What to Watch for at The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)
What to Watch for at The Department of Veterans Affairs
– by Allison Gill
The Contrarian
“During Donald Trump’s first term, it took a while for me to get fired” . . . Allison Gill an employee of the Department of Veterans
I had worked at the VA for over a decade when I was told my job was moving across the country. My podcast about the Mueller Investigation was investigated, and through that it was brought to my attention through a FOIA request that my social media was being monitored because of my interview with the Secretary of the VA that Trump had ousted, and because of my social media posts critical of the abuse found at the VA Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection. I was removed from my job ostensibly because I was a remote worker.
Now, in Trump’s second term, the abuse is right out in the open. With the reinstatement of Schedule F, the administration no longer has to resort to tricks like moving jobs and offices across the country to gut the civil service and target those who speak truth to power. Now, the promises of Project 2025 as it pertains to veterans and veteran benefits are front and center, and I wanted to take some time to tell people what to look out for, and how to fight back.
It appears policy changes are coming that will violate laws intended to protect Veteran Benefits. Project 2025 aims to slash benefits and privatize veteran healthcare, according to a Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute analysis. The VA’s use of private healthcare is known to face “huge cost overruns.”
These benefits reductions could be part of the first sweeping budget reconciliation bill that also promises cuts to Medicaid, food stamps (which many active duty service members and veterans rely on), and climate proposals from President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
Doug Collins, Trump’s pick for VA secretary, called for firings during his confirmation hearing.
Pete Hegseth has floated prioritizing VA service-connected disability benefits, which could threaten benefits for those whose injuries weren’t a direct result of something that happened in the line of duty. That could threaten disability benefits for veterans with PTSD resulting from sexual assault or other abuse sustained while in the military.
The Trump administration could also refuse to pay back the veterans he tried to—in my opinion—swindle out of their GI Bill education benefits during his first term in office. Veterans who accepted Chapter 33 benefits had to forfeit the first year of their Chapter 32 benefits, and that condition cost millions of veterans thousands of dollars. One veteran, James Rudisill, sued the VA and won at the Supreme Court—a decision ordering the VA to repay billions of dollars to veterans. Those payments have yet to come, and the first Trump administration fought the case the whole way. As veteran Michael Embrich wrote this past week for Rolling Stone:
“Trump’s disregard for legal and moral obligations to veterans is nothing new. His administration routinely prioritized “cost-cutting” over service members’ well-being, whether by attempting to privatize the VA in his first term, delaying benefits claims, or ignoring the systemic issues plaguing veterans’ health care. With this ruling, veterans stand to gain billions in owed benefits. But Trump’s track record suggests he will fight tooth and nail to deny us what we have rightfully earned.”
Finally, the VA Office of Accountability and Whistleblower Protection (OAWP) is more in danger than ever of becoming simply a project subject to the whims of the executive branch. The OAWP was established by Congress in 2017 to protect whistleblowers, but in a 2019 report the VA Inspector General found that it failed to protect whistleblowers by revealing their identities to other VA entities and failed to uphold the law. They actually used the OAWP to punish whistleblowers and protect the administration officials that they complained about. The Inspector General’s office summarized the report by saying: “Insufficient safeguards put whistleblowers at risk of becoming the subject of retaliatory investigations, and in one troubling instance OAWP initiated an investigation that could itself be considered retaliatory.”
I’ll be keeping a close eye on the OAWP, and recommend that VA whistleblowers initiate legal action if the new administration abuses the Office in violation of the law that established it. The ambitions here are nothing new for the Trump administration, but they’re more unbridled than ever.
The motto of the VA is based on a passage from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address in which he vowed that the nation would “care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.” In the coming months and years, I will be keeping a close eye on these promised attacks on veterans benefits and whistleblower protections, and I am committed to exposing this administration for any violations of law and policy that undermine Lincoln’s sacred promise.