Fixing veteran suicide with a task force

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to create a task force to address veteran suicide. He’s bringing out the big guns: the secretaries for a dozen government agencies will be on it.

The task force has been given one year to do the following: develop strategies to lower the rate of veteran suicides, design and propose to Congress a program of local grants, and develop a research strategy to improve coordination and monitoring.

The Department of Veterans Affairs was allegedly already serious about preventing veteran suicide. Its 2018 report, second paragraph, says, “Suicide prevention is VA’s highest clinical priority” and that it’s “focused on preventing veteran suicides through intensive efforts.”

Here’s one example of its intensive efforts: The November 2018 Government Accountability Office report on the VA’s suicide prevention outreach says that the 2018 suicide prevention media-outreach budget was $6.2 million. It was for radio and print ads, public-service announcements, ads on billboards and buses, digital search ads, social media content and more. Targets were veterans, their families, their friends and the general public — all groups who need the information. Yet the VA spent only $57,000 of that money and guesstimated they would spend a total of $1.5 million, leaving $4.7 million untouched. And they mostly ignored Suicide Prevention Month two years in a row.

So why didn’t they spend the money? Because there was a vacancy in the suicide prevention office. A single vacancy. The GAO report says there was no one to “make decisions.” Contrary to federal control standards, the VA didn’t bother to assign responsibilities to make sure the work continued.

I know President Trump has a special place in his heart for veterans, but I just don’t see a group of department secretaries managing to solve the VA’s problems. They run too deep.