WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to tackle the problem of long call wait times by automatically disconnecting calls that keep a veteran on hold for 30 minutes, sources confirmed today.

“For too long, we have kept our nation’s veterans in an unending limbo of hold music and meaningless reminders that ‘their call is important to us,’” VA Secretary David Shulkin said. “But starting today, your call is important to us no more."

“Let’s be honest: if we haven’t gotten to the call after half an hour, you may as well get on with your day.”

Shulkin noted that the Congressional Budget Office said the new program would shorten the average hold time for veterans to 29.9999999 minutes, down from 481.73 in the third quarter of 2014, the last year for which records were not lost when hard drives were mistakenly smashed to bits with pile drivers, then burned and dumped in a disused uranium mine.