His Victories
This site holds Secretary Collins to account. Accountability that only counts a man's failures isn't accountability — it's a vendetta. So here is the other ledger: what his VA has done that worked, documented the same way we document the failures — with dates, numbers, and sources.
How to read the labels. VA-reported means the figure comes from the VA's own releases — real, but self-graded. Independently reported means outside outlets or another agency's data confirm it. Mixed means VA numbers that independent reporting has carried, sometimes with caveats. We label his victories the way we wish the VA labeled its promises.
The claims backlog — cut by more than 70%
Mixed. The disability claims backlog (pending over 125 days) fell from 264,717 on January 20, 2025 to under 70,000 by July 2026 — the first time since February 2020. Average decision time dropped from 141.5 days to 75.6 days. VA processed a record 3,001,734 claims in FY2025, then broke it with 3,111,399 in FY2026 — over $207 billion in compensation and pension awarded. Veterans’ advocates quoted in the coverage call the benefits operation “light years ahead of where it was” — while warning that speed is not the same as accuracy. Both halves of that sentence are the record. Sources: VA, Jul 7 2026 · VA, FY2026 record · Military.com
Veteran homelessness — the best housing year in seven years
Mixed. VA permanently housed 51,936 homeless veterans in FY2025, the highest total since it began counting, and ran a nationwide “Getting Veterans Off the Street” surge in May 2025. HUD’s independent Point-in-Time count found 32,495 veterans homeless on a single night — a record low (that count night was January 2025, so the long trend’s credit is shared across administrations). In fall 2026 VA awarded a record $1.17 billion in homelessness grants to 680 organizations. Sources: VA, Nov 26 2025 · VA on HUD count
Suicide prevention — $111.9 million to the organizations veterans actually reach
VA-reported, independently covered. In September 2026 VA awarded $111.9 million to 191 community organizations through the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program — aimed at the veterans VA care never touches (61% of veterans who died by suicide in 2023 had no VA care in their final year). Fox grantees served roughly 17,000 veterans and family members in 2025 and connected 2,647 previously unconnected veterans to VA care. Sources: Becker’s, Sept 30 2026 · Military.com
Community care — record volume, and the red tape actually cut
Mixed. VA completed a record ~60 million community care appointments in FY2025. In August 2025 it extended community care authorizations to a full year for 30 specialty services, ending the 3-to-6-month reauthorization churn — “No veteran should have their health care disrupted by red tape.” In September 2026 it eliminated precertification for authorized community care outright. (This family notes, without rancor and without forgetting, that the advanced endoscopy its own VA surgeons recommended in March 2026 was never carried out — five months of scheduling produced a booked consultation and no procedure. The policy is right. The execution is the whole argument of this site.) Sources: Army Times, Aug 5 2025 · VA precertification page
The electronic health record — restarted, after three years of paralysis
Independently reported. The Oracle EHR rollout, paused since April 2023 after safety failures, went live at four Michigan systems in April 2026; Collins expanded the 2026 schedule from 4 sites to 13, and by August 2026 the system was live at 11 hospitals. The restart decision predates him; the acceleration and the 2026 execution are his. The cost is another matter — Congress is currently fighting VA over a contract ceiling raised to roughly $27 billion, and that dispute is part of his record too. Sources: Military Times, Apr 10 2026 · Nextgov, Aug 2026
Home loans — the 29 millionth loan, and a foreclosure shield restored
Independently reported. VA guaranteed its 29 millionth home loan in August 2025, with volume running 19% above the prior year. When the VASP foreclosure-rescue program lapsed, the VA Home Loan Program Reform Act (signed July 30, 2025) created a permanent Partial Claim Program; VA opened it for submissions June 15, 2026. The honest footnote belongs in his ledger too: VA’s own figures say 10,000+ veterans lost homes during the gap year before the shield was restored. Sources: VA, 29 millionth loan · H.R.1815 · Military.com
The records handoff — attacking the 180-day wall between DoD and VA
Mixed. A September 8, 2026 executive order directs continuous sharing of service and health records between the Department of Defense and VA — historically a 90-to-180-day paper handoff that stalls every new veteran’s first claim. VA projects 20–30 days saved per claim; that part is a projection, not yet a result. The order is real, and Collins championed it. Source: Military.com
Smaller cuts, personally announced
VA-reported. Benefits paperwork cut by nearly two-thirds, with the compensation application itself being cut from roughly 20 pages to 5 (his stated target: end of 2026). The backlog of veteran families waiting for health care enrollment eliminated. Forty-three new VA health care facilities opened since January 2025 (VA’s count). And his standard, given under oath: “If you hurt a veteran and you’re working for the VA, you will not work for the VA. That is my commitment.” Sources: VA FY2026 release · PBS NewsHour testimony clip
Why this page exists
Every item above is the VA doing, at scale, what it promises. Which is precisely why the founding case on this site matters. A department that can move 3.1 million claims in a year, house 51,936 homeless veterans, and cut its backlog by 70% is not a department that can’t schedule one authorized consult, correct one conflated record, deliver one approved power chair, or return one hotline call. It is a department that does those things when it decides the case counts.
Secretary Collins gets full credit here for the victories that are his — labeled honestly, sourced, and updated as the record grows. The letters ask only that the same competence reach the cases that don’t make the press releases.
Know a documented Collins-era VA win we’re missing — with a source? Tell us. It will be added with the same labels.
The standard is the ask
This page is the proof of what the department can do when a case counts. The founding case on this site is still waiting for that same competence — one consult scheduled, one record corrected, one callback returned. Two ways to move it:
- Sign the petition — Secretary Collins: read the record and answer. A named human, a tracking number, written answers, a date certain. Signatures are verified before the count is published.
- Tell your story — if your family’s case got the version of the VA that isn’t on this page, put it on the record. Documents first, consent controlling, nothing published that the record cannot carry.