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Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Chairman Moran and I work together in a very bipartisan way on a lot of legislation.

I would like to support his resolution, but we received it only about an hour ago, and so I have been unable to check with my colleagues on this side as to whether there is any objection among them.

Second, although I would like to support it, I have to say no, not because of something it has but what it lacks, and that is, it fails to mention anything about the Trump-Musk assault on the VA and its workforce and particularly the negative impacts of those actions on veterans' mental health and suicide prevention. It fails to call for restoring the VA's skilled professional workforce that is necessary to provide sufficient healthcare, particularly mental health care.

I should also note that prior to Secretary Collins and DOGE, wait times for care--before they took over and seized control, wait times actually decreased in 2024 while the number of new patient appointments increased by 11 percent. So this idea that somehow the VA was wholly failing before this administration is exactly the opposite of reality. The time to process each claim actually decreased. The VA processed 116,192 veterans' appeals, representing a 12.5-increase over last year's record. Those are claims for disability and compensation. Additionally, under the previous administration, veteran homelessness reached record lows--a 55.6-percent reduction since 2010.

The VA also made it easier for veterans to seek mental health care while reducing wait times for that care in new appointments.

Claims that the VA has been placing more barriers for veterans to receive care in the VA and through community care are simply untrue. Since 2019, the VA has made enormous improvements in customer service and has become more welcoming to veterans through historic outreach.

If we listen to veterans, as I do every weekend because I go home every weekend, what I hear is customer satisfaction rising and happiness with VA healthcare. Sure, there are criticisms, and we need to meet those criticisms. There are shortcomings, and we need to improve VA healthcare to address those shortcomings. But VA trust has increased to the point of 80.4 percent this year--an alltime record and an increase of 25 percent since 2016.

Let me just say about labor rights and union activities at the VA, labor organizing and collective bargaining actually expedite conflict resolution. It reduces legal costs. It actually saves money through collective bargaining, not to mention the waste, fraud, and abuse that it helps the Department uncover and address. Those negotiations have allowed the Department to bar criminally bad actors from receiving settlement funds and being reinstated.

There is a lot more to say on this topic, but let me just finish by saying that I hope we can work together. I hope the chairman and I can work together in a bipartisan way to put together our two resolutions and devise one that will pass muster on both sides.

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