TRANSCRIPT: Van Hollen Rallies at VA Headquarters Against Trump & Musk’s Dangerous Veterans’ Policies

Today, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) joined veterans, labor unions representing U.S. Veterans Affairs Department (VA) employees, and veterans’ advocates outside the VA headquarters to speak out against Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s assaults on the VA workforce and harmful policies for veterans and their families. During the press conference, the Senator condemned the Administration’s actions to cut the VA’s merit-based civil servants as the department faces critical staffing shortages and increased demand for its services, including those required by the PACT Act, passed and signed into law in August 2022.

Senator Van Hollen’s remarks can be viewed here, and a transcript is below:

Well let me start by thanking all of our veterans who served this country and to thank all of you who are here to support our veterans and their service and sacrifice.

And to Senator Blumenthal and Congressman Takano, thank you for being people who listen to our veterans and act to support them – and working to bring us together today.

And to all of our union leaders who are here representing the workers who serve our veterans every day, thank all of you who are here and throughout this great country serving our veterans and helping our veterans.

All of us know that we can never fully repay the debt owed to our veterans, but we can keep our promises that we've made to our veterans who have served us so well. And I want to thank all of the staff of the VA who do that every single day. Thank you to the nurses and everybody else who does it.

In my great state of Maryland, we have the VA Medical Center in Baltimore, we have Perry Point, we have vet centers, and community-based outpatient clinics all over our state. And thank you to all of the workers at the VA who serve there and take care of our veterans, who help heal the physical wounds and the mental wounds of war. And are there to support our veterans overall – in terms of education benefits, employment efforts, tending to the sacred cemeteries where our veterans are buried – and so, thank you all for what you do.

Now, right now I think they're 9 million, 9 million veterans being served by the Veterans Administration, so we need people who are looking out for them. And unfortunately, the person that we have in the White House right now, is somebody who – I hate to say it, but it's true – does not believe in service, does not believe in sacrifice. In fact, he has said it. He said that he thought that those fallen soldiers were – to quote his Marine Corps General former Chief of Staff John Kelly – President Trump has called those fallen soldiers quote “suckers and losers.” This is the person that is in the White House, and this is the person who has turned the keys to federal agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, over to Elon Musk.

This has nothing to do with efficiency, as my colleague said. This is part of the most corrupt bargain in American history. Elon Musk spent over 280 million to elect Donald Trump, and Donald Trump is now allowing him to rampage through federal agencies.

Their real ultimate goal is to shut down very important services to the American people and use the savings from denying those services to working Americans to provide tax cuts to the very wealthy, like Elon Musk and the others who were behind President Trump on inauguration day. When he talked about the “golden age” he was talking about delivering even more money to Elon Musk and the tech titans.

So, this is what it's about – because if it were about efficiency, you wouldn't start by firing the Inspector General of the VA, or all the other Inspectors General in the US government. Because all of us know that they're there to be our eyes and ears and to look out for waste, fraud, and abuse. So, you only fire Inspector Generals when you're trying to open the door to more waste, fraud, and abuse, and that is what Schedule F is all about.

They now want to put in place a plan to replace 50-60,000 merit-based federal civil servants with political cronies. That is also an invitation to corruption. And all of this is laid out in Project 2025. You may remember that was the blueprint that when asked on the campaign trail about it, Donald Trump said: what is that thing? I don't know anything about it. But he just installed the key architect of that in the Office of Management and Budget, which of course is the command and control center for the budgets for all federal agencies.

So, when it comes to the VA, we know that you're already facing staffing shortages. We know you already don't have the people power to serve our veterans. And so when they put a freeze on top of that, that just means less care for our veterans.

I mean you work 24/7 – you and your teams – around the clock. But there's no way you can substitute for those huge cuts, right? And so, when they put a freeze in place that is hurting our veterans – and we also have reports that they're getting into the databases and very important personal sensitive information about our veterans – so we need to blow the whistle on all this.

We need to make sure that Elon Musk can no longer continue his illegal raid on federal agencies. And we need to remind our fellow Americans that at the end of the day, what this is all about has nothing to do with efficiency, and again, everything to do with serving them – Elon Musk and those cronies – rather than serving the American people as our veterans did.

So, let's stand up again today for our veterans. And we call upon all of America to do it. Thank you all very much.