Richard Blumenthal on Mass Firings at the VA: The Impact of Musk, Trump and Sec. Collins Has Been ‘Monumentally Destructive and It Is Stupid’

EXCERPT:

BLUMENTHAL: “Already, 2,400 have been fired and 83,000 jobs are on the chopping block. VA secretary has said they’re going to go. We’re here to sound the alarm and reverse this self-inflicted, ongoing, destructive cruelty and incompetence. I would like to think that it is malign neglect, not purposeful malevolence. But one way or the other, the impact of Elon Musk and Donald Trump and, yes, Secretary Doug Collins, has been monumentally destructive and it is stupid. I’m going to use a word that I told my children never to use, a four-letter word, D-U-M-B. It is dumb. There is no rhyme or reason to firing 83,000 members of the VA workforce, about a third of them veterans, when at the same time there are 40,000 openings for the same kinds of positions, surgeons, physicians, nurses, counselors, schedulers, janitors, they’re all part of a team. And including claims processors for the PACT Act, the Dole Act, and other kinds of benefits that they have earned and they deserve, not next year, but now. There is no sense in firing people for the very positions that the VA is trying to recruit, makes no sense.”