I’m running to keep Trump from gutting Missouri veterans’ health care | Opinion

I went to Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis on Wreaths Across America Day to visit my parents. Like so many families, I came to remember, to say thank you and to sit quietly with the weight of what service costs.

When I arrived, volunteers were still working their way through the grounds. My parents’ section had not been reached yet, so I stopped a volunteer, took a stack of wreaths and placed them myself. There was no ceremony. Just cold air, steady hands and rows upon rows of headstones that make one thing painfully clear: Freedom is not abstract. It has names. It has dates. It has families left behind.

That should have been the entire day.

But while wreaths were still being laid, news broke that the Trump administration had quietly confirmed the elimination of more than 30,000 positions across the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system. No announcement. No explanation. Just paperwork and the assumption that no one would connect the dots.

If you want to understand how an administration values veterans, ignore the speeches. Watch the staffing charts. Look at who disappears. Or more accurately, who is never replaced.

Earlier this year, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins floated plans to shrink the VA workforce. Veterans organizations, medical professionals and advocates pushed back hard. The public backlash was intense enough that it appeared the plan had been dropped. Washington moved on. The story faded.

What followed instead was something quieter and far more dangerous. A hiring freeze. Pressure on senior staff to retire early. The stripping away of union protections. A workplace that became so demoralizing that seasoned nurses, clinicians and mental health professionals chose to leave rather than endure it.

Jobs stayed empty. Clinics stayed open. Demand did not drop. Fewer workers were expected to carry more weight. Then, after months of rising wait times and burnout, leadership erased those vacant positions and called it efficiency.

Roughly 1 in 10 VA jobs disappeared

This past week, I heard directly from the people living with the consequences. Nurses. Therapists. VA employees who chose public service knowing they would never be wealthy doing it. In a single day, multiple people told me they were watching entire teams vanish, including hundreds of mental health roles.

Here in the St. Louis VA system, at least 55 full-time nursing positions have now been permanently eliminated. That is not a budget line. That is fewer appointments. Longer waits. Exhausted staff holding the system together with less and less support. For veterans already living with pain, trauma or depression, it means deciding whether fighting for care is worth the cost.

This is happening even though the VA’s own inspector general warned last year that the St. Louis system was already critically understaffed. Leadership had the data. They understood the risk. They proceeded anyway. Since Collins took over, roughly 1 out of every 10 VA jobs has disappeared. Throughout it all, he has insisted nothing essential is being lost.

Veterans always pay the price for that kind of dishonesty.

There is a reason this pattern is familiar. The endgame is privatization: Starve the system. Let frustration build. Then point to the damage as proof that public care cannot work. Once veterans are pushed into private networks, the money flows freely. Hospital chains bill more. Insurance companies take their cut. Contractors line up. Veterans’ health becomes a revenue stream.

Wall Street sees it clearly. Veterans are reduced to margins.

I spent my career in uniform. I have buried friends. I have stood in cemeteries such as Jefferson Barracks more times than I can count. Veterans are not asking for luxury. They want competent care from people who understand military service, combat injuries and the long aftermath that follows both.

When it is properly staffed and supported, the VA does that better than anyone. That is exactly why it is being hollowed out quietly instead of attacked openly. If this were honest, there would be outrage.

Which brings me to my representative in Congress.

Ann Wagner: Not an advocate for veterans’ care

I am running against Ann Wagner. She often speaks about her son’s military service. She is quick to cloak herself in patriotic language. But when tens of thousands of VA health care jobs were eliminated, including nurses and mental health staff serving veterans in her own district, she said nothing.

No statement. No questions. No pressure.

While Missouri veterans lost access to care, she stayed silent. While nurses were cut, she stayed silent. While families worried about appointments and mental health support, she stayed silent.

I was at Jefferson Barracks that day. She was not.

Missourians have seen this routine before. Grand gestures. Safe rhetoric. Silence when leadership requires confronting power instead of accommodating it.

Veterans do not need another photo opportunity. They need appointments that exist. Nurses who are not stretched past the breaking point. Mental health care when they ask for it, not months later.

Honoring the fallen while cutting care for the living tells you exactly what priorities are driving these decisions.

If anyone asks why I am running for Congress, this is the answer. I am finished watching veterans used as symbols while their care is quietly dismantled. I am done with management speak that hides real harm. I am done with elected officials who know better and say nothing.

We can do better. But only if we stop pretending this is accidental and start naming who is responsible and who is complicit.

The graves at Jefferson Barracks are silent.

The truth does not have to be.

Veterans advocate and social entrepreneur Fred Wellman of Wildwood is a candidate to represent Missouri’s 2nd District in the U.S. House of Representatives.