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Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I am honored to follow the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee and to be followed by another distinguished member of that same committee and to focus on these first 100 days.

The focus on the first 100 days of an administration, I think, comes from the time of Franklin Roosevelt and his 100 days in the midst of deep depression, despondency, and despair on the part of the American people, and the whirlwind of activity that he brought to addressing our Nation's depression.

And there are dramatic differences between those 100 days and the 100 days we have seen from President Trump. First and foremost, our economy was at near full employment, at a time of solid prosperity, 100 days ago, and we are now sliding toward exactly the kind of economic downturn that F.D.R. helped to address.

Second, in those first 100 days of the Roosevelt administration, there was a whirlwind of congressional activity, inspired by the President, with his proposals for new Agencies and programs and investments. Congress was a partner. In this administration, President Trump has acted unilaterally by Executive order--illegally, unconstitutionally, and unchecked, except by courts that have been a bulwark.

In those first 100 days of the Roosevelt administration, F.D.R. appealed to our ``better angels,'' our willingness to give back, to be generous to our fellow Americans. He later inspired us with the call to ``a rendezvous with destiny.'' In this administration, which is plagued with corruption, crypto theft, and Musk exploitation of Agencies, it is a downward spiral, a race to the bottom in an appeal to self-indulgence and self-enrichment.

There are many, many other differences, but the whirlwind of activity here has produced chaos. That is the operative word: chaos. The turmoil and turbulence have produced confusion and, yes, anxiety, deep fear, and apprehension about the future of this country. And the poll numbers only reflect not only the downward spiral of our economy but of our confidence in the future.

This administration has been cruel, and it has been dumb. It is unmatched for its meanness and stupidity--the harm and hurt done to everyday Americans in real life and realtime; the harm in tariffs already having effect on the uncertainty of businesses about the future, their inability to plan, to invest in new manufacturing, and the fear of people that they will be jobless and lose the dignity of work and be hit with higher prices for everything from groceries to gasoline, to housing; the harm done in healthcare already, our federally qualified health centers deprived of funding, NIH research grants for curing cancer, for diabetes or hypertension canceled or frozen; in education, the uncertainty and loss of funding for special education and other programs that benefit children and the neediest and most vulnerable of our districts, in rural areas as well as urban; and, of course, the damage to our fundamental freedoms, women's reproductive freedoms, the suspension of title X grants, and the assault on women's healthcare--other freedoms: the basic due process of people who should have a right to receive notice and the opportunity to be heard before they are deported, before they are detained, before they are imprisoned or put on a plane to be imprisoned out of the country.

Basic fairness and due process rights that involve also the President intimidating law firms with threats that they will be denied access to security clearances or even to go on to governmental property, and intimidation and threatening our universities, supposedly in the name of anti-Semitism--nobody hates anti-Semitism more than I do, but I despise using anti-Semitism as a pretext or a guise simply to attack people or institutions because they disagree with a public official.

We live in a time when the rule of law is under threat, perhaps as never before in my lifetime, and the cause of freedom, all around the world, is in jeopardy. Ukraine has been betrayed. This Nation has switched sides to the enduring and deep detriment of our standing in the world, our reliability as a partner and ally. The harm may be irreparable.

We must stand with Ukraine. We now have more than 60 cosponsors of a Russia sanctions bill that I have been proud to lead with Senator Graham--it is bipartisan, evenly divided in cosponsorship--to send a message to Vladimir Putin: We are going to hit you, and we are going to hit you hard economically if you continue to stall and string along America, if you continue to play the President.

But Donald Trump has been a seemingly willing partner in being played by Vladimir Putin, his bro, his role model, perhaps.

Nobody has a stronger right to claim credit for preserving our freedoms in the past and now than our veterans, and they have been betrayed by this administration. For our veterans, it has been 100 days of chaos, of cruelty, stupidity, anxiety on their part, and apprehension, and 100 days of decisions made about their healthcare and their benefits. They were promised healthcare, and they were promised benefits. And now this administration is breaking those promises, not by coming to Congress and asking for a rescission or changing the PACT Act, which we passed in a bipartisan way, but simply by firing the people who were supposed to approve those claims for PACT Act benefits for veterans who have been exposed to toxic chemicals or burn pits.

And this is an administration that has fired already 2,500 of those dedicated VA employees, close to one-third of them veterans themselves, thousands from the Federal workforce, generally, close to 30 percent of them are veterans as well. And make no mistake, every one of these days has been a time of crisis for those veterans. Since day one, the administration has systematically shortchanged and betrayed veterans with its policies.

They have not only fired that 2,500 in reckless mass terminations of probationary employees--our young workforce, starting out on jobs, our VA future, and some of them dedicated multiyear employees who have just been promoted and, therefore, are in those new positions on a probationary basis. They have been promoted because they were good at their jobs and dedicated and hard-working, and they have been fired.

That is why I have proposed the Putting Veterans First Act, which would put those veterans back on the job--all of them from the VA--and put those veterans back on the job from the Federal workforce, and make sure that anybody who is terminated in the future gets a right to a personal, individual evaluation, and not just fired because Elon Musk wants to meet certain numbers or apply an algorithm or have his tech bros pick out randomly, arbitrarily names from the list.

There are 83,000 of those VA jobs on the chopping block. The approach of this Secretary of the VA, of Elon Musk, and Donald Trump is ``Fire first, plan later''; ``Fire first, evaluate later.''

I am disappointed that so many of my Republican colleagues are seeking to minimize or diminish the human impacts of these cuts, because I am hearing from veterans, just as I am from people in Connecticut and all around the country.

I went to Michigan just last week to talk to folks there. Those human impacts are heartbreaking because these actions are heartless, and they are impactful not only on the incomes of these people but on their self-worth, their sense of dignity. They have devoted their lives to caring for veterans, and now, with the sweep of a hand, they get the back of a hand from Elon Musk, who has never ever even thought about wearing the uniform of the U.S. military.

These human impacts include world-class researchers who are looking into how to predict stroke risk among veterans; enrollment of veterans into clinical trials for advanced cancer delayed because of the VA's hiring freeze; openings for new clinics that have been delayed because the VA can't hire the necessary staff to open their doors; the VA mental health staff forced to conduct counseling sessions in open cubicles without privacy, basic privacy, for the veterans who are talking about their innermost doubts and fears; service lines at VA hospitals and clinics that have been halted; beds in operating rooms at VA facilities that have been suspended. We are hearing about VA supply teams now understaffed and behind on placing critical supply requests for medication and equipment; support lines for caregivers that have been reduced; Veterans Crisis Line employees fired and, after a public backlash, maybe some rehired, as we heard today in a hearing of the Veterans Affairs' Committee. But the impact is enduring because suicide prevention has to be done in the moment, and suicide prevention training sessions have been postponed or canceled.

Earlier this month, the Secretary announced he will be abruptly canceling the VA Servicing Purchase Program, known as VASP, on May 1. Now, I know very few of my colleagues have heard about VASP, but it is a program that enables veterans to get some very temporary, short-term help so they can avoid eviction from their homes and the homelessness that we are all ashamed to acknowledge continues to exist in the greatest country in the history of the world.

Our veterans are on the streets without shelter because they lack homes, and here is a program designed to keep them in their homes, and the Secretary is canceling it.

With housing more unaffordable than ever and veterans losing their jobs, I am at a loss--total, absolute loss--to understand how he can cancel a critical program that helps veterans undergoing financial hardship to stay in their homes.

I challenge the Secretary of the VA; I challenge the President of the United States; I challenge my colleagues across the aisle: Instead of saying yes blindly to Elon Musk, when he says ``Slash and trash the VA, fire those thousands of people, and end those programs,'' look at them not as waste but as an investment.

Yes, if there is waste, let's eliminate it. But as the national commander of the VFW--Veterans of Foreign Wars--said to us in one of our hearings, when he was wounded in combat, the surgeon who took the shrapnel out of his arm did it with a scalpel; he did not cut the arm off with a chain saw. Let's give up Elon Musk's chain saw, and if there is waste, do it with a scalpel.

These first 100 days have been disgraceful and shameful, cruel and dumb, deeply un-American. These VA employees are the ones delivering healthcare to the people we love and revere.

To my colleagues across the aisle, I just want to remind you in closing that this is a moment that will define you, your career, your reputation. It is a moment of profound historic challenges that has been recognized with massive marches here in the Nation's Capital, in Connecticut, around our State--New London, New Haven, Westport, New Britain. I have been to many of them.

Veterans are one of most powerful voices in our country, and I urge them to use those voices and their faces to say: We need the PACT Act. We need veterans' healthcare. We need to fulfill our promises.

As VFW commander Al Lipphardt said at that hearing, apply pressure and stop the bleeding.

These heartless and heartbreaking cuts, firings, freezes are un- American. My Republican colleagues, who have been almost entirely silent, please do the right thing. Our country has made a sacred promise. Our duties as Members of Congress is to keep our promises.

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