The Senate on Monday confirmed Robert Wilkie to be the next secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.Wilkie, previously an undersecretary at the Pentagon, is the fourth VA secretary in five years and has a lot of work ahead of him to modernize the agency and deliver on President Donald Trump’s campaign promises to provide better, more timely care and services to veterans.
The VA, the second largest federal agency behind the Department of Defense, continues to grapple with staffing shortages and bureaucratic obstacles to improvement.
Last month, the VA inspector general concluded the agency has more than 2,300 clinical vacancies. As of July 1, nearly 700,000 veterans were waiting longer than a month for appointments. Some 76,000 of those were waiting longer than six months.
And the agency has yet to implement a comprehensive reorganization plan to provide greater accountability following an inspector general report this spring that found VA officials at local, regional and national levels knew for years about dangerous conditions at the VA hospital in Washington but did not fix them.
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07.12.2025