ICYMI Video: Blumenthal Blasts DOGE & Trump Admin's Chaotic Cancellation of VA Contracts at Spotlight Forum

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – At a spotlight forum held by Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), stakeholders detailed the timeline, process, and impact of the Trump Administration’s ongoing cancellation of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) contracts, which began earlier this year. Witnesses included employees whose companies had a VA contract cancelled by DOGE, including a veteran-owned small business, an expert in cancer registries which are among the cancelled VA contracts, and an expert in federal contracting oversight and transparency.

Despite multiple requests from Blumenthal and Congressional Democrats, VA Secretary Doug Collins refuses to send Congress the complete and updated list of VA contracts cancelled or proposed for cancellation. During the hearing, witnesses detailed the real-life impact on veterans of the Trump VA’s reckless cancellation of contracts, which appear to have been carried out without any rationale or meaningful analysis.

“We are here because we’ve been stone walled and slow walked,” said Blumenthal. “…The Administration has failed to provide us with basic facts about those contracts, but the staff of the…minority side of the Committee has been doing an investigation. And the results are preliminary, but they are clear that there is no rationale, no underlying principle based on either the merits of the contract, the amount of money, or the effect on veterans for cancelling at least 650 contracts. We have documented those cancellations and they concern veterans suicide, cancer, prosthetics, research, implementation particularly of the PACT Act. They are essential for delivering quality services to our veterans.”

Since February, the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Democratic staff has conducted a detailed review of Collins’ VA contract cancellation process and has identified hundreds of contracts that provide life-saving services to veterans and critical support to VA operations, using official federal contracting databases and conducting interviews with VA employees and contractors. While Collins and VA officials have refused to turn over the complete and updated list of contracts cancelled, contract data is available online in near real time—including information on the cancellation of VA contracts.

Detailing the findings of this investigation, Blumenthal continued, “[Collins] says the contracts are wasteful. In reality, a majority are for critical services. To help VA recruit and retain doctors, to maintain cancer registries, to support suicide prevention efforts, and to perform safety inspections at VA medical facilities. Those examples are just a few…but these contracts are for the critical services that the VA provides and for benefits and compensation.”

Blumenthal concluded by emphasizing Collins’ continued untruthful narrative surrounding his cancellation of hundreds of VA contracts and pointing to the error-filled data the Trump VA released on May 16: “When we cross checked with public contracting databases, [Collins’] information is fraught with error that at this point I am tempted to say, has to be purposeful...That is the logical conclusion to reach from the kind of stonewalling and inaccuracies that he’s given this Committee. Let me say finally—multiple letters, requests in hearings, and countless emails to VA officials are unavailing so far to produce the truth. Our investigation will continue. We are unearthing some deeply repugnant and concerning aspects of this process. I have to believe the DOGE tech bros are willing to burn down the house because they don’t live in it. They aren’t veterans. They don’t need these services…Most importantly, the Secretary of the VA is refusing to give us information.”

During the forum, witnesses highlighted the sudden cancellation of their companies’ contracts, without cause, and underscored the harm of the cancellation on veterans. Their testimony directly contradicted VA Secretary Collins and Department officials’ claim that “contracts that directly supported Veterans, beneficiaries or provided services VA cannot do itself, such as a nurse who saw patients or an organization that provided third-party certification services, respectively, were not canceled,” and that “VA will not cancel contracts for work that provides services to veterans or that the agency cannot do itself without a contingency plan in place.” In fact, witnesses testified that the work carried out through their contracts was consistently recognized for high performance by VA and was deemed critical by the VA employees with whom they worked.  

Witness testimony and the Committee’s investigation has found no evidence to date that VA has put in place “contingency plans” in advance to replace many of the services it cancelled, as Collins and officials have claimed.

Benjamin Ambrose, a Marine Corps veteran working on a VA contract that was cancelled by DOGE, spotlighted how his company was helping veterans access the care and benefits they earned before its contract was abruptly cancelled: “…I served as a program manager for Aptive Resources, overseeing the health care identity management support contract know as Task Order 169. This program supported the VA’s Electronic Health Record Modernization efforts by eliminating identity anomalies within the master person index. Records that, when inaccurate, block veterans from receiving medical care, disability and retirement compensation, and other earned benefits. Over the life of the contract, my team resolved 13,400 anomalies…Despite our performance and critical mission alignment, Task Order 169 was terminated…earlier this year, abruptly without transition and without an alternative plan to continue data resolution.”  

Ambrose emphasized these13,400 cases represent individual American veterans, many of whom had gone months or years without critical care or services due to health database errors. His team routinely uncovered cases involving unhoused veterans, aging Vietnam veterans, and newly discharged service members unable to receive medication or book appointments due to data mismatches through no fault of their own.

Nadine Walker, Senior Director of Professional Practice at the National Cancer Registrars Association, underscored the impact of cancelling cancer registry contracts. Four cancer registry contracts are among those cancelled or descoped by DOGE and the Trump VA earlier this year: “Cancer registries are foundational to cancer surveillance in the United States. As Americans, we rely on our cancer surveillance system for everything we learn about, read about, or hear about with regards to cancer. From the number of new cancer patients, cancer survival statistics, cancer research, and cancer prevention needs nationally, within our respective states, and even in our families…VA must be allowed to use [cancer registrar] contractors as needed to adequately staff their registries. These specially trained individuals are not easy to recruit or hire as direct VA employees, and they are also in high demand.”

This forum comes on the heels of damning reporting from ProPublica exposing the careless nature of Secretary Collins and DOGE’s contract cancellation process at VA. This includes detailing DOGE’s use of flawed, error-prone AI tools to propose and determine what contracts for veterans—including those providing care and services—would be cancelled. In one egregious example detailed in the story, the AI algorithm was told by DOGE to find programs that support implementing the PACT Act and flag them for termination. 

The full text of Blumenthal’s opening is copied below and a video link is available here.

Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): We are here because we have been stonewalled and slow walked. We are here to tell a story. It’s a story of waste and abuse, from people who are purportedly trying to stop waste and abuse. They are laying waste to a renowned and profoundly significant agency in our government that has responsibility to our nation’s heroes.

We need the kind of oversight that this Committee is supposed to provide, but it is failing in that task, and that is why we are having this spotlight hearing with witnesses who should be testifying before the full Committee about the critical facts they are going to give us today.

Number one, this hearing, spotlight hearing, is one of a series, this one concerns contract cancellations. The Administration has failed to provide us with basic facts about these contracts but the staff of the majority—I’m sorry, the minority side of the Committee—our minority staff has been doing an investigation, and the results are preliminary but they are clear, that there is no rationale, no underlying principle, based on either the merits of the contracts, the amount of money, or the effect on veterans for cancelling at least 650 contracts. We have documented those cancellations, and they concern veteran suicide, cancer, prosthetics, research, implementation particularly of the PACT Act. They are essential to delivering quality services to our veterans. These contracts are underway, and cancelling them actually costs more money that it saves, in many instances.

We are spotlighting that abuse of power on the part of the Secretary of the VA—and make no mistake, we are talking about DOGE, Musk people, who are rashly and recklessly making recommendations about what contracts should be canceled, but ultimately, it is the responsibly of the VA Secretary to either accept those recommendations or to reject them as he should have done instead of cancelling these contracts en masse.

He says that contacts were wasteful. In reality, the majority are for critical services: to help the VA recruit and retain doctors, to maintain cancer registries, to support suicide prevention efforts, and to preform safety inspections at VA medical facilities. Those examples are just a few, but suffice it to say, these contracts are for the critical services that the VA provides and for benefits and compensation based on the injuries caused by exposure to toxic burn pits and other kinds of problems that veterans may encounter.

On March 3rd, Secretary Collins changed course—again—announcing that he would cancel 585 contracts with an alleged value of 1.8 million—nearly 2 billion dollars— again, he provided no details. He has since gone back and forth on the numbers of contracts and the values of them. For example, on May 16th, he told Congress it had cancelled more than 440 contracts with a value of $120 billion. Again, information provided—inadequate, filled with errors and inaccuracies. When we cross check with public contracting databases, his information is fraught with error that at this point, I am tempted to say has too purposeful. It has to be deliberately misleading. I hope not, but that is the logical conclusion to reach from the kind of stonewalling and inaccuracies that he has given this Committee.

Let me say finally, multiple letters requesting hearings, countless emails to VA officials, unavailing so far to produce the truth. Our investigation will continue, we are unearthing some deeply repugnant and concerning aspects of this process. I have to believe that the DOGE tech bros are willing to burn down the house because they don’t live in it. They’re not veterans, they don’t need these services. They have to be people who have no relatives or friends who are veterans, and if they do, they are betraying them. And most important, the Secretary of the VA is refusing to give us information and potentially betraying the trust that he has.

With that we are going to turn to our witnesses, let me introduce them.

Benjamin Ambrose is a Marine Corps veteran, including combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Following his military service, he served as a policy advisor on veterans’ issues in the Senate before entering the consulting sector, where his work has included innovation and issues for the Department of Defense, the Office of Naval Research, and VA healthcare. He was working on a VA contract when it was cancelled by DOGE.

Sharon Hinde-Grimm is an Army veteran and Chief Executive Officer of Snowbird Agility Inc., a service-disabled veteran-owned small business with a VA contract to improve quality of care for veterans. She is a recognized leader in modernizing public sector digital services, and fierce advocate for small businesses in the government contracting space. In 2025, she was named a Women Veteran Trailblazer by the VA Center for Women Veterans. Her company’s contract was cancelled by DOGE.

Nadine Walker is the Senior Director of Professional Practice at the National Cancer Registrars Association. Ms. Walker brings more than 30 years of experience as a certified cancer registry professional. She has worked at community hospitals and academic teaching healthcare facilities in New Jersey as part of the cancer leadership team, building quality patient-centered cancer programs. She was also responsible for coordinating and managing the American College of Surgeon’s Commission on Cancer Program Accreditations and Hospital Cancer Registry Operations. Cancer registry services are among the contracts cancelled by DOGE at VA.

Scott Amey, the General Counsel for the Project on Government Oversight—also known as POGO, I think—and an expert on federal contracting oversight and transparency. In addition to working on organizational legal demands, he participates in contract oversight investigations, including conducting reviews of federal spending on products and services, the responsibility of federal contractors and conflicts of interests and ethics concerns. He spent years testifying before Congress and federal agency panels, submitting public comments on proposed regulations, educating the public by working with the media and publishing reports on federal acquisition, ethics, and open-government issues.

Thank you all for being here. I have rushed through your qualifications because we really want to hear from you. I apologize to all who are listening through the livestream, and I know there are many of you because our past sessions and hearings have been very well attended online. And I turn it over to—let’s begin with Mr. Ambrose.

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