During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) spoke about the mass layoffs of VA employees.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Senator Roanoke. Thank you Mr. Chairman for this hearing. Of the number of bills
00:06that are on the agenda three of them are mine and I'm glad to say that the VA in
00:11support of two of them with requests for more time for the third one so these are
00:17the Rep VA Act, Vet Pact Act which VA supports and the Veterans Fraud
00:23Reimbursement Act which the VA says it needs more time to review even though
00:28the VA did testify in support of this act in a House subcommittee. The thing is
00:35Mr. Chairman that we can have all of these bills but if the VA doesn't have
00:39the manpower does not have the personnel to implement the various bills that we
00:44pass what are we doing here? And so I share the Vice Chair's concerns about
00:51what is going on with the VA. Now we know that federal employees are being fired
00:55across the board in every department not just in VA. Thousands of federal
01:02employees are being fired. 2,400 being fired from VA. Mr. Engelbaum were these
01:11initial firings based on any kind of an analysis of competence? Any performance
01:20analysis that led to the firing of 2,400 people and from the VA? Senator I
01:27can't talk to to specifics on the actual analysis. One as I mentioned earlier on
01:32that it's subject of litigation right right now. Excuse me. You know everybody
01:38knows that these firings were across the board and of course it's going to lead
01:42to litigation. Do not use litigation as an excuse for coming to tell us that you
01:48can't talk about it. These were across the board firings of people on
01:52probationary status. It impacted not just the VA and by the way another 80,000
01:58plus will be getting fired and yes it will that those will lead to more
02:06litigation. President Trump issued something like 26 executive orders on
02:12day one of his administration. I would say that there were probably losses
02:19filed as to every single one of these as expected because many of these EOs were
02:25totally illegal but we have an administration that doesn't give a rip
02:29about the rule of law so do not come here and tell us that you can't talk
02:34about what the basis of these firings were. I think the fact of the matter is
02:38that they were across the board. I don't know how the VA is supposed to do its
02:42job when on the one hand it is firing by the time you're through the
02:50administration is through some 80, 90, 85,000 people from the VA and at the same
02:58time you're trying to hire some 300,000 so on the one hand you're letting go all
03:03these people not based on any performance analysis and on the other
03:07you're trying to hire 300,000 or so people. I mean who would want to work
03:11for any of our agencies with all this chaos going on so Mr. Chairman much as
03:16you know I support the legislation that we have I really wonder what is this
03:22exercise that we're undergoing here where many of these bills including the
03:28three that I introduced all in a bipartisan way and as I mentioned
03:33earlier this is a one of the few committees where we are able to get
03:37things done in a bipartisan way and so I would be very supportive except that we
03:44have an administration that doesn't seem to have its controls and hands on the
03:49levels of control because we have an administration that is continuing to so
03:58chaos and litigation abounds there about 70 lawsuits that are ongoing and
04:08numerous judges are saying to the administration you can't do that and we
04:13have to have hearings on whether or not this administration intends to even
04:16follow court orders so Mr. Chairman