Brooks D. Tucker is the author of the chapter on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in the Mandate for Leadership. He is former acting chief of staff at the agency, having served under Donald Trump. His bio in the book also credits him as having served as Assistant Secretary for Congressional and Legislative Affairs at the VA. The bio goes on to say that he is a “retired Marine lieutenant colonel” who “served in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Africa, the Caucasus, and the Western Pacific.”
First, it should be noted that Tucker served as “acting” chief of staff. This is in keeping with a Trump administration practice of appointing top-level personnel to acting positions, at times as a way of avoiding the legally mandated Senate confirmation process. Appointing people as “acting” in their roles also serves to remind them that they serve at the pleasure of the president and thus makes them more likely to carry out orders from the White House without question—even if questions are warranted. If Project 2025 becomes reality, it would not be surprising if the next conservative president simply invokes the theory of the unitary executive and thumbs his nose at the Senate (should it retain a Democratic majority) and appoints people without bothering to obtain confirmation.
During the Trump administration, the leadership of the VA was not without controversy. For example Secretary Robert Wilkie, Tucker’s boss, was accused of smearing a woman veteran who made an complaint of sexual assault in a VA facility. Tucker was involved in the controversy in that he wrote an email casting doubt on the complaint. Tucker wrote: “The sensitivity of this topic…makes me not want to be a naysayer but there are way too many coincidences that surround this.”
A key coincidence is that the woman was evidently a Democrat. ProPublica writes: “Wilkie was convinced the allegation was staged to damage him politically because the veteran was a Democratic congressional staffer, investigators found.” Wilkie’s handling of the investigation into the woman’s accusation led to a loss of confidence in his leadership. ProPublica writes: “The six largest veterans organizations demanded that President Donald Trump fire Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie based on his ‘documented wrongdoing’ in the watchdog report. ‘He no longer has the trust or confidence of America’s veterans.’”
This sort of politicized, unprofessional conduct alleged in news reports and the official investigation into the matter is what may be expected if Project 2025 comes to pass, as leadership in the federal bureaucracy will focus more on political loyalty and less on professional competence.
Plans for the VA
In addition to Project 2025’s general plan to “flood the zone with conservative” appointees, Tucker’s plan for the VA includes another favorite policy of the project: privatization. It is axiomatic among many conservatives that government is always less efficient than private enterprise and that therefore the government can save taxpayer money by contracting with private businesses—even when it comes to the military—or even selling off government assets to private concerns. Opponents of privatization argue that some services (e.g., defense, prisons, law enforcement, utilities, healthcare, and education) properly belong in the people’s hands not just for moral and public policy reasons but also because in reality, sometimes government does do a better job, given that the government is not obliged to make a profit.
At the VA, a form of privatization goes by the name of Community Care. Under the Community Care program, the VA contracts with private healthcare providers to provide healthcare to veterans. This care is an alternative to care provided at VA facilities.
This form of privatization is not bad per se, and it has a long history at the VA. For example, in rural areas, where it is not feasible to build and maintain dedicated VA hospitals, private clinics can spare veterans difficult and inconvenient travel. The issue is in the details. Over the years, the privatized portion of the VA’s budget has grown, and there are criticisms regarding efficiency and cost.
Abortion and Trans Healthcare
Along with praising privatization, Tucker also wants the VA to “Rescind all departmental clinical policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance starting with abortion services and gender reassignment surgery.” Tucker sees abortion as “unrelated to military service” and that the VA “lacks the legal authority…to perform.” Further, Tucker sees abortion as “grotesque… violence against the child in the womb.”
Tucker sees abortion and gender reassignment treatment as a byproduct of “the Left’s pernicious trend of abusing the role of government to further its own agenda.” Of course, the same charge of “abusing the role of government to further its own agenda” could be laid at the feet of Project 2025 should a conservative president gain the White House. Tucker also wants to “ensure political control of the VA.” It is very much a matter of debate whether the VA should be political, or subject to political control, at all. Its mission is to aid veterans, not enforce any particular political view. While top VA leaders may be political appointees, arguably their political affiliation should rank very low on their hiring criteria, and their administrative experience and qualifications should rank very high. Project 2025 explicitly aims to make politics outweigh qualifications.
A short discussion of the issue of abortion and gender affirming care at the VA is in order here. First, according to a final rule published in the Federal Register, the VA does have the legal authority to perform abortions under its general mandate to provide healthcare. (Also, the Heritage Foundation—the prime backer of Project 2025–is fond of the lie that abortion is not healthcare. It is, as any woman whose life is at risk from complications of pregnancy can attest.)
According to a White House Fact Sheet, the proposed healthcare budget for 2025 includes “a total of $112.6 billion in discretionary medical care funding” for the VA. This amount includes “$13.7 billion for women veterans’ healthcare, including $1.1 billion toward women’s gender-specific care.”
According to an article in Military.com, “The Department of Veterans Affairs provided 88 abortions in the first year that it offered the procedure.” Of those, only “28 were surgical.” (The remainder were provided via medication.) Further, “Nine [of the 88 abortions] were because the life of the mother was endangered by the pregnancy, and 15 were because the pregnancy was the result of rape.” (Speaking of grotesque violence…) The rest were provided to lessen risk to the health of the veteran.
According to Planned Parenthood, abortion via pill “can cost up to around $800.” As for surgical abortions, they cost “from about $715 earlier in the second trimester to $1,500-2,000 later in the second trimester.”
Thus, if the cost of a surgical abortion at the VA is roughly the same, say $1,000, one sample year of abortions cost the VA $28,000 out of a sample total of $112.6 billion in discretionary medical care funding and $1.1 billion in gender-specific care funding. In short, the cost is quite trivial, yet it is very much the focus of the Mandate for Leadership.
Similarly, according to the Congressional research service, an estimated…cost [of] gender-affirming surgical care for active duty servicemembers…ranged between $2.4 million and $8.4 million annually. Between January 1, 2016 and May 14, 2021, [the Department of Defense] reportedly spent approximately $15 million to provide gender-affirming care (surgical and non-surgical care) to 1,892 servicemembers.” There are approximately two million service members in the United States. It seems safe to assume there is a similarly small ratio of veterans seeking gender-affirming care to the total number of veterans receiving care.
In sum, while surveying a vast forest with a view toward its management, Tucker’s attention first falls on two saplings he finds morally offensive. Cutting them down would hurt veterans, but it would serve Tucker’s political ideology.
