On the recordApril 9, 2025
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.…





