Video: Blumenthal Presses Trump VA Nominee for Answers: "We're Asking for Basic Transparency"

[WASHINGTON, D.C.] – At a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee nomination hearing today, Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) grilled John Bartrum, the nominee to be Under Secretary for Health at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), on his role working as Senior Advisor to VA Secretary Doug Collins and the Trump VA’s lack of transparency around the impacts of its staffing and contract cuts. If confirmed, Bartrum would be tasked with leading VA’s health care system, serving more than nine million veterans, and overseeing VA’s health care workforce.

“Alarmingly the VA is poised to lose…30,000 employees by the end of this year—along with 40,000 pre-existing vacancies—with no intention of backfilling those positions. At least one VA facility recently had fifty mental health care providers leave due to the toxic work conditions created by this Administration. Secretary Collins says this will have no effect on veterans’ health care. With all due respect, I think that contention is simply false…All this has happened Mr. Bartrum, again, while you have been working as a senior advisor to Secretary Collins,” said Blumenthal.

Following reporting from Federal News Network detailing the significant loss of VA staff in direct care and veteran-facing roles Bartrum would oversee, Blumenthal pressed Bartrum on his views regarding these dramatic losses: “Are you alarmed by the numbers that I gave you, as to the 1,720 registered nurses, 600 physicians, front line doctors, nurses, psychologists, police officers leaving as a result of the resignations, firings, hiring freezes just so far?”

Blumenthal cited data from the article, which revealed how thousands of employees in veteran-facing jobs, including approximately 1,720 registered nurses, 1,150 medical support assistants, 600 physicians, 200 police officers, 80 psychologists and 1,100 veteran claim examiners, have left the Department so far in fiscal year 2025—the majority since January. In comparison, over same time period last year, the Biden Administration added approximately 3,200 registered nurses, 230 doctors, 1,570 medical support assistants, 190 police officers, and 1,480 claims examiners.

Blumenthal rebuked Mr. Bartrum’s response—which brushed off these losses of thousands of doctors and nurses as “natural changeover”: “Are you aware that the loss of those thousands of staff have an effect on VA health care? Those numbers are not business as usual. I gave you the numbers for a similar period under the Biden Administration. Even at the beginning of this fiscal year, there were 40,000 vacancies. Wouldn’t you say VA health care is in jeopardy as a result of the number of VA employees already lost—even before the 30,000 that [will leave] by the end of the year?”

Blumenthal also questioned Bartrum on the decisions he was involved in during his time working as Senior Advisor to VA Secretary Collins: “In your role as Senior Advisor, were you involved in the cancellation of contracts?”

When Bartrum replied “yes,” Blumenthal asked him the number of the contracts that have been cancelled, which Bartrum was unable to provide.

Blumenthal emphasized the Administration’s inability to provide Congress answers and accurate information about its cuts, like its ongoing cancellation of hundreds of contracts providing services to veterans and supporting VA operations: “Well, we’ve heard that again and again and again ‘you’ll get back to us.’ We’ve heard it from nominees; we’ve heard it from the Secretary. Information has been provided—it’s incomplete. It’s wrong. We’re asking for basic transparency and disclosure here that we have a right to see, veterans have a right to see, and the public has a right to see.”

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

U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): Thanks, Mr. Chairman. As senior advisor to Secretary Collins, Mr. Bartrum, were you involved in the decision to fire 83,000 VA employees?

Mr. John Bartrum: Was I involved in the decision to fire 82,000 employees? No.

Blumenthal: Were you involved in the decision to change that number to 30,000?

Bartrum: No

Blumenthal: Have you been involved in any workforce decisions previously related to health care?

Bartrum: I'm not involved in any of the HR decisions that come out of the HR side.

Blumenthal: Are you alarmed by the numbers that I gave you, as to the 1,720 registered nurses. Nearly 600 physicians. Frontline doctors, nurses, psychologists, police officers, leaving as a result of the resignations, firings, hiring freezes, just so far?

Bartrum: So, what I would say is that I am not aware of any firings there have been–

Blumenthal: Well, are you alarmed by those numbers?

Bartrum: But there are force restructuring tools out there, but there’s also numbers of people that change in the system, and In our system every year we have about 40,000 people turnover in our system every year. So in the system where you have 470,000 people, I'm not alarmed by a shift of 500 or 700 or 7,500 because in systems this big you have natural, natural change over. What I can say is that what I have seen in the VA, is that our employees tend to stay longer, and we tend to recruit well.

Blumenthal: Are you aware that the loss of those thousands of staff have an effect on VA health care? Those numbers are not business as usual. I gave you the numbers for the similar period under the Biden Administration. Even at the beginning of this fiscal year there were 40,000 vacancies. Wouldn't you say that V.A. health care is in jeopardy as a result of the numbers of employees already lost, even before the 30,000 that are planned by the end of the year?

Bartrum: So what I would also say is that, what you may not have seen is that we’ve made changes to our systems that have enhanced our ability to provide access and our ability to provide care.

Blumenthal: So you’re not alarmed?

Bartrum: So expanding the electronic scheduling system, which in the past one person would schedule for the community care process, would schedule, and these were generally nurses, would schedule 5-7 patients a day. By expanding out the, what's called the EPS, the electronic scheduling process, we’re now doing 20-24 on average per scheduler. So it expands access and it expands the ability –

Blumenthal: I’m going to interrupt you because my time is limited, Mr. Bartrum. You’re talking to me about maybe doing scheduling more efficiently, you’re not talking about doctors, nurses, police, janitors. You and I talked. They’re all part of the team, you’ve got to have a team. Are you, in your role as senior advisor, were you involved in the cancellation of contracts?

Bartrum: I was involved in review of contracts that career officials would recommend for re-scoping, de-scoping or, in some cases, cancellation.

Blumenthal: What’s the answer to that question: yes or no?

Bartrum: Yes.

Blumenthal: You were involved?

Bartrum: Yes

Blumenthal: Okay, can you give me a number of contracts that have been canceled?

Bartrum: Ah, no. I can't give you a number of contracts that have been canceled but what I can say is I can get back to you for the record. I know that we have –

Blumenthal: Well we’ve heard that again, and again, and again, and again you’ll get back to us. We’ve heard it from nominees, we’ve heard it from the Secretary. Information has been provided. It’s incomplete, it’s wrong. We’re asking for basic transparency and disclosure here, that we have a right to see, veterans have a right to see, the public has a right to see. Let me ask you, do you have information about the wait times for community care? When veterans choose that option, do you have data about the wait times for community care?

Bartrum: Yes, I do have some information. I'm not locating my page on that, sir, if I find it. But I can get back to you. What I can say is that in our wait times we have seen improvements in certain areas of wait times.

Blumenthal: We’ve asked for this data, repeatedly. I'm not surprised you can't find it in your notebook there. Or maybe, I should say, if you found it, it should have been provided to us long before now because we’ve requested it, repeatedly. You can get back to me, I welcome your willingness to do so. But, again, the reason why we have, in effect, asked for the regular order on these nominees is this kind of data simply hasn't been provided. My time is expired, Mr. Chairman, I hope that we’ll have time for additional questions.

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