Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Ranking Minority Member Sen. Richard Blumenthal has released a report detailing the "harm" inflicted on the Department of Veterans Affairs and veterans by the Trump administration’s policies.
The report, "Breaking the Pact: Impacts of Trump, DOGE and Doug Collins’ Ongoing Assault on Veterans," was released ahead of the SVAC’s oversight hearing with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins on Wednesday.
“Instead of building on the progress of the Biden administration and prioritising veterans’ best interests, the Trump administration has spent the last year recklessly implementing politically-motivated policies that place veterans’ care and benefits at greater risk than ever before,” said Blumenthal (D-CT) in a statement.
He said the report, “grounded in testimony from veterans and VA employees — seeks to expose that cover-up and document the harm inflicted. The conclusion is unmistakable: Veterans are paying the price for this administration’s self-inflicted sabotage, while dedicated VA employees are demoralized and exhausted by the incompetence and hostility of their leadership.”
The report concluded that VA shed more than 40,000 employees in fiscal year 2025 and noted that 88 percent of those who left were health care staff, including doctors, nurses, mental health clinicians, and other frontline employees. According to the report, Fiscal year 2025 also marks the first annual net loss of staff in VA history.
“VA is hemorrhaging doctors, mental health professionals, nurses, and other frontline providers. Experienced staff are leaving in droves, while recruitment falters amid toxic working conditions and indiscriminate firings,” he said. “The resulting harm to the quality and timeliness of care will be felt for years. And this growing damage helps explain why the Trump administration has often refused to provide Congress with even the most basic information about their policies and their impact on veterans.”
However, the VA’s workforce dashboard shows its staffing level is down about 30,000.
The report also found that as of Jan. 6, “the national mean for wait times for new patients for individual mental health appointments was more than 35 days — significantly exceeding the 20-day wait time threshold for veterans to be eligible for care in the community. Some states are reporting more than double the wait time threshold, with 40 to 60-day wait times, including Maine (61 days) and Maryland (54 days).”
VA says that through FY25, wait times for mental health were under six days for established patients and 19 days for new patients.
The report also detailed what it called the Trump administration’s “continued lack of transparency and false savings claims around its cancellation of thousands of contracts providing services to veterans and supporting VA operations; withholding of funding for programs serving homeless veterans; reinstatement of a near-total abortion ban for veterans and their loved ones; gutting of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which helped protect veterans and servicemembers from fraud; and the impact of Republicans’ cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits from the Affordable Care Act on veterans.”
VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz termed the report “political therater.”
“Senator Blumenthal sat on his hands throughout the entirety of the Biden administration, when VA failed to solve all of its most serious problems,” he said.
Kasperowicz noted that VA is making major improvements for veterans under Trump. He said the backlog of veterans waiting for VA benefits is down 57 percent since Jan. 20, 2025, after it increased 24 percent during the Biden administration.
According to Kasperowicz, VA has also eliminated the backlog of veteran families waiting for VA health care and is processing record numbers of disability claims. Twenty-five new health care clinics have been opened and 51,936 homeless veterans were permanently housed nationwide in FY25.
Blumenthal’s full report is here.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.