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Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am here on the floor because we are in a moment of crisis for our veterans. It is a moment of profound historic challenge to the Veterans' Administration, and what we need from Members of this body--and I am encouraged by the response so far-- is a call to action. We need a plan for accountability. That is our job--to hold responsible officials who have the obligation and opportunity to serve our veterans at a time when Elon Musk and Donald Trump are slashing and trashing our Veterans' Administration, with real-life impacts on the healthcare and disability benefits that are afforded to our Nation's heroes. It is a disgrace, it is shameful, it is unacceptable, and we need to muster the courage and fortitude on the part of this body to call it out and call it off.

That is why I am here, and it is only the beginning of a plan for accountability that will include others--my colleagues coming to the floor this week and next--as well as hearings that we will organize, shadow hearings--not necessarily formal hearings of the committee but hearings that we will have on aspects of this challenge that call for us to highlight the need for action.

We are going to come to the floor as well to seek unanimous consent on measures that will stop the degrading and decimation of the Veterans' Administration. It is illegal. It is immoral. It is immoral because we have a solemn responsibility--I don't need to make a long speech to tell my colleagues about this responsibility. We recognize it rhetorically all the time. I am here not to make a speech but to have an impact.

Next week, we are going to be voting on the next VA Deputy Secretary nominee, Paul Lawrence, and I just want to be really blunt. I voted for Doug Collins to be VA Secretary. It was a mistake because Secretary Collins has not been forthcoming with facts. He has not been transparent. He has not been responsive to us or to veterans and his employees who are asking questions about what the future of the VA will be given the firing of 80,000 members of the VA workforce, projected, in the next few months without a plan, without a strategy, without any forethought about what its real-life impact will be.

I voted for Doug Collins, and I regret it. I apologize for it. I am not making the same mistake with Paul Lawrence. There is no reason to believe he will be any different--not to mention any better--because he is the Deputy. I have respect for their service in the military, as I do for anyone who has worn the uniform, but I cannot--I cannot--vote for Paul Lawrence. I hope my colleagues will be as vigilant as I am seeking to be in voting against him. I will oppose his nomination.

Since taking office, this administration has shortsightedly shortchanged and systematically betrayed our veterans with policies that are against their interests. The goal here: save money so that tax cuts can be financed--tax cuts for the billionaires and millionaires that populate this administration and drive its policy.

They fired already 2,400 VA employees, many of them high performers. They have been promoted to provisional positions because they have been high performers. They are in those provisional positions for a time when they would become permanently in those positions, but because they are provisional, they have been fired; likewise, the younger members of the workforce who have just been recruited for positions that are open and where their talent is vitally needed. They are the future of our VA, younger VA employees who want to make a career of it, want to serve fellow veterans.

Thirty percent of all the fired workers are veterans because 30 percent of the workforce there is veterans. In fact, the newer employees may be veterans in a higher percentage. We are terminating the future workforce of the VA--again, simply to save money to finance tax cuts for Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires and the ultrawealthy.

Now, the workers who have been fired are in positions of healthcare and disability benefits processing. So what is at risk here is literally the everyday medical needs of our veterans. They are physicians, thousands of them; nurses; schedulers; counselors; the janitors who make sure the facilities are clean. The surgeon who goes into the operating suite can't do it alone; he needs his team. We are firing his team as well as the medical care providers.

On the disability benefits side, the increase in workforce that took place in recent years is to deal with the PACT Act increase in applicants for disability benefits, our veterans who have been exposed to burn pits and toxic chemicals. They are in need of screening, advising, consulting, as well as care and treatment.

We had bipartisan support for the PACT Act. The law is dead letter if it is implemented haphazardly, and we are betraying the goals and the trust we sought so proudly to espouse when we passed that PACT Act that recognized the sacrifice veterans are making--and their families--when they have cancer or hypertension or diabetes or any of the diseases that can result from exposure to those toxic chemicals.

VA Secretary Doug Collins has claimed falsely that there will be no impact to veterans' healthcare and benefits as a result of the administration's malign directive.

At the end of the Biden administration, the VA was delivering more benefits and more healthcare to more veterans than ever before as a result of the success of the PACT Act, for toxic-exposed veterans, and trust in the VA was at an alltime high.

We are risking the healthcare and benefits to veterans not just now but in the future because the credibility of the VA will be decimated, along with its workforce.

The cancelation of contracts eliminates another source of resources for our veterans. VA employees are the ones delivering healthcare. VA employees are the ones processing the PACT Act benefits.

I am disappointed and dismayed that so many of my Republican colleagues are seeking to minimize or diminish the human impacts of these cuts, firings, freezes--the cuts in funding, the freezes in hiring, the firings of employees who are there now--even at a time when there are 40,000 open positions. The VA is recruiting to fill them-- 3,000 surgeons, 6,000 nurses, thousands of counselors and schedulers-- open positions. At the same time that it is trying to recruit people to fill those positions, it is firing the workers who have similar or the same positions right now. It makes no sense.

But the human impacts are what trouble me the most. To my colleagues or anyone who claims there are no impacts, go host a veteran townhall in your State. Talk to the local VFW or American Legion or any of the other veterans service organizations. Go visit a local VA medical center or clinic or talk to employees who work there. When you meet face to face with your constituents, the immediate impacts of this administration's malign directives, whether it is out of malevolence or simply malign neglect, will become apparent, and either way, it is unacceptable.

I invite Secretary Collins to actually come to a townhall--make it Connecticut; make it anywhere--a townhall where you will meet face to face with a group of veterans who will tell you what these cuts, freezes, and firings mean in real life to the services that are supposed to be provided to them and will be denied because of these directives.

Let's be clear: The one behind this is Elon Musk. The one who is directing these cuts, freezes, and firings is an unappointed, unelected billionaire who has never contemplated wearing the uniform of this country, not to mention helping or serving our veterans in any way.

Elon Musk, you come to a townhall with veterans. You face them and tell them that they can't have the medical care they need and deserve to treat cancer or hypertension or any of the diseases or illnesses that result from exposure to toxic chemicals or burn pits.

I attended a veterans event last week. I talk to veterans all the time when I am back in Connecticut. I know firsthand what these cuts, freezes, and firings mean to them. The impacts caused by Musk and Trump--heartbreaking, heartless cuts and other damaging directives--are being felt in every corner of my State of Connecticut and every part of our country.

I just want to read a few sentences from Sioux Falls Live, a newspaper in South Dakota:

``Staffing cuts in the federal Department of Veterans Affairs are disproportionately affecting the veterans that the department preferentially hires,'' said members of a South Dakota veterans' advocacy group.

They worry the Trump administration's goal of cutting 80,000 VA employees will put more veterans out of work without a vetting process, and erode the quality of services provided.

Eugene Murphy, of Sioux Falls, is a past national commander of Disabled American Veterans and a Vietnam War vet who was paralyzed by gunshot wounds.

``How are you going to treat my brothers and sisters like that?'' He said. ``This is not right.''

I hope those words will echo in this Chamber. It is not right. It is not right. These veterans in South Dakota have a right to be angry, not to mention concerned and worried not just for themselves but veterans across the country.

We heard that a VA hospital in South Dakota is at risk of losing nearly 20 percent of its staff as a direct result of Trump and Musk's illegal and indiscriminate reduction-in-force plans.

And yet Secretary Collins continues to dutifully carry out the Musk plan with no buy-in, no consultation, no townhall with that.

Now let me read you an excerpt from an article in the Spokesman- Review that contained interviews with some of the VA employees that Collins illegally fired. VA employees like Ricky Noschese who worked at Lovell Federal Healthcare Center.

Here is what Ricky Noschese--I apologize for the mispronunciation-- Ricky Noschese says about that Federal health center where he supervises a team of technicians in charge of keeping equipment running at the hospital--another corrective. He supervised them.

Lovell serves 90,000 patients a year, including veterans, Active-Duty servicemembers, and their dependents:

In less than a year on the job, Ricky had identified more than $10 million in cost savings and had a long list of ideas to improve operations and complete long-delayed projects.

With the support of his boss, Noschese wrote a detailed four-page document to justify his employment. He described how he had helped save taxpayers more than $10 million by using nearly two decades of experience as an HVAC technician to identify efficiencies and find cost-effective ways to extend the life of air-handling units.

He was head of a 12-person team responsible for ensuring clean water, fire safety, and other essentials required to maintain the hospital's accreditation.

Noschese and his bosses hoped he would be exempt from the mass firing, but after they sent the justification memo up the chain, they got a curt, simple, stark response: The document was too long. He should sum up his position in no more than three sentences.

Noschese was told a member of hospital leadership did that, but it made no difference. He had to turn in his badge and go home.

Now I tell you this story in some detail because it shows that efforts to eliminate waste when they are draconian and cruel and indiscriminate actually create more costs. Laying waste to the VA with across-the-board cuts without careful, selective consideration actually raises the expense, as it will in Noschese's job where there is nobody to do that excellent work based on his experience and expertise; and, ultimately, the costs will be higher as a result. But Elon Musk, apparently, doesn't care, nor does Doug Collins.

Take disabled veteran Megan-Richelle Cole. She worked at Lovell, managing the supply of medications and ensured patients so that they would receive only the best drugs, not expired or recalled drugs. When she was fired--simply on the basis of being a probationary employee--she was in the final stages of buying a house. Disabled veteran, doing work responsibly and well, about to buy a house--suddenly, she has no income.

Let me read a few more lines about her:

To make matters worse, the VA didn't provide her with a form required to file for unemployment benefits, and she had to withdraw from that home purchase. ``Everything was going smoothly, like it was supposed to,'' she said, until the sudden termination left her feeling humiliated and lost. ``Nobody knew anything. It was just heartbreaking.'' Cole's supervisors, again, tried to help her preserve her job to no avail.

Let's be clear: This administration's actions have a real lasting impact on veterans' care and benefits despite Secretary Collins' blatantly disingenuous claims that there have been none, there will be none. Elon Musk should know what those consequences will be, and Secretary Collins should be transparent with the administration and with us.

These heartbreaking and heartless cuts will destroy lives and livelihoods. VA Secretary Collins, Musk, and Trump are prioritizing a ``fire first, analyze later'' mindset and strategy at the expense of the very people they are supposed to serve--people who served and sacrificed for us: America's veterans. It is unconscionable. It is unwise and ineffective. It is immoral.

I will say this in closing: Nobody is claiming--certainly, I am not-- that there isn't waste that we can eliminate, that fraud or abuse shouldn't be pursued. In fact, if this administration were serious about fraud and abuse and waste, they wouldn't have fired Mike Missal, the inspector general, whose service under both Democratic and Republican administrations has been exemplary.

He has been saluted and praised in Republican administrations, as well as Democratic, by my colleagues on the Republican side, as well as ours, but he was fired inexplicably, inconsistently with the goal of eliminating waste and fraud. It belies their claims and pretensions to want to eliminate abuse and fraud and waste to fire the watchdog who would call it out, investigate it, and refer it for prosecution as he has done saving tens of millions of dollars for taxpayers and benefits for veterans.

He has served both Republican and Democratic administrations, and there is nothing partisan about anything that I have said here, about the impact on veterans, the cruelty, and deeply heartbreaking consequences of these actions.

My Republican colleagues should join us when we begin next week with floor speeches and unanimous consent requests and the hearings--shadow hearings--that we will conduct and other actions that we will undertake in this call for accountability--a call for action.

Nothing partisan should deter them from joining us. This responsibility is one that we share in this body to highlight and call out and call off the Musk-Trump disastrous and disgraceful cuts in benefits and healthcare for our veterans.

We are hearing from veterans, and again, I encourage my colleagues to hear more directly, immediately, personally from them. I invite Secretary Collins to join me in a townhall as soon as possible.

I invite him again, as I did in a letter recently, to appear on April 2 before a shadow hearing we will conduct in this Capitol. He can explain himself. He can tell me why I am wrong but, most important, he can answer to our Nation's veterans who deserve and need better from this administration.

America's veterans deserve nothing less than for every single Member in this body to call into question these damaging policies. They deserve nothing less than the gold standard in healthcare, as well as full and complete benefits of the PACT Act and in every other respect, the respect and responsibility that we have. To disrespect them is un- American.

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