In case you missed it, the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Congressman Mark Takano, appeared on the Democrats’ Daily Blueprint today to discuss the progress achieved under the Honoring Our PACT Act signed by President Joe Biden and how, under Donald Trump, the Department of Veterans Affairs is firing thousands of qualified federal employees as part of a coordinated attack on veterans. 

WATCH

You can find highlights from the conversation below: 

On Trump and VA Secretary Doug Collins’ cutting staff at VA medical centers: 

Ranking Member Mark Takano: “I have never visited a VA facility that said they were overstaffed. They are always saying, ‘We are understaffed. We need more specialists. We need more primary care physicians. We need more nurses.’ Never, never, never have I heard that the VA has ever been fully staffed. Doug Collins is boasting and bragging about all these cuts. It’s meant that veterans are paying the price with longer wait times… Longer wait times means they can’t get their appointments when they want to get them.” 

On what veterans are saying about the long-term consequences of cuts by DOGE, Trump, and Collins:

Ranking Member Mark Takano: “At the VA, all [care] is coordinated. It happens all in one place. And we need to make sure that we take care of our rural veterans better. But long term, it’s going to mean care is privatized. That is going to be a worse experience for our veterans. …

“More immediately, what the VA is doing is they’ve cut access to reproductive health care for our women veterans. What I find particularly not just frustrating, but it angers me, [is] that the very women who stood up for your rights and my rights, who put their lives on the line so that we have our freedoms, they’re getting their freedoms taken away. Their ability to get access to, say, a life-saving abortion when, say, a pregnancy endangers their life, the VA is reversing the ability for a woman veteran to get an abortion, in the case of incest and rape as well.”

On the gains that Democrats achieved under the Honoring Our PACT Act signed by President Biden:

Ranking Member Mark Takano: “Under President Biden, we did even more. The Republicans did not want to do this, but we passed the Honoring our PACT Act. 34 Republicans voted with the Democrats when we brought it to the floor.

“Now what did the PACT Act do? The PACT Act was the largest expansion of veterans’ benefits in a generation. To date, six million veterans have been screened for toxic exposure. 1.5 million veterans have had their claims approved.

“What does that mean? It means that the federal government, our government, the American people, we are listening to veterans when they come in and say that they have an illness that is due to their service connection… When they’re screened, it sets them up for when an illness occurs, maybe 10 years [later], when their body develops a cancer because of an exposure to a burn pit, they’re going to have the peace of mind that their family is going to be taken care of, that their medical expenses are going to be taken care of.”

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