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Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I am here today in the hope that our colleagues will join me in condemning actions taken by President Trump and Elon Musk that are devastating to the healthcare of our veterans, as well as their disability benefits under the PACT Act, and most especially, deeply harmful to mental health care and suicide prevention for veterans, and to engage in this call for action restoring the doctors, counselors, psychiatrists, all who are essential to veterans' healthcare and have lost their jobs--thousands of them.

The plain, staggering fact is that Musk and Trump are kneecapping the VA healthcare system at a time when the VA projects a 59-percent increase. That is right. In this fiscal year going to 2032, a 59- percent increase in inpatient and outpatient mental health care is projected.

Now, they have taken a wrecking ball to the VA in order to save money that then can be used for tax cuts going to people who need them least--the ultrawealthy, the billionaires and millionaires--at a time when veterans who need healthcare most will be deprived of it.

The reason is quite simply the staffing shortages that they have purposefully created--2,400 already; on the chopping block, another 83,000--without a plan or a strategy, admitted to us by the VA itself. They are making it up as they go along, but they know they want to slash and trash the VA workforce.

This kind of cruel, heartless, heartbreaking approach to the VA comes at a time when they already have 40,000 openings of exactly the kind of skilled professionals that they are firing--40,000 openings, including 3,000 physician positions, 6,000 nurses, thousands of counselors, janitors, schedulers. And they are firing the very kind of people they are trying to recruit.

You would think that the Trump administration's top priority at the VA would be to bolster its mental health workforce at a time when 59- percent increase is projected, but they are doing just the opposite.

Since the beginning of this administration, there have been 2,400 employees unjustly and illegally terminated already, including Veterans Crisis Line employees. And the VA's newest staffing goal--that 83,000 number that I mentioned before--is going to be cutting employees at a time of ever-increasing demand, even in the short term.

All these cuts will do is to harm veterans. There is no elimination of waste or fraud or abuse. In every Agency and in every program, there is some waste, but the way to eliminate it is not to slash indiscriminately and draconian cuts as a way to do it.

While we wait for these 83,000 employees to be axed by Trump and Musk, we already see the impact. Employee assistance programs and mental health support contracts for the VA workforce have been canceled. Staff at vet centers--VA community-based counseling centers-- have been fired. VA mental health staff are being forced to conduct counseling sessions in open cubicles, putting veterans' privacy at risk. World-class researchers performing research on mental health and substance abuse disorders among veterans have been terminated.

Most devastating of all, Veterans Crisis Line has seen a recent increase in call volume largely from veterans who were either terminated from the Federal workforce or who were concerned about losing their benefits or both, because at least a quarter up to a third or more of the Federal workforce are veterans, and they need that mental health care.

Amidst that flood of cruel actions taken by the administration, I am proud that my Democratic colleagues have been united in our resistance to these relentless attacks on veterans.

It is not only on mental health care, it is all healthcare. It is not only on healthcare, it is on the PACT Act for veterans who need that screening, benefits, care. And it is not a matter of eliminating waste because we know the way to eliminate waste is to go line by line, item by item carefully and thoughtfully--or as Al Lipphardt, the national commander of the VFW, told us--and he was describing a wound that he sustained while in combat during the Vietnam war:

I am thankful that the medics who treated me chose not to take my whole arm for the sake of efficiency. It took a trained eye, a skillful hand, and human intuition to fix me up and get me back in the fight. In my experience, those operating with a scalpel have a better chance at saving limbs than those who operate with a chainsaw.

What we are seeing right now is the DOGE tech bros under Elon Musk operating with that famous chain saw that he has displayed, and they are doing it to the detriment of our veterans and to those who are being fired.

As Mr. Lipphardt said, these veterans are now being told their skills are no longer useful to the government. We are losing people who are genuinely committed to the mission and find a continued sense of purpose in what they do.

These dedicated, patriotic veterans--the ones who work at the VA, the ones who are served by the VA--are deeply disserved and damaged by these actions. As Mr. Lipphardt said, finally: We need to stop the bleeding. We need to, as he said, ``apply pressure and stop the bleeding.''

I am joined on the Senate floor today by two of my colleagues who have been integral to this fight, Senator Sanders and Senator Duckworth, who will be calling for passage of their own resolutions aimed at reversing damage from the Trump/Musk attacks on veterans.

I hope that our votes on these resolutions send a message. I hope we will have unanimous support for my resolution and for theirs, that we will keep faith with our veterans, and we will leave none of them behind.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Further, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon table with no intervening action or debate.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, I want to respond very quickly by saying, first of all, I think we share a lot of goals, but we need action. The VA is in crisis impending right now, in real time, affecting real lives in real time, people who need mental health care now, who need the Veterans Crisis Line now, who need those counselors and psychiatrists now.

What I am asking is unanimous consent for a resolution that calls for restoring the VA workforce to meet that crisis and to doing right by our veterans. It shouldn't be partisan. It isn't partisan.

I have been critical of the VA under Democratic administrations, under General Shinseki when he was there and the delays were unacceptable, and nobody was more direct or critical than I was.

We can be bipartisan in our praise and in our criticism, but we need to stand up to the Musk-Trump slash-and-trash regime that has been so harmful to our veterans. And we can't go about it with business as usual. These draconian, indiscriminate cuts are doing harm to our veterans as we speak, and to avoid action is not only inappropriate, it is injustice to our Nation's heroes.

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