The Senate voted Tuesday to confirm former Rep. Doug Collins as Veterans Affairs secretary, capping off the former Georgia GOP congressman’s smooth journey to become a member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet.
The 77-23 vote came after Collins previously sailed through committee and easily cleared the simple majority threshold needed to invoke cloture on his nomination last week.
Republican senators praised Collins, who has served as an Air Force Reserve chaplain since 2002, on the chamber floor ahead of his confirmation.
Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said Collins would “improve veterans’ access to care,” while addressing the “alarming” rate of veteran suicide and homelessness.
Meanwhile, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, said Collins’ time as a lawmaker means he “understands the importance of being accountable” to Congress.
“Rep. Collins, a veteran himself, recognizes the challenges veterans face with the VA,” Grassley added. “During his time in the House of Representatives, he was a supporter of giving veterans the choice on where to seek health care. He and I agree that the VA needs to do better by our veterans and taxpayers alike.”
Collins is poised to take the helm at VA at a time when the agency is seeing hundreds of thousands of additional veterans sign up for VA health care programs, largely driven by the 2022 law known as the PACT Act, which expanded benefits to former servicemembers exposed to toxins while serving overseas.
The burgeoning costs of providing care under the PACT Act is one part of an overarching fiscal debate centering on how to trim excess from the agency’s budget without hurting veterans’ access to or quality of care. Collins during his confirmation hearing pledged that “we’re not going to balance budgets on the back of veterans benefits.”
The department is also still struggling to modernize its electronic health care record system, a fraught, multibillion-dollar effort that has drawn concern from lawmakers and prompted a programmatic reset and a 2023 contract renegotiation that changed the next phase of the agreement from a single five-year term to five one-year terms.
The change, officials said at the time, would allow the VA to annually reassess the deal with contractor Oracle Health. Most recently, the agreement was renewed in June 2024 for an 11-month period.
Collins drew more opponents Tuesday than he had five days prior, when the Senate voted 83-13 to invoke cloture.
Among those who opposed Collins’ confirmation Tuesday were Sens. Angela Alsobrooks, D-Md.; Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del.; Cory Booker, D-N.J.; Maria Cantwell, D-Wash.; Chris Coons, D-Del.; Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill.; Mazie K. Hirono, D-Hawaii; Andy Kim, D-N.J.; Edward J. Markey, D-Mass.; Jeff Merkley, D-Ore.; Christopher S. Murphy, D-Conn.; Patty Murray, D-Wash.; Alex Padilla, D-Calif.; Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii; Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., Tina Smith, D-Minn.; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.; Mark Warner, D-Va., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass; Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I.; and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
Hirono also cast the lone vote against Collins in committee last month. At the time, she cited concerns that Collins would back the overturning of a Biden administration regulation to allow the VA to perform abortions in cases of rape, incest or when giving birth would endanger the life of the woman.
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