The bill
VA TRUST Act
HR. 6740, 119th Congress.
Sponsored by
Rep. Flood, Mike [R-NE-1]
ID: F000474
Follow the money
The bill
HR. 6740, 119th Congress.
The sponsor
Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.
The money
26 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.
The alignment
This bill's text tracks the "Introduction" section, p. 679-681 of the Mandate for Leadership.
Track this bill's progress through the legislative process
Latest Action
Committee Hearings Held
May 19, 2026
📍 Current Status
Next: The bill moves to the floor for full chamber debate and voting.
1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.
2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.
3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.
4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.
5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.
6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.
7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the 119th Congress. The VA TRUST Act - because nothing says "trust" like a bill that's about as transparent as a politician's promise.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The main purpose of this bill is to modify pay rates for certain Senior Executive Service (SES) employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Because, clearly, the most pressing issue facing our nation's veterans is ensuring that high-ranking bureaucrats are adequately compensated. I mean, who needs actual healthcare reform when you can give SES employees a raise?
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends title 38 of the United States Code to require reports on performance awards and bonuses given to high-level employees (because we all know how well that's worked out in the past). It also establishes pay rates for senior executive positions within the VA, because apparently, the current system is too complicated. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that SES employees are already making bank.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The affected parties include SES employees at the VA (who will likely see a pay bump), veterans (who will continue to wait in line for actual healthcare), and taxpayers (who will foot the bill for this bureaucratic largesse). Oh, and let's not forget the politicians who sponsored this bill - they'll get to tout their "support" for veterans while actually doing nothing to address the VA's systemic problems.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** The potential impact of this bill is a slight increase in pay for SES employees, which will likely be offset by further cuts to actual veteran services. The implications are clear: our politicians are more interested in padding the pockets of bureaucrats than actually helping those who served our country. It's just another example of the "support our troops" crowd using veterans as a prop to advance their own agendas.
In short, this bill is a classic case of legislative myopia - treating the symptoms (in this case, SES employee pay) while ignoring the underlying disease (the VA's systemic failures). But hey, at least it'll make for some great campaign ads.
Rep. Flood, Mike [R-NE-1]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
No PAC contributions found
No committee contributions found
Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.
Showing 32 nodes and 26 connections (40 secondary connections hidden)
Total contributions: $99,811
Showing top 20 donors by contribution amount
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.
— 646 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 3. Section 121 (developing and administering an education program that teaches veterans about their health care options available from the Department of Veterans Affairs). 4. Section 152 (returning the Office for Innovation of Care and Payment to the Office of Enterprise Integration with a joint governance process set up with the VHA). 5. Section 161 (overhauling Family Caregiver Program expansion, which has gone poorly, so that it focuses on consistency of eligibility and awareness that the most severely wounded or injured may require the program indefinitely). l Require the VHA to report publicly on all aspects of its operation, including quality, safety, patient experience, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness, using standards similar to those in the Medicare Accountable Care Organization program so that the government may monitor and achieve continuous improvement in the VA system more effectively. l Encourage VA Medical Centers to seek out relevant academic and private- sector input in their communities to improve the overall patient experience. Budget l Conduct an independent audit of the VA similar to the 2018 Department of Defense (DOD) audit to identify IT, management, financial, contracting, and other deficiencies. l Assess the misalignment of VHA facilities and rising infrastructure costs. The VHA operates 172 inpatient medical facilities nationally that are an average of 60 years old. Some of these facilities are underutilized and inadequately staffed. Facilities in certain urban and rural areas are seeing significant declines in the veteran population and strong competition for fresh medical staff. In 2018, Congress authorized an Asset Infrastructure Review (AIR) of national VHA medical markets to provide insight into where the VA health care budget should be responsibly allocated to serve veterans most effectively. However, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee lacked the political will to act on the White House’s nominations of commission members, and this ultimately led to termination of the AIR process. The next Administration should seek out agile, creative, and politically acceptable operational solutions to this aging infrastructure status quo,
— 646 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 3. Section 121 (developing and administering an education program that teaches veterans about their health care options available from the Department of Veterans Affairs). 4. Section 152 (returning the Office for Innovation of Care and Payment to the Office of Enterprise Integration with a joint governance process set up with the VHA). 5. Section 161 (overhauling Family Caregiver Program expansion, which has gone poorly, so that it focuses on consistency of eligibility and awareness that the most severely wounded or injured may require the program indefinitely). l Require the VHA to report publicly on all aspects of its operation, including quality, safety, patient experience, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness, using standards similar to those in the Medicare Accountable Care Organization program so that the government may monitor and achieve continuous improvement in the VA system more effectively. l Encourage VA Medical Centers to seek out relevant academic and private- sector input in their communities to improve the overall patient experience. Budget l Conduct an independent audit of the VA similar to the 2018 Department of Defense (DOD) audit to identify IT, management, financial, contracting, and other deficiencies. l Assess the misalignment of VHA facilities and rising infrastructure costs. The VHA operates 172 inpatient medical facilities nationally that are an average of 60 years old. Some of these facilities are underutilized and inadequately staffed. Facilities in certain urban and rural areas are seeing significant declines in the veteran population and strong competition for fresh medical staff. In 2018, Congress authorized an Asset Infrastructure Review (AIR) of national VHA medical markets to provide insight into where the VA health care budget should be responsibly allocated to serve veterans most effectively. However, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee lacked the political will to act on the White House’s nominations of commission members, and this ultimately led to termination of the AIR process. The next Administration should seek out agile, creative, and politically acceptable operational solutions to this aging infrastructure status quo, — 647 — Department of Veterans Affairs reimagine the health care footprint in some locales, and spur a realignment of capacity through budgetary allocations. Specifically: 1. Embrace the expansion of Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs) as an avenue to maintain a VA footprint in challenging medical markets without investing further in obsolete and unaffordable VA health care campuses. 2. Explore the potential to pilot facility-sharing partnerships between the VA and strained local health care systems to reduce costs by leveraging limited talent and resources. Personnel l Extend the term of the Under Secretary for Health (USH) to five years. Additionally, authority should be given to reappoint this individual for a second five-year term both to allow for continuity and to protect the USH from political transition. l Establish a Senior Executive Service (SES) position of VHA Care System Chief Information Officer (CIO), selected by and reporting to the chief of the VHA Care System with a dotted line to the VA CIO. l Identify a workflow process to bring wait times in compliance with VA MISSION Act–required time frames wherever possible. 1. Assess the daily clinical appointment load for physicians and clinical staff in medical facilities where wait times for care are well outside of the time frames required by the VA MISSION Act. 2. Require VHA facilities to increase the number of patients seen each day to equal the number seen by DOD medical facilities: approximately 19 patients per provider per day. Currently, VA facilities may be seeing as few as six patients per provider per day. 3. Consider a pilot program to extend weekday appointment hours and offer Saturday appointment options to veterans if a facility continues to demonstrate that it has excess capacity and is experiencing delays in the delivery of care for veterans. 4. Identify clinical services that are consistently in high demand but require cost-prohibitive compensation to recruit and retain talent, and examine exceptions for higher competitive pay.
— 652 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Broaden pay and benefits in critical VA skill sets (beyond medical care occupations) to be more competitive with private-sector industry. IT, acquisition, cyber, and economists are some examples of skill sets that are difficult for the VA to recruit, largely because of the limitations of federal pay scales. l Continue to maximize the use of new VA hiring and pay authorities provided by Congress in the RAISE Act6 and PACT Act7 as well as existing authorities in student loan forgiveness and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Personnel l Foster a culture that is mission (veteran) driven, alert, engaged, and habitually responsive to the veteran, and structure an environment that promotes a flexible and agile workplace. l Increase employee satisfaction/experience to improve recruitment and retention of VA personnel. Go beyond the traditional focus on the extrinsic (monetary pay and bonuses) and seek creative ways to instill teamwork, loyalty, and pride. l Train leaders and managers to promote an energized and productive workplace culture and reward those who do it well. Ensure that senior leaders (SES) set the proper example. l Focus more attention on hiring veterans and military spouses. The percentage of veterans employed at VA has been declining. l Support the White House Office of Presidential Personnel (PPO) in identifying a fully vetted roster of candidates to assume all key positions at VA well ahead of formal nominations. The VA is the second-largest federal agency, yet it is authorized a woefully small number of PA/PAS positions when compared to other agencies of lesser size. Congress and the Office of Personnel Management should be engaged on ways to provide authorities for a higher number of non-career PA positions. The White House PPO can be inclined to discount the VA’s importance, but given the political attention that VA can generate for Congress and the media, PPO should understand the importance of finding talented political appointees to serve at VA. l Increase the number and utilization of Limited Term Appointment Senior Executive Service positions for up to three years to work on special projects to ensure talent refreshment, talent acquisition, and flexibility. — 653 — Department of Veterans Affairs l Manage the relationship with organized labor effectively and proactively. 1. Ensure that any agenda that includes labor/civil service reform in the VA has a clear direction from the Secretarial level, support from the General Counsel, alignment with the Assistant Secretary for Human Resources and Administration, and a unified and strong political will to carry it out. Without those elements, labor reforms are very difficult to accomplish. 2. Ensure that each senior leader in the process gets buy-in from reform- minded career employees willing to accept and support change. Those mid-level and senior-level managers exist, but they will need to be identified early and shown trust and confidence. 3. Ensure that the White House communicates the labor reform agenda swiftly. Trump Administration executive orders on civil service reform (official time, government-furnished office space) were issued too late, and departments and agencies were not prepared to execute them. 4. Anticipate the inevitable opportunities for legal challenges from organized labor, and be prepared for them to happen and be dragged out—which makes early, decisive timing all the more important. 5. Ensure that the White House is prepared to support a concerted and deliberate effort on implementation to avoid perceptions of a disconnected strategy and disaggregated effort. 6. Remain mindful of which labor contracts end, when they end, and what the agency’s goals for renegotiation are. If not done effectively, contract end dates will be missed or lack notification. It is therefore essential to have a clear strategy with respect to what leadership wants from a new contract: Do not make the perfect the enemy of the good in contract negotiations. l Work with Congress to sunset the Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP). OAWP was well intentioned when formed, but it is redundant with the activities of supervisors as well as equal employment opportunity, Office of the Inspector General, Office of Special Counsel, and other policies, programs, and procedures for holding employees accountable. This redundancy results in lengthy investigations, gaps in coverage, and an overall ineffective method of employee and supervisor accountability.
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.