'We've Already Seen Some Degradation In Care': Chrissy Houlahan Warns Against Cuts To The VA

2 days ago

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) joined Forbes senior editor Maggie McGrath on "Forbes Newsroom" to discuss about Trump administration cuts to the VA.

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Transcript

00:00You recently wrote on social media that our country owes a great debt to those who have

00:04served in our armed forces. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is turning its back

00:09on our veterans by stripping away essential resources from the VA. What are you seeing

00:14specifically in your district and what needs to be done to counteract these measures?

00:20So I don't think we've seen the final shoe drop on this. There has been the beginning

00:25indications of I think what will be a pretty massive loss of jobs. And remember that many

00:31of the jobs who serve veterans are held by veterans. So it's estimated that about one

00:36in four people who hold a job with the VA are veterans themselves. Let's assume that

00:42those cuts that we're hearing that are coming, 80,000 or so people will come. They will come

00:47right out of the opportunities for good health and good lives that my veterans in Coatesville

00:54experience. I have a VA hospital right in Coatesville that is one of the nation's oldest

00:59actually. And what we've already seen even before this final shoe drops is we've already seen some

01:07degradation in care. And let me give you some specifics. Some people have been asked who are

01:12in the mental health space to return to office. What does that mean? They return to offices that

01:18can't accommodate them in spaces that are too small for all of them. These are mental health

01:24professionals. And they are now being told that they have to return to their office, to an office

01:28where they're sitting in banks of phones, where they're providing mental health counseling to

01:35veterans, sometimes by phone, sometimes as we're speaking to one another. And the idea that a

01:41veteran will consider his or her case secure and private when there's a phone bank of people who

01:49are sitting on card tables in some cases, processing calls, it's false. I can firsthand

01:58say that it's really important that people feel as though when they call in or they dial in that

02:03they have a private conversation with somebody. And so these consequences of return to work with

02:08no thought to where work is, is insane, especially in the mental health space.

02:15What will it take to give those workers enough space or provide the resources that the VA

02:22needs, in your opinion? Well, this gets back to kind of the beginning of our conversation with

02:28these young students from Afghanistan. Why are we making these kinds of choices in such a

02:36haphazard kind of a method, methodology? Why are we having a conversation after the fact about

02:44unwinding a decision that was made rather than making a deliberate decision and thinking hard

02:50about it? And that's been the case with the VA as well. It's really easy, I think, for Americans

02:58to kind of think, well, those are 100 women far away getting an education from a country that

03:04isn't the United States. We don't need to worry about that. But you can bet the minute that our

03:10veterans are being affected, there will be all kinds of people crying out for change. And that's

03:18why I really just want to prevent that from happening to begin with. Why is this an okay

03:23process that we're going through? It's absolutely an untenable process. And as I mentioned, this is

03:28what our jobs are here in Congress. My job on the Armed Services Committee is to go through

03:34a very painful appropriations process and a painful approval process of what our budget

03:40will look like for the military every year and where the money's going to go for the military

03:45every year. There's the same conversation that happens for the VA every year. And so we have to

03:51be able to have our government work. And that doesn't mean that we have people coming, kind of

03:55swooping in from the outside, telling us what we got wrong. And I think this is why I understand

04:01the American people and American people's anxiety. People approach me and say things like,

04:08well, I just don't understand. This is okay. We're just putting a pause on it for 90 days. We're

04:12just taking a look at what's happening and how we're spending things. And if that were true,

04:17I would understand that. But that's not indeed what's been happening. These are programs that

04:21in many cases have taken years. This is the third time that mathematical and statistical modeling

04:26bill that just passed today has passed in the House. And so hopefully this year it'll be the

04:32first time it passes in the Senate and it'll become a law. And so this is not some sort of

04:37overnight process where we can just undo all of the work that we've done. And I think that's one

04:42of the things I'm most worried about, particularly with our vets.

'We've Already Seen Some Degradation In Care': Chrissy Houlahan Warns Against Cuts To The VA

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