WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), a member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, released a video with North Carolina native and U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie discussing their work to improve the VA and help ensure veterans receive the benefits they need and deserve.
Watch video of the discussion HERE.
Senator Tillis: I have to thank my friend, he was my friend long before he was the Secretary of the VA, Robert Wilkie who worked in my office with me for several years before he went on to the Department of Defense and now heads the VA. He has been responsible for a transformation, and it’s amazing because we talked about all the problems the VA had when he was in my office, so tell me a little bit about what your first 90 days on the job were like and the state the VA was in then and what it is now.
Secretary Wilkie: Thank you Senator, it’s wonderful being back home in North Carolina but it is also a privilege being with you. I was privilege to return to politics with you and I have always said I learned more from you then you could ever learn from me and I thank you because I’m here because of you and your dedication to the veterans in North Carolina.
The VA was in a great state of turmoil, moral was low and it had been battered in the previous administration from scandal after scandal. It required the calming of the institution by walking to post, talking to people, changing the command philosophy so that people at every level of the VA had a say in how the department was run.
Growing up in a military family and having served in both the Navy and the Air Force, I take walking the post seriously, and as a result of that, people out in the field serving the VA have been able to see VA leadership and engage with them. We just hit an all-time high of trust and approval from the nine and half million veterans whom we serve at 90%. Four years ago the VA would have been lucky to hit 50%. We have transformed, we have offered veterans for the first time complete choice so if they want to go into the private sector and we can’t provide them the services they want, they are free to do that.
We also set a record last year of 59.9 million appointments at the VA which was an all-time high, even higher than the appointments after World War II where 15 million Americans demobilized. We are reforming and about to launch electronic health records so for the first time we will be able to dip into the Department of Defense and look at an entire record of a veteran from the moment they began so people like my father will no longer have to carry around an 800 page paper record.
We have seen a transformation, and I think there are two statistics that I value the most. In the last Administration, the VA was always ranked 17 out of 17 in terms of best places to work. In the last two years, we reached number 6 and we are closing in on NASA. The other is that during this crisis as the rest of America has been challenged by an epidemic the likes we have not seen since World War I, we have fewer requests for leave and fewer absences among our 400,000 employees than we did at this time last year. People are proud to come to work and carry on what I think is the most noble mission of the government.
Watch the full discussion HERE.
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