. Frankly, it just
it just was irrelevant. And I think that's not uncommon
for most folks.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Yeah, depends on who you got and that kind of that,
which goes to the VA. Right. I know some people
that you know, Look, I'm in the Buffalo, New York
area right our last last year are are the head
of the VA here and the chief of staff were
both fired and which was not which was under the
Biden administration. But that tells you how bad it was.
And there's other ones and it's not been known to
do good care, but there's others, especially those in Florida

(01:01:33):
that you know, I have buddies of mine, mutual friends
of ours that swear by it, that have saved their lives.
And there's no there's definitely not a standard. There's a
variance across major hot not even talking about clinics, but
major hospitals.

Speaker 3 (01:01:47):
The VA has some of the best prostate cancer centers
of excellence in the country and you never know it
unless you lived in Dallas or Seattle or a couple
of places you just didn't. You just don't know. But
they're there. I mean, you have these little pockets of
great stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:02:06):
But that's where President Biden should have went. Maybe they
would have caught his nine years earlier.

Speaker 3 (01:02:14):
We're all going to struggle with that at some point,
so I like, I don't wish ill On that would
but yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:21):
Yeah, but you're you're right though, I just look at
you know, there's there's patients again, friends of mine that
do this, that actually watch the show. But there are
you know, young patients, children that have multiple ailments and stuff,
and they go to these centers, private centers or funded things,
and they have a case manager that knows everything about

(01:02:41):
their care, everything about what they have going on or whatever.
In my in my where I work in the software industry,
it's very common that we have what we call customer
success managers, which are there's so many patients, so many patients,
so many customers, they just make sure that they know
about the latest, you know, stuff coming out and what's happening,
and if they have any support tickets open it, they're handled.

(01:03:01):
So I take that and transition that into this. It's like,
like you said, of all the veterans seven and a
half maybe kind of full time, so you know, the
ones that are in there that four and a half
or five million, up to eight million that are going
all the time should probably have a dedicated case manager.
Per Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:03:19):
Well, well, if you think about it, right, if the
VA just focused on the success of a veteran, their health,
you know, their success, you know they're being healthy, economic success,
you know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
All the things that we have programs for, all the
things that we spend money on. If we if we
actually were concerned about the outcomes for that veteran, and
that's how we measured ourselves. You're right, the VA would
be structured very differently because right now, the VA structured
as a as a corporate entity. Right we have a
Veterans Experience Office, we have you know, customer relations off

(01:03:54):
of customer relationship offices, those kind of things. But those
are all inward organized, seeing functions that can be almost
disconnected from an outcome. You know that they will tie
them to their own outcomes, to the organization's outcomes, but
but those outcome measures are not necessarily tied to and
many cases aren't to a veteran's outcome. And so when

(01:04:17):
a veteran, you know, goes bankrupt, who's responsible for that? Well,
obviously the veteran is, But was there anything that we
could do to help them have not gotten into that situation?
That's kind of an extreme thing. But if a veteran,
I mean, suicide's a straightforward one. But there's other situations
where we're not you know, we're spending a lot of

(01:04:38):
money on a lot of programs, but but where's the
where's the success mechanism? And all these veterans that are
really successful. You ask them how they got there. I
don't know if the VA is ever going to get mentioned,
and that you know that thank you speech for for them.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
Well, every major hospital has a patient advocacy office, which
is usually staffed by a handful a couple people whose
sole job is or the veteran to go to to
say I don't feel like I'm getting good care? Can
I you know, I feel like I'm not being treated
well or whatever? Most could have been retired first. Aren't
a lot of soldiers serving under me? A lot of
them going through BA. Most of them never know that

(01:05:12):
office exists. They just suffer through a crappy doctor, a
bad experience, or whatever, and they don't even Sometimes they
come to me or my wife and be like, did
you know about this? Here's their number, here's their email,
get a hold of their Their job is to help.
They're like an ig kind of right, but but for
the patient, for the veteran to get on the healthcare
side better. And most don't even know that exists, that

(01:05:34):
there's this office, but it's also barely staffed. That should
be an army there, right, that's kind of your case.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Mane, you know, and it should be it should be
networked in a way where it's not just that one hospital,
it should be across the you know, the vision across
the system. And then it also should have connections to
because you know, as we know, when we go to
help a veteran that's in crisis, it's not just the
healthcare piece, it's the benefits piece, it's the you know,

(01:06:00):
the other types of wrap around services that they need
that we're trying to put all together, that come from
all different kinds of places, and you just have to
you know, you have to know, you know, I get
calls like this all the time, can you help us
with this? And and you're right, you're you start making
connections with all these different strings that can help them.
You kind of wish sometimes it was a little easier

(01:06:20):
than that. And that's why I like some of these
options that I've seen where, you know, to be successful
in helping a veteran, if you're a private sector entity,
you have to do a good job. Like you can't
just say well, I did my best, be happy with
what you got, like you have to go to do
a job or you don't stay in business. And that mentality,
I know is very difficult to do on the on

(01:06:41):
the government side if not impossible, which is kind of
what's led me to, well, maybe more of this should
be so be private because there's a there's a built
in incentive on that side, where I've struggled to find
the incentive, you know, just saying Oh, I want to
serve veterans and I've got a heart for veterans. I

(01:07:02):
guess the cynical part of me, or the part that
I've learned unfortunately, is that that's just that's just not
good enough. I mean, so it just doesn't doesn't do it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
And I don't want to crap all over VA and stuff,
but but I mean, there are definitely a lot of
people working in the VAS that have a good heart.
A lot of them are veterans. Uh, quite a few
locally that work there that I that I've served with,
and they're really trying to do the right thing. But
like with all organizations, the bad apples and all this stuff,
there are other people that are there because that's the
job they got, and this and that, or they think

(01:07:31):
it's stable because it's for the government.

Speaker 3 (01:07:35):
Well, tell you, this is not a people problem. The
VA does not have a people problem. Whether it's the
number of people or whatever. It's not that it is
a structure, it's the it's the environments and the structures
you're putting those people into that you know they can
do their best and never really fulfill their potential or
or get the job done. And there's always going to

(01:07:56):
be people that just are lazy or whatever else. Sure
I got that, but half the time you're not able
to differentiate between the two. And that's where I always
and that's back to the accountability piece. That's the part
that always frustrated me because I would see people really
trying to make a difference get really frustrated because they're
sitting next to somebody else that just doesn't bother. They

(01:08:17):
don't care, and they're like, why I'm working my ass
off and this person's getting promoted the same time I do.
It's same kind of military thing sometimes, but it's like
why am I even working here? And so you lose
really good people that are dedicated because they just like,
you know, it's a what's the point you put me
in a no win situation?

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
We see that with law enforcement all the people where
they go. My management, my leadership doesn't have my back.
Why am I out here risking myself or we like say,
working hard to do or whatever, and Joe Blow or Susie
Blow next to me doesn't and they get paid the
same to it, and they get to go home every
day at three and they sleep well at night. And
I'm stressing because I felt I didn't do one hundred
and ten percent right. So hey, we've been going for

(01:08:57):
a while, and we could keep going, for sure, I
had so many more.

Speaker 3 (01:09:01):
Hey we can talk. I mean, BA is one of
those things you can talk about forever and uh and yeah,
happy to talk about that. Or if we ever want
to get into the disability claim stuff. That's really what
I've been dedicating the last couple of years too with
the National Association for Veteran Rights. Really started that just
to help the private sector folks really do the right

(01:09:23):
thing by veterans and and hold them accountable. And so
we've had we've been working. I've been working across about
almost forty states over the last year and a half
with on the legislative side and things like that. So
there's all kinds of other stuff we can we can
jump into. Happy to do that anytime.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Yeah, let's definitely we'll make sure we get you back
on for sure, because I want to talk about any
b R. I want to talk about you know a
couple of things and this stuff, but anything people had
dogs too.

Speaker 3 (01:09:53):
But my buddy ever in Clark Still that does that
rescues plentier dogs for for veterans. He's got a great
little great thing there.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
So we've ro Rob's on of course in the background. Rob,
we've already lined up two three more shows now with
Peter there you.

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
Go, all right, Hey, that's great, appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Yeah, before we let you go, and definitely stand for
after we close out stands. I want you out before
we let you go. Anything for our listeners and viewers
that we didn't cover on the topics we talked about,
you want to make sure you get out there or
anything that that you're working on that you want to
let people know about that we just weren't able to
get to.

Speaker 3 (01:10:27):
I mean, the plea for folks. I mean, you know,
when you find somebody that you know, a fellow veteran
in crisis, you just reach out and and you know,
try to network them into a local charity that you know,
a group that can help them. Just just connect with them.
Some of these problems are bigger than just one group

(01:10:48):
or one person to deal with, but you know, getting
them started. You know, I had an experience with the
guy down in Florida. Got connected him through a friend
and it was just like, hey, can you talk to
this guy? And that's all you needed. Like literally, I
mean he'd had a a multi multi sert U s
F and and and the agency type stuff. I mean,

(01:11:09):
I'm I'm talking to this guy going my tea whiz man.
You've worked with everybody, all stuff, and he just slipped
through the cracks and he just he just wanted to
reconnect and we just got him reconnected. I mean, he
he was giving his stuff away, doing all this kind
of stuff, but he just got plugged back in and
that's all you need. He just just snap right out
of it. So you never know what might work, but
h but always just kind of jump in.

Speaker 4 (01:11:30):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
I kind of limit now my my nonprofit work just
so I can dedicate time to stuff without you know,
spreading yourself too thin. But I try to just always
pick up the call when folks have you know, can
you help this guy? I mean I may not be
able to do much, but just just connecting with somebody
else and and uh and get him there. So I
would just encourage folks to just keep that part of
it and keep it local. Don't don't get frustrated with oh,

(01:11:52):
the VA. The VA is not going to solve any
of these problems anyway. Just find somebody local that that
can work with folks. That's where most of these solutions
come from. They'll eventually, you know, the other the bigger
groups can get involved, but at the starting point they
a lot of times I find folks just need to
know there's people in their community that's uh, that's there
for him.

Speaker 2 (01:12:12):
So it's all about networking and having friends in low
places like it has helped me in a number of
times from you know, getting it get.

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
I get plenty of calls. From the plenty of calls
it hey, can you help this guy? I'm like, Okay,
give me some more information. I'll get this going.

Speaker 2 (01:12:33):
So he may have called you for me. A couple
of times. We reached out to help family members and
help people.

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):
It's always that's always, that's the it's not the fun.
It's hard to call that fun, but it is the
motivating part of rewarding.

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12:48):
Yeah, well, I mean, you know, sometimes you don't know
how the resolution ever goes because they come fast, but
you get to put in, you know, you get to
contribute a little bit and you know that keeps you
going through to day.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
So absolutely well, Hey, thank you so much for your
time tonight. Thank you everyone for tuning in. Make sure
you check out our sponsors and we've been running them
along the bottom. We will talk to you all next week.
Stay tuned here on Stewing the Nun Be sure and
tune in on Tuesday nights for our Lima Charlie Show.
As you've been seeing, we've had some great guests on
there and with all that, Peter, thank you again, sir.

(01:13:19):
Great great to see you again, Bud.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
Thanks appreciate it.

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