ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President Trump's nominee to lead the VA, Doug Collins, got a strong endorsement today from the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee with an 18-1 vote to confirm. His nomination now heads to the full Senate for a vote.
But that wasn't the biggest news about the VA today. It's been a confusing time at the department since President Trump announced a federal hiring freeze Monday. The order said it would not affect veterans' benefits. But within 24 hours, doctors and nurses were getting VA job offers rescinded. NPR veterans correspondent Quil Lawrence is here. Hi, Quil.
QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: Hey, Ari.
SHAPIRO: OK, so Doug Collins, Air Force colonel and former Georgia congressman - he was pressed about this federal hiring freeze at his confirmation hearing. What happened?
LAWRENCE: Yeah, in particular, the Democratic ranking member, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, said that VA, where there's been an ongoing push to fill vacancies, needs a total exemption from this hiring freeze to get veterans timely health care and the benefits that they've earned. Collins respectfully pushed back.
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DOUG COLLINS: No one on the veteran health care side is going to miss their health care provider because of this new hiring freeze. The president is doing a prudent step as he comes into office to make sure that we have a good handle on what we've got and going forward.
LAWRENCE: So but then just a day later, I started hearing stories from across the country about doctors, pharmacists, nurses, people who had already gone through a very complicated process to get hired by the VA, and they were having these job offers rescinded. Some of them after having moved and bought a house, you know, moved a U-Haul across the country, suddenly, they were told, no, you don't have a job.
SHAPIRO: Now, I understand 25 Democratic senators sent a letter to President Trump. You've seen this letter. What does it say?
LAWRENCE: Yeah, Senator Blumenthal led that effort, and he explained it to me earlier today.
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL: There's no question that this hiring freeze will inhibit retaining and recruiting new people to serve our veterans where there are openings right now. So we're demanding that the hiring freeze provide for a full and immediate exemption for VA personnel.
LAWRENCE: So then, in the middle of speaking with Senator Blumenthal, this other VA memo came out. And the VA memo said that the VA was going to mostly do that. It exempts hundreds of thousands of VA health care jobs from the hiring freeze.
SHAPIRO: So where does that leave the doctors whose job offers got rescinded or the veterans themselves?
LAWRENCE: Yeah, well, so the memo directed that all of these jobs be reposted as openings and that the VA recontact the people who they had just rescinded the job offers from - these people who had what they thought were firm job offers, that were canceled for about 48 hours. This memo acknowledged that that's going to take some time, and it certainly might have shaken some trust in the VA's job offers/hiring process.
But there's still a few other issues. So, you know, these exemptions, so far, from the hiring freeze, are almost all health care jobs. But that leaves out critical non-health care jobs, like answering the Veteran suicide crisis line or, you know, all the people who are working through the backlog of veterans' disability claims. They don't appear to be included in this exemption from the hiring freeze. The Republican chair of the VA Committee, Senator Jerry Moran, sent NPR a statement praising the VA's exemptions today and saying that VA needs to establish a clear, long-term staffing plan.
SHAPIRO: Is anyone concerned that that phrase - clear, long-term staffing plan - could be a euphemism for downsizing or cutting the VA?
LAWRENCE: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's bipartisan agreement that if there's waste within the VA, it should be cut, making it work more efficiently. But Moran, and many Republicans, favor outsourcing a greater portion of VA care to the private sector. And they want vets to be able to choose either private care or VA care. They think that's the best way to get - take care of veterans. But most studies show the VA doing as well or better than private care, and private care is very expensive. Some within the VA see this hiring freeze as just a very blunt tool to try and cut VA, and by doing that, push more veterans into getting care in the private sector.
SHAPIRO: And just briefly, another memo was sent to the VA and many other federal agencies, apparently, today, which appears to be a form letter telling federal staff to report on colleagues who may be trying to continue with diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
LAWRENCE: Yeah. VA, as you said, got what seems to be a pretty identical letter being sent across from acting directors saying that they are aware of efforts by some in government to disguise DEI programs by using coded or imprecise language, meaning that they're going to try and keep these DEI positions going despite Trump's order to end them. But the remarkable part is the letter said that staff should report immediately on anyone doing that and there could be punishment for an employee that doesn't inform on their colleagues. And a lot of people told me that they just found that tone chilling.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Quil Lawrence, who covers veterans and the VA. Thanks a lot, Quil.
LAWRENCE: Thanks, Ari. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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