Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill, in an effort to protect service veterans' federal jobs and contracts – and their healthcare, and the sensitive health data entrusted to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs – are taking action. They're holding hearings, hosting roundtable public discussions with fired vets and drafting new laws designed to protect service members from the actions of the Trump Administration and its Department of Government Efficiency.For instance, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs ranking member, recently announced a series of "shadow hearings" to examine the impact of the administration DOGE on veterans and their families.In the first, held on Wednesday, senators asked former VA employees a series of questions about agency operations and care programs. They wanted to know if those on ground zero of the workforce reductions at the agency think that all VA program teams experiencing staffing losses will be able to keep up with veteran demand and if all the protected data accessible through VA.gov is secure.Earlier in the week, Sen. Cory Booker, D-New Jersey, also addressed VA job losses and how they will affect veterans' care during his record-breaking marathon 25-hour speech from the Senate floor. During a question-and-answer period with Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, the two discussed firings at the Veteran Crisis Line and VA medical centers that need to expand their services to keep up with growing veteran demand in their communities.VA cuts under a microscopePresident Trump enacted a federal government hiring freeze on his first day in office, although open Veterans Health Administration healthcare job posts were later exempted. But the VA began firing staff, including U.S. veterans in January and February.Blumenthal said his shadow sessions are designed to highlight specific issues and provisions in the Putting Veterans First Act of 2025, which he introduced on March 13 as a means to "provide protections for employees, benefits, and programs of the Department of Veterans Affairs." His proposed bill has two sections that address DOGE's effect on the agency. One section of the legislation would limit the department's access to veteran and VA systems and data and prohibit access to any veteran or VA data "including health records, contracts and financial data." Another would pause efforts to cut and cancel VA contracts "pending a full review and report to Congress on contracts that were cancelled, which ones VA plans to restore and overall impact to veterans' care and benefits."VA Secretary Doug Collins was invited to the first shadow hearing, which had been viewed by nearly 20,000 people on the X social media platform at press time, but did not attend."This shadow hearing will be an important opportunity for VA to respond to questions from members and key stakeholders and to hear from veterans and VA employees who have been directly, negatively impacted by recent policy and program changes you have made," Blumenthal told Collins in a letter. On March 3, the VA announced it had terminated 585 contracts with vendors and contractors. Collins then announced in a video on March 5 that the agency would reduce another 15% of its workforce – about 80,000 jobs – under the DOGE Workforce Optimization Initiative, "without making cuts to healthcare or benefits to veterans or VA beneficiaries."Collins told veterans in Howell, Michigan, gathered at the American Legion Post 141 on Monday that while the agency may not get to 80,000 in staff reductions, there would be a lot of "friction," according to the Detroit Free Press. He was joined by U.S. Representative Tom Barrett, R-Michigan, who chairs the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, as part of their day touring VA medical facilities in the state, the story said."Where do we need help and where do we not need [help]?" Collins reportedly said. "That's really the criteria for what we're doing right now."Lawmakers and others have said they are experiencing growing frustration at the agency for not responding to their requests for information on job cuts and analyses on how VA programs could be affected by the agency's staff and contract terminations.On Monday, Blumenthal also announced he would join Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, in placing a hold on all VA nominees in protest of Collins's thus far declining to appear before lawmakers. "We need answers right away to the questions we have been asking in letters we have written," Blumenthal said. "And we need them in public so veterans can see and have some transparency and visibility into what is actually happening. The anger among our veterans’ community is mounting."Data security in the spotlightProviding testimony remotely were several fired VA staff members, including Jonathan Kamens, who spearheaded cybersecurity on the VA.gov portal for benefits and services.Fired by email on Valentine's Day along with about 40 colleagues, Kamens had previously told the Associated Press that veterans' health and financial data is at risk with the cuts. He said the agency's main portal has access to many VA databases to provide veterans with benefits and services. Existing staff would not be able to backfill the role, he said.Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, asked Kamens for more detail on threats to veteran data through VA.gov. "The VA offers a huge array of services to veterans, and that involves a huge amount of data," Kamens told Warren. (He offered more insights in a blog post about the shadow hearing this week.)"We're talking about medical records; we're talking about therapy notes; we're talking about information about their families; we're talking about their financial information; their bank account numbers; their tax records," he said. "All of this stuff gets uploaded through VA.gov. It's all accessible." If a threat actor compromises the portal, then all of that data is compromised, said Kamens, outlining three major threats. "One of them is that scammers are going to go after our veterans and use that data to convince the veterans that they're legitimate and then take advantage of them."The second threat is data exfiltration for extortion or stealing private medical or therapy information and threatening to release it unless a ransom is paid. The third threat is that the administration could use VA data "to go after particular segments of the veteran population that are particularly at risk under Trump," Kamen said."Unfortunately, we don't have to look far to figure out what risk is posed when DOGE gets its hands on a database," Warren responded, noting that DOGE.gov was hacked and private security information was revealed when DOGE itself published "controlled information about the office that designs U.S. intelligence satellites." Warren then asked Kamens, "Do you believe that the cybersecurity of VA.gov and the data security of the 20 million veterans who use it is in good hands?" "No, senator, I absolutely do not," he answered. "Specifically, they are making a huge effort to centralize access to that data," Kamens explained. "The reason why the data has traditionally been decentralized in the federal government is exactly to prevent it from misuse."Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, asked Kamens how he was fired, and why he believed he was ousted from his role. "I have heard about why some of the people of the U.S. Digital Service were fired and some of us were not," Kamens answered. "As best as I am able to determine from the facts that I do have access to, I think I was chosen for firing because I had been outspoken in my opposition to what DOGE was doing before I was fired, and I think I was fired for political reasons, frankly."When asked for the specific reason the VA gave him, Kamens said, noting that he had not received any reviews of poor performance, he was told the agency was going to be restructured and his services were "no longer needed."Removing expertise, overburdening teamsIn Blumenthal's shadow session, witnesses also included people such Major General Paul Eaton; Kira Carrigan, a military veteran and military spouse stationed in Louisiana who worked remotely for the Office of Personnel Management, and Shernice Mundell, who was promoted at OPM in August. Warren asked Eaton what would happen to the "quality of services the VA provides to our veterans if Elon Musk is allowed to cut 83,000 employees?""When you reduce the care component, you're going to extend the wait times, and sometimes you just don't have that time," Eaton said. Too often, he said, veterans are in crisis and need immediate attention. "That's why we have the suicide rates that we do.""The other thing that's going on is there's an effort to privatize everything that the VA is doing," he continued. "Once that happens, you will then have your veterans exposed to medical care professionals who may not know what veterans' care issues are.""What we do get with the VA is expertise and capacities, and we used to have the metrics to ensure that we were going to be seen at the right time. That is now eroded," said Eaton.Lou Graziani, a retired disabled Army veteran reinstated to his public affairs position at a VA office in the Bronx after court rulings, also fielded questions from senators.King asked Graziani, who fired him from his job communicating with veterans about their benefits. He said the chief human capital officer who sent his original termination as well as reinstatement notices may know.Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, a former naval officer and astronaut, asked the former witnesses how staff reductions would affect their VA colleagues.Kamens, who worked for a year and a half at the VA in the office of the chief technology officer, said that everyone he interacted with at the agency was a dedicated public servant and they are already overworked."It's going to be more impossible for them to keep up with what it is that they're being asked to do," he said. "I would add that despite how overworked all of the people that I worked with were, we accomplished great things in terms of improving services for veterans and reducing wait times and improving the quality of service that they were provided."Sacrificing frontline support The loss of frontline workers has prompted lawmakers to inquire how VA job cuts impact veterans' care.Sen. Booker, who focused his epic floor speech on what he called President Trump's willingness to violate the Constitution's Article 1 principles to hurt those who rely on "healthcare and social security," dove into VA and federal agency firings of veterans and the downstream effects of that with Sen. Duckworth.One of 10 co-sponsors of the Protect Veterans Jobs Act introduced by Duckworth, a veteran, on March 10, Booker has pledged to work to reinstate VA staff like Graziani. The lawmakers argue that agency employees were wrongly fired from their federal jobs by the Trump Administration. "Firing these VA employees will even harm veterans that Trump is not firing because it's going to force them to wait longer to see their healthcare providers," Duckworth said Monday in the preamble to her question. "It's going to make them wait longer to have their disability claims; it is going to make them wait longer to have someone pick up their calls at the Veterans Crisis Line."Duckworth said she has been contacted by constituents who said they were fired from their jobs on the vets’ crisis line. One had been promoted and was thus in probationary status when she was terminated. Meanwhile, Secretary Collins denied crisis line firings in a video dated February 20. But four days later, the agency announced the firing of 1,400 probationary employees, which may have included the constituent and former VA employee Duckworth spoke of. The Illinois senator asked Booker if he had also heard from veterans in New Jersey who lost their jobs.Booker referenced stories from veterans that he read earlier in his speech and said that he knows of thousands of veterans that not only served the VA, but also the National Park Service, Defense Department and other agencies, and veteran entrepreneurs that have helped to strengthen the economy now struggling under DOGE cuts."The VA is cutting not just veteran jobs, they're cutting contracts with veteran-owned businesses," Booker said.Duckworth said that VA cuts are going to result in reduced efficacy of veterans' homelessness programs. She said she found evidence of that in Missouri at the Cochrane VA Medical Center, where she traveled to over the weekend. Cochrane staff had told her they need to expand their VA housing services because 25,000 veterans are moving into the area.Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers have largely been absent from Congressional conversations about VA job losses and program and contract cuts, and how they are or could affect veterans. No republicans attended Blumenthal's first VA shadow session. But two GOP senators did attend Booker's marathon protest speech, the Oregon Capital Chroniclereported, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, and Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah. Meanwhile, some other Republican politicians have voiced some concerns about the way these cuts have been administered. The Associated Press reported that Rep. Dan Crenshaw, R-Texas, has acknowledged constituent concerns about VA cuts at a March 21 town hall meeting. "We’re learning about this stuff at the speed of light, the way you are. I think there’s been some babies thrown out with the bath water here, but we’re still gathering information on it."Crenshaw, a Navy veteran, then pledged to fight for veteran jobs, according to the AP. "If you’re doing a job that we need you to do, you’re doing it well, yeah, we’ve got to fight for you," he said. Healthcare IT News has reached out to the VA press office for comments and will update this story when and if there are any.Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.Email:
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