ICYMI:Murray Statement on Trump & Elon Plans to Decimate the VA, Firing 80,000 Employees and Putting Veterans’ Care in Grave Danger
ICYMI: Senator Murray Presses VA Deputy Secretary Nominee on Mass Firings of VA Researchers, Holding Oracle Accountable to Get EHR Right for Veterans
VA Researcher: “What’s going on right now isn’t a two-way door where you can tear down the VA and then see what happens, and if you don’t like it, go back to the way it was. This is a one-way door —if we tear it down now, it is going to take years or decades to build back.”
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Washington DC - Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, held a virtual press conference slamming President Trump and Elon Musk’s moves to decimate the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) workforce, with former VA employees and contractors in Washington state who were recently laid off through no fault of their own and with zero justification as part of Trump and Elon’s unprecedented assault on the federal workforce. The press call comes as VA has already laid off over 2,000 employees and an internal memo leaked last week showed that VA is planning to lay off as many as 83,000 employees this year as part of a plan to slash its workforce to 2019 levels—which were in place before millions of veterans became newly eligible for care under the bipartisan Ley PACTO Senator Murray helped pass. More than one fourth of VA employees are veterans. Senator Murray has been abierto en vocación attention a how Trump and Elon’s indiscriminate mass layoffs are hurting people across the country—especially veterans—and will undermine services Americans everywhere rely on.
Joining Senator Murray for today’s press conference were: Future Zhou, Army veteran and former Inventory Management Specialist in the Logistics Section at VA Puget Sound; Christian Helfrich, former Research Investigator at VA Puget Sound; Dan Foster, an Olympia-area Army veteran and Project Manager supporting the Transition Assistance Program for VA; and Shawn Durnen, President of NineLine Veteran Services in Fife.
“These cuts are going to increase wait times, they will end medical research, they will shutter health care providers, and they will cut veterans off from health care they need. It could mean they are delayed, perhaps getting a new artificial leg so they can go hiking and be with their family. It could mean delays getting mental health support during a crisis. Or it could mean delays getting treatment as they fight for their life against cancer that is related to burn pits exposure,” Senator Murray said on today’s press call. “These women and men put their lives on the line for our country. We should be rolling out the carpet for them to get the care they need—not slamming a door in their face. But that’s what these firings represent. They are slamming the door on veterans in need. What Trump and Musk are doing here is disrespectful, it’s un-patriotic, and it’s ungrateful. And, I am going to be fighting back as hard as I possibly can to make sure every veteran has access to the care they need—and that no veteran gets cut off by a couple of billionaires who don’t know what they are doing, and don’t seem to care who they hurt. So I’m asking everyone to join me in demanding that the Trump administration reverse course on these massive staffing cuts, and bring back the critical employees they have already laid off with zero justification.”
Mass firing VA employees as Trump and Elon plan to do will, for example, force veterans to wait longer to see health care providers about blood pressure and diabetes control, receive life-saving mental health care, have timely surgeries, have their disability claims adjudicated, have someone to pick up their calls at the Veterans Crisis Line, have burial and funeral expense reimbursement requests processed, and much more. It will put clinical trials that veterans are enrolled in at risk and jeopardize research—on everything from PTSD to opioid addiction—that could yield critical breakthroughs for everyone, not just veterans, and it will impact the cleanliness and efficiency of VA facilities, which means procedures may be delayed when rooms and equipment are not clean and available as planned, among so much else. A number of staff supporting the Veterans Crisis Line, which provides 24/7, confidential crisis support for veterans and their loved ones, were already among those fired by Trump and Musk.
Additionally, in 2022, Congress passed the bipartisan Ley PACTO—the largest expansion of veterans’ benefits in two decades—which requires a significant influx of resources and staff to deliver the benefits and care under the law. Trump and Elon’s mass firings and ongoing hiring freeze, which prohibits new disability claims raters from coming on board, are already undercutting VA’s ability to process claims under the law—forcing the backlog of unprocessed disability claims to grow above 254,000. Additionally, new harmful directives from VA in recent weeks—from the blanket cancellation of hundreds of contracts supporting patient safety and clinical recruitment efforts, protecting veterans’ private records, and more, to their implementation of a decision to reduce purchase card limits to $1, curbing VA medical centers’ ability to purchase supplies and equipment they need to serve veterans or to provide lodging for transplant patients—have also already had detrimental impacts on the ability of veterans to receive their care and benefits.
“I represented the supply chain department doing our daily critical shortage meetings with nurse managers, ensuring that essential supplies were available each morning for surgeries and procedures. I also managed recall notifications, searching for and removing any equipment or medication on recall that could harm veterans… This position was not only a continuation of my commitment to service, but also an opportunity to contribute to an organization that, in my view, exists to honor and support veterans,” said Future Zhou, an Army veteran and former Inventory Management Specialist at VA Puget Sound who was abruptly fired for no reason and with no justification by Trump and Elon Musk last month. “I was shocked and deeply disappointed when I received an email on Monday, February 24th, at 1:56pm, notifying me of my immediate removal from my position. I was left with the task of informing my supervisor, my section chief, and my HR of this decision… Unfortunately, I was not alone. Five other logistics personnel in our probationary phase were dismissed within hours of me, two mail clerks and three supply techs. The unprofessional manner in which these decisions were executed was incredibly disrespectful. I have since visited my office—because I still receive my care at the Seattle VA—and witnessed firsthand the undue stress and devastation that these indiscriminate firings have caused. Our supply team is now more than seven days behind on placing critical supply requests for medication and equipment in our hospital, and our supply techs have had to cut their night shifts, limiting deliveries to our clinics. I saw nurses going down to the warehouse to collect their own supplies in order to continue to provide quality care to our veterans. I am not confident that the hospital can remain open under these conditions.”
“I study the gap between what we understand to be the best quality care available, based on the best available evidence, and the care we deliver… I work with other researchers and clinicians to understand why those gaps exist and how we close them,” said Christian Helfrich, a health systems researcher who worked as a Research Investigator at VA Puget Sound until February 12th, when he abruptly lost his job because the Trump administration, in an unprecedented move, is refusing to honor VA researchers’ three-year “Not to Exceed” term limits (NTEs) by rolling them over as is standard. “I worked with colleagues in pulmonary medicine to study how we could use the Electronic Health Record innovatively to identify patients with Obstructive Pulmonary Disease who might not be on the best combinations of medicines possible, or might have been misdiagnosed and actually have heart failure… I also worked with colleagues evaluating the new Oracle Electronic Health Record… and we did interviews and surveys with clinicians and staff using the Electronic Health Record to try to identify problems early on and report those problems to people in positions of leadership who might be able to do something about it… In terms of what the affect will be on veterans… it’s not having innovative care developed in the VA, like pulmonary teams using the Electronic Health Record to identify problems for veterans before they happen, preventing things like pneumonia, and it’s not doing things like having people systematically identifying problems with the new Oracle Electronic Health Record… Research is an investment in the future—and if we don’t invest in research today, we are not investing in the future of the VA. And I’ll just add, what’s going on right now isn’t a two-way door where you can tear down the VA and then see what happens, and if you don’t like it, go back to the way it was. This is a one-way door —if we tear it down now, it is going to take years or decades to build back.”
“As a Veteran myself, I was able to watch the evolution of services meant to assist Service members, their families, or their caregivers with transitioning from life in or around the military to the civilian world and workforce,” said Daniel Foster, an Army veteran in Olympia who until recently worked to support a contract supporting the Transition Assistance Program for VA. His contract provided training materials, research support, and management tools for the VA office responsible for training nearly 200,000 transitioning Service Members each year—before it was abruptly cancelled by Trump and Elon. “My job as a contractor was part of the team developing these important materials for Service members. As the benefits themselves are constantly changing due to legislative or policy changes, it is imperative that the audience can get access to timely, accurate, and effective training regarding their benefits. This support was abruptly cut off with 874 other contracts the week of February 24th as part of DOGE’s actions. Myself and nearly a hundred others on our contract alone had 12 hours’ notice that we would be without jobs. A substantial number of my colleagues are like myself Veterans, who had found a way to continue to serve our country and fellow Service members with our unique skills and abilities. That opportunity has now been unceremoniously ended, and we are all wondering what’s next. The termination of this contract is going to directly affect dozens of Veterans or their family members immediately; and that’s on just this one contract out of those 875. Beyond that I am hesitant to even guess at the after effects on a program dedicated to helping so many Veterans transition.”
“We’ve seen a huge uprising of individuals who have gone from job stability, employment, successful careers… to now where we’re seeing individuals calling in daily—we’ve seen a ten percent increase in the past 30 days of individuals suffering with suicidal ideation who hare proud servicemembers, who have put their time in at the VA, who have dedicated their lives to making positive change, and now we’re looking at the downside of this,” Shawn Durnen, an Army veteran and President of NineLine Veteran Services in Fife, a local nonprofit that coordinates services for housing homeless veterans, helping veterans’ experiencing mental health crises, and cross-coordination with the private, public, and nonprofit sectors, among much else. “I’ve had a family member in every war dating back to World War II. To see the progress that the VA has made, and the direct interventions, leading the way in medical interventions and all the pieces that make up the VA in the last 10 years… Let’s do the proactive approach and realize, these veterans served, there are severe comorbidities that face every different population of veterans on this planet, and it is our moral and ethical responsibility to continue to take care of them. I see them every day, from our chronically homeless to our mentally in-need… but the VA downsizing and shrinking access to those services, all it’s going to do is put more pressure on a system like the nonprofit region which—the cross-coordination over the last ten years has been a pillar of success, and the evidence base is staring us right in the face. So, to take that away is causing more burden on a system that doesn’t have access to all those resources, that doesn’t have access to deal with the sheer number of individuals that will have to target different care outside of the VA if this continues to happen.”
Senator Murray was the first woman to join the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the first woman to chair the Committee—as the daughter of a World War II veteran, supporting veterans and their families has always been an important priority for her. Senator Murray has been a leading voice in the Seante hablar forcefully against President Trump and Elon Musk’s mass firing of VA employees and VA researchers across the country and Elon Musk and DOGE’s infiltration of the VA, including accessing veterans’ sensitive personal information. In recent weeks, Senator Murray and her colleagues sent letters to VA Secretary Doug Collins demanding that the VA swiftly reverse moves to cut VA researchers, as well as múltiple letras pressing Secretary Collins to sever Elon Musk and DOGE’s access to any VA or other government system with information about veterans, and protect veterans, their families, and VA staff from unprecedented access to sensitive information. Senator Murray grilled Trump’s nominee for VA Deputy Secretary, Dr. Paul Lawrence, on the mass firings of VA employees and VA researchers, and voted against Doug Collins’s nomination to be VA Secretary in early February, sounding the alarm over reports of DOGE at the VA and making clear that the Trump administration’s lawlessness was putting our national security and our veterans at risk.
Senator Murray’s full remarks from today’s press conference are below and video is AQUÍ:
“First of all, I want to thank all of our folks who are participating in this with me and who will share their stories with you, because I think it is so important to understand what is happening with our veterans and with the VA. And thank you to all the press who have joined us for this as well.
“Many of you know, I am the daughter of a veteran.
“My dad fought in World War II and received a Purple Heart,I remember growing up how his VA benefits made such a huge difference for us. They made it possible for him to get the medical care he needed for his MS, even when times were tough.
“So when I say, we have a moral obligation to care for our veterans and their families—this is really personal to me. And when I see Musk and Trump firing VA workers left and right—when I hear they now plan to fire over 80,000 more VA workers, you can bet, I will not be quiet about this.
“Because those staffing cuts are a benefit cut for our veterans—so I am going to raise hell, and raise the alarm, and raise up the voices of veterans who can speak firsthand what is at stake here.
“Which is exactly why I put this call together. The stone cold reality is that massive VA layoffs will hurt, and even endanger veterans. That’s not some theory—that is what we are already seeing. They laid off over 2,000 VA workers already.
“I have heard directly from VA researchers here in Washington state who are being fired—that will undermine research to prevent veteran suicide, build lifechanging prosthetics, and treat opioid addiction, and more. I have heard from claims raters in Washington who were fired—that is going to mean longer wait times for veterans trying to get their disability claims approved. And—really upsetting—I’m hearing from veterans in Washington state who are already getting cut off from the care that they need.
“One veteran who reached out to my office was told by their mental health care provider he has to start seeking care elsewhere. The VA provides some of the best mental health care in the country, but now he has to find a new provider outside the VA, who may not understand what he has gone through as a veteran and wait times are longer. Another veteran, who has stage 4 cancer due to Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam learned the scheduling team that helps him get to and from treatments, was cut in half.
“That is what is happening right now–today–after Musk and Trump carelessly kicked out over two thousand VA workers. But now, they are talking about cutting over thirty times as many. They are talking about over 80,000 more VA workers gone—for no real reason. It defies all logic and reason to pretend that it is not going to hurt veterans.
“These cuts are going to increase wait times, they will end medical research, they will shutter health care providers, and they will cut veterans off from healthcare they need. It could mean they are delayed, perhaps getting a new artificial leg so they can go hiking and be with their family. It could mean delays getting mental health support during a crisis. Or it could mean delays getting treatment as they fight for their life against cancer that is related to burn pits exposure.
“These women and men put their lives on the line for our country. We should be rolling out the carpets for them to get the care they need—not slamming a door in their face. But that’s what these firings represent. They are slamming the door on veterans in need. What Trump and Musk are doing here is disrespectful, it’s un-patriotic, and it’s ungrateful. And, I am going to be fighting back as hard as I possibly can to make sure every veteran has access to the care they need—and that no veteran gets cut off by a couple of billionaires who don’t know what they are doing, and don’t seem to care who they hurt.
“So I’m asking everyone to join me in demanding that the Trump administration reverse course on these massive staffing cuts, and bring back the critical employees they have already laid off with ZERO justification.
“I want you to hear from some of the people who are in the front lines on this, and again, I want to thank all of the folks who have agreed to speak out today. It takes courage to be able to come forth on this–I want to thank every one of you.
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