May 15, 2025
Re: Veterans Administration Funding and Staff Support
Dear Congressman Gosar:
Thank you for your prompt and thoughtful April 28th response to my inquiry regarding VA reductions. I estimate you represent more than 840,000 Arizonans. I am only one. Still, I share with you the priority of serving our veterans effectively. You are my most direct access to Congress, hence this request.
I believe we are on the same page regarding these points:
- Our veterans deserve the finest medical care our country can provide.
- Funding and staffing must adequately support that level of care.
- Since the need may change over time, regular review is necessary to determine if support levels are adequate.
- Congress should control veterans benefit funding to meet these goals.
In this context I am concerned with the plan to reduce staffing and funding to 2019 levels, without first conducting an analysis of the cost and benefit of these changes. Setting arbitrary support levels before a comprehensive analysis is conducted could end up wasting taxpayer dollars and have catastrophic impacts for our veterans.
I agree that it may be appropriate to reduce support levels if a well-documented analysis indicates the need. But I am unaware of any such analysis having been conducted. It is unfair to veterans, staff, and taxpayers to indulge in wild swings of veterans’ support over time, unless changes in need justify such movements.
In summary: arbitrarily reducing staffing levels, then figuring out how to achieve optimum support levels with those resources is a cart and horse problem. It is essential to get it right and keep it that way, regardless of the administration in charge. We will have veterans who need and deserve support across many administrations.
Firing Inspector General Michael Missal without any opportunity to consider his insights regarding support levels appear to me to be a waste of his time and our tax dollars. If his input is deemed deficient, that would be the time to replace him.
The following excerpt from the 2014 Inspector General’s Report documents problems at the Phoenix VA hospital in connection with additional care of burn pit injuries under the 2022 PACT Act. That situation illustrates exactly why I am concerned that arbitrarily eliminating 80,000 employees could lead to similar or even worse system failures.
…case reviews of 45 patients who experienced unacceptable and troubling lapses in follow-up, coordination, quality, and continuity of care. The patients discussed reflect both patients who were negatively impacted by care delays (28 patients including 6 deaths), as well as patients whose care deviated from the expected standard independent of delays (17 patients including 14 deaths). In addition to 1,400 veterans waiting to receive a scheduled primary care appointment who were appropriately included on the Phoenix VA Health Care System Electronic Wait List, we identified over 3,500 additional veterans. Many of the 3,500 veterans were on what we determined to be unofficial wait lists and were at risk of never obtaining their requested or necessary appointments.
I leave you with these questions:
- How will your office monitor this situation to ensure that there is no reduction in the level of care for our veterans associated with implementing support reductions?
- Will you aggressively intervene on behalf of your veteran constituents if deficiencies in veterans’ support/services become evident?
- Will you keep your constituents appraised of your findings so we can understand how our Nation’s obligations to our veterans are being met?
Please let me know if you believe I have misunderstood any aspect of this issue.
Thank you for your attention to this critical issue. I appreciate the immense challenges of navigating the changes now underway in our Federal government. It is likewise a challenge for concerned citizens to remain accurately informed.
While I am contacting you again as your constituent, a have discussed this with my colleagues at the Arizona Independent Voter’s Network and they concur in this inquiry.
Respectfully,
Al Bell
Peoria, AZ 85383
Arizona Independent Voter’s Network
For every complex problem there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
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