Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On DOGE Cutting Vital Programs That Benefit Everyday Americans And Our Veterans

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on DOGE cutting programs that are vital to everyday Americans and throwing the VA system into chaos. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

When Donald Trump and DOGE began their work, they kept saying the same thing.

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE said: this is about cutting waste. It’s about efficiency. It’s about meritocracy.

Unfortunately, the truth has not been as advertised. It’s been utter chaos.

Yesterday, the Department of Veterans Affairs said they were reversing course on cancelling billions of dollars in contract work, because – as it turns out – slashing billions in funding that helps veterans is extremely harmful for veterans.

These VA cuts were lauded by DOGE as an example of eliminating waste. The VA Secretary claimed these contracts were for consultants to “make power point slides and write meeting minutes.”

That’s not even close to the truth.

Let me read some examples of what DOGE was actually prepared to cut.

Funding for chemotherapy and imaging services. Those were going to be cut. That’s hardly make-work. That’s hardly writing meeting minutes.

Funding for veterans with disabilities – cut.

Even funding to help veterans suffering from toxic exposure and burn pits. One contract would help over twenty thousand veterans track down their military service record from DOD in order to prove their toxic exposure, as is required. Without these records, getting affordable treatment would not likely be possible.

And DOGE said, let’s cut that too.

Even if the VA reverses course, cancelling these contracts and firing VA staff is still immensely damaging, very damaging.

There’s the risk that you can’t re-hire workers back in time, because they’ve moved on to other jobs.

Or contracts aren’t available because they took their business elsewhere.

And by then, the damage is done – vital services and operations that serve veterans can’t continue as before. It could take months – maybe even years – to build this back, which had been built up carefully to help veterans over the years, and many of us in Congress worked for those things. So, to cut these services and then say never mind still ends up being very destructive.

Sadly, this is only one example.

Yesterday, Elon Musk led his first Cabinet meeting of this Administration.

He admitted that DOGE’s approach has led to many erroneous cuts to staff and programs that are not wasteful but, on the contrary, vital.

“For example,” he said “with USAID, one of the things we accidentally cancelled very briefly was Ebola prevention.” Those are his words.

Are you kidding me?

Cutting funds to stop one of the deadliest diseases in the world is reckless, especially when there’s an Ebola outbreak in Uganda as we speak, and flights from Kampala leave Kampala every day and go all over the world. When epidemics hit America, they oftentime begin abroad, and U.S. funding is essential for preventing those diseases from reaching us here at all. 

I should also note that the claims that Ebola funding is back online are false. Reports are out from last night that 95% of all USAID funding is now being cut, so we’re not sure where it all is.

What DOGE is doing is not what efficiency looks like.

If DOGE actually cares about efficiency and meritocracy, then it is failing, in many ways, its own test.

It would be better to look at these programs, see which might be wasteful, see which are needed, and then make the cuts to the wasteful programs – not take a meat ax or blow torch, call it what you will, and cut everything and then say we'll restore some of the things we shouldn't have cut. Because once you make those cuts, it's very hard to put the pieces back together.

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