Video: Blumenthal Slams Trump Administration's Freeze of Federal Aid for Critical Veteran Programs

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – At a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing focused on community care today, Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) slammed the Trump Administration’s move to illegally freeze all federal grants, including those at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and stressed the negative impact this will have on veterans and their families.

“We are here on a morning when all of these [VA] programs are in severe and urgent jeopardy. The Trump Administration has announced – illegally – that it will freeze federal aid for programs that are immensely important to veterans,” said Blumenthal. “This freeze on federal aid will hurt veterans by pausing funding for critical programs that millions of veterans and their families rely on. We’re talking about homeless veterans, funding for veterans’ nursing homes across the country, suicide prevention programs…These funds must be freed immediately, or else veterans will be betrayed. There’s nothing ‘woke’ or ‘Marxist’ about working to end veteran suicide or delivering our veterans the benefits they earned and deserve.”

Blumenthal questioned the hearing’s witnesses on the impact the Trump Administration’s move to freeze federal grants will have on veterans and efforts to combat veteran suicide: “The freeze on funding – that affects vital programs, including suicide prevention programs. Just to give you one example, the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program provides grants to community-based suicide prevention resources to meet the needs to veterans…including Easterseals in New London, Tolland, and Windham counties in my state of Connecticut. That program now is frozen in terms of funding. That’s a bad decision, would you agree?”

“It freezes our ability. We connected 235 veterans a week through the Fox Grant. That’s 235 veterans I can’t connect to,” responded Jim Lorraine, President and CEO of America’s Warrior Partnership. Blumenthal has also heard directly from Connecticut grant recipients serving veterans who are at-risk of being frozen.

During the hearing, Blumenthal also stressed his concerns with Trump’s recent firing of VA Inspector General Mike Missal and highlighted Missal’s non-partisan work under Republican and Democratic administrations to call out and stop waste, fraud, and abuse at VA “aggressively and effectively.” As co-founder of the Inspector General Caucus, Blumenthal is a staunch advocate for Inspectors General and has been a fierce critic of Trump’s firing of at least 15 Inspectors General last week, including VA Inspector General Missal.

Blumenthal continued, “The question for all of us, why this measure of firing the Inspector General of VA was done at this moment, when in fact [Missal] has been the bulwark against waste, fraud, and abuse at the VA?”

As written, the Trump Administration’s freezing of federal grants today puts critical VA programs that provide essential services for American veterans and their families at risk, including:

·         Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program – a first-of-its-kind veteran suicide prevention grant that provides funding for community veterans suicide prevention programs.

·         VA Homeless Providers Grants and Per Diem Programs – grants for community-based organizations offering transitional housing and supportive services to homeless veterans with the goal of helping veterans move into permanent housing.

·         VA Supportive Services for Veteran Families Program – grants providing supportive services for very low-income veteran families including rental assistance and homelessness prevention.

·         Veteran and Spouse Transitional Assistance Grant Program - grants to provide assistance to veterans transitioning out of military service and their spouses, including resume writing support, interview preparation, and job recruitment training.

·         Legal Services for Veterans Grant Programs – grants to provide legal services to veterans, including homeless veterans and women veterans.

·         State Veterans Home Care – provides payments for nursing home care for veterans at State Veterans Homes.

·         Payments to States for Programs to Promote the Hiring and Retention of Nurses at State Veterans Homes - grants for State Veterans Homes to assist in hiring or retaining any nurse who provides clinical care to residents.

·         Suicide Mortality Review Cooperative Agreements – grants to review and understand suicide deaths and develop strategies based on data to prevent veteran suicides.

·         Veterans Cemetery Grants Program - grants to establish, expand, and improve State or Tribal government veterans cemeteries.

The full text of Blumenthal’s opening remarks is copied below and a video link is available here.

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This cause must be bipartisan, and it must be immediate. There is no question about the need to speed, streamline, and safeguard access to community care and referrals to the kind of providers that are necessary to prevent the tragedies or near tragedies, such as your husband, Charlie, suffered, Ms. Marg.

I believe strongly that these two systems, private and VA, must be complementary, not competitive. And overriding all of this debate is the need for more providers, more doctors, more nurses, more psychiatrists, and social workers who can provide the kind of care that our veterans need. And obviously, the VA should not be in competition with communities for the numbers of scarce providers, skilled professionals who are necessary to provide this care.

But we are here on a morning when all of these programs are in severe and urgent jeopardy. The Trump administration has announced illegally that it will freeze federal aid for programs that are immensely important for veterans. This freeze on federal aid will hurt veterans by pausing funding for critical programs that millions of veterans and their families rely on. We are talking about homeless veterans, funding for veterans’ nursing homes across the country, suicide prevention programs, many of the programs that we will be discussing today, and the efforts to streamline, speed, and safeguard access to community programs. Reimbursement for those providers who need it to make community care work—frozen. We are deterring and discouraging that kind of community care right now in real time. And I urge all the members of the Committee, I urge my colleagues, to oppose this measure, to make their views known. I call on veterans and their organizations across the country to make their views known because these funds must be freed immediately, or else veterans will be betrayed.

There is nothing woke or Marxist about working to end veteran suicide or delivering our veterans the benefits that they have earned and deserve. And I will put in the record later today a list of programs—it’s going to be probably about two pages long, I have a tentative list here—that will be adversely impacted by this freeze on funding. It is also, by the way, unsustainable legally. It violates the Impoundment Act. These funds have been lawfully appropriated under bills passed by the Congress and signed by the President. And no member of the Executive Branch, including the President, has the lawful power to simply stop them.

I am concerned also about the action to dismiss the Inspector General. I am going to be circulating a letter to my colleagues that would, in fact, protest to the President the firing of the VA’s Inspector General, Mike Missal, who has worked for many years under both Republican and Democratic administrations, to call out and stop waste, fraud, and abuse. He has done it in a very nonpartisan, or actually, nonpolitical way, aggressively and effectively. And the question for all of us is, why this measure of firing the Inspector General of the VA was done at this moment when in fact he has been the bulwark against waste, fraud, and abuse in the VA, as have been Inspectors General across the Executive Branch.

I believe strongly that the private sector health care system and the VA are complementary, and one route to care should never come at the expense of the other. I fear that’s what is happening today. The erosion of VA direct care is a real threat, and I say erosion because it could happen gradually, not all of a sudden, but if it happens, it may well be irreparable.

I am hopeful that we will restore the Inspector General, that we will make sure that the funding for the VA system and other programs will be unfrozen, and that we will work together in a bipartisan way to speed and assure the referral system under the kind of legislation that the Chairman has proposed. There was an effort last session, and I supported it, to legislate in this area. I am hopeful that his measure is one that we can all support. I know last session he offered the Veterans Health Act. I assume that this measure is similar to it. Ranking Member Tester offered the Making Community Care Work for Veterans Act. I feel some combination of these measures is viable and achievable, and I'm hopeful that we can reach a bipartisan effort.

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