Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Internal Revenue Service Relating to ``Gross Proceeds Reporting By Brokers That Regularly Provide Services Effectuating Digital Asset Sales''--

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, first, let me thank Senator Blumenthal for this effort. It really matters. Even if it fails, it matters to our veterans to know that we tried, to know that we did not leave them out there at the mercy of Elon Musk and his little muskrats that have been running around through all of our government Agencies breaking Agencies, violating court orders, prowling through your data-- Americans, prowling through your data--and, of course, firing veterans.

No President has fired more veterans than Donald Trump just in his first few weeks in office, and what it is doing to the VA and to services for veterans is deeply wrong and deeply unfortunate.

In Rhode Island, we have our Providence VA health center, which is a first-class operation. Our veterans love it. It is well run. It has all sorts of new services and facilities that Senator Reed and I have worked to make sure got to the hospital. Also, it has nearly 2,500 employees. It is a big operation.

We also have the Providence VA benefits office, which is such a good benefits office that if a program is being rolled out and not working someplace, they call in the Providence benefits office to try to get it working. If they are about to roll out a new program and they want to beta test it, they go to the Providence benefits office because they are good at what they do. I can't think of anything that makes them more proud than the customers they serve. They love the folks they work for.

So to go through this group and slash and burn without the least logic or care from, like, these little tech bro muskrat types who have never served, have no idea what they are doing, but are just taking delight in moving fast and breaking things, to use the tech bro talk-- well, that is fine if you are a tech bro and you are playing around with equipment, but when you are dealing with our veterans and you are dealing with people's lives, running around fast, not knowing what you are doing, and breaking stuff sounds more like Thing One and Thing Two from ``The Cat in the Hat.'' This is not the responsible way veterans should be treated.

I will mention just two while I am here.

There is a Rhode Islander who works for our Veterans Crisis Line. It is the hotline that veterans can call in to when they are having an acute crisis of some kind, perhaps even feeling suicidal. This is not easy work. When that phone goes, you have to be on, and you have to be expert. You have to understand how to support the people who are calling in. You have to understand how to get them to the services they need. It is a life-and-death matter.

This individual was fired and then rehired a few days later--or at least told they were reinstated just a few days later. But with all the scrambling going on at the VA, the VA has not reissued work credentials, and they still do not have a return-to-work date for the improper firing that never should have happened and then was rescinded but now doesn't have a proper end to the termination. It is administrative malpractice, it is stupid, and it is wrong.

We have another Rhode Islander who worked at the local vet center who was also abruptly and unjustifiably terminated.

As I said, it really means a lot to these people to be working for veterans. They really put their hearts into it, and they really want to do a very good job. They actually get rated on whether or not they are, in fact, doing a good job.

This individual received outstanding performance ratings. It wasn't just that they threw their heart and soul into their work, their peers reviewed them and their supervisors reviewed them and said that they were outstanding performers at their work.

So a letter comes to them saying that they were terminated due to poor performance. Among other things, that was a lie because they weren't poor performers. They were excellent performers.

When you lie to people who are working for veterans just so you can fire them, that is a pretty loathsome way to go about serving veterans, and it is certainly a loathsome way to treat the people who dedicate their lives to taking care of veterans.

If you want to go find the people who have poor performance and fire them, go find the people who have poor performance and fire them, but don't just randomly accuse high performers of poor performance, lie to them about their performance, and fire them. It is a really offensive state of affairs.

It means now that vet center calls are being routed out to Colorado in a different time zone. Rhode Island--a little bit like Connecticut-- is a small State. Connecticut is a little bigger. We have our own character, we have our own nature, and we have our own, often, way of speaking. And it matters, when you pick up the phone to call the vet center, that you are not talking to somebody several time zones away in Colorado, particularly not because the phone isn't being answered because a high-performing worker was lied to about their performance and wrongly fired. There is really no excuse for that.

I want to say to the folks at the Providence benefits office: Thank you. God bless you. We admire and respect what you do. We recognize that the entire VA organization has treated you as particularly expert and able, and the work you do to make sure our vets get the benefits they are due is first class. Thank you for what you do. We are grateful. And I apologize that this President and this whatever he is and his little muskrats are doing this kind of damage to the institution you so proudly serve.

To the folks at the Providence VA hospital: God bless you, and thank you. You do great work.

I deal with veterans all the time. Our veterans love our hospital. They are proud of our hospital. They think it is well run. They think they are well treated. The services are good. You can even get rides there. There is good parking. I mean, this hospital runs the way you would want a veterans hospital to run.

So keep those little muskrats out of Rhode Island. Don't damage the services to our veterans.

I hope that, as the chairman said, we can come together and fix this, but it is hard to hear about how we should come together when nobody came together from ``Muskland,'' and those little muskrats didn't check in with anybody before they went in to break stuff at these Agencies. It is a little late for togetherness when there has been none in terms of defending the work that these wonderful people do.

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