Ranking Member Takano Calls Out Committee Republicans’ Voter Suppression Efforts
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WASHINGTON, DC - This morning, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Ranking Member Mark Takano (CA-39) called out Committee Republicans’ voter suppression efforts and urged the Department Veterans Affairs (VA) to continue assisting veterans and their caregivers in exercising their right to vote.
In this meeting, Committee Republicans voted to subpoena VA for documents on its partnerships with nonpartisan organizations and state agencies to provide voting assistance. Through longstanding policy and law, VA provides voter registration aid to veterans and caregivers during administrative appointments, like when changing their address. Ranking Member Takano urged VA to continue promoting better access to veterans’ participation in electoral processes.
Ranking Member Takano delivered the following remarks, as prepared, at the beginning of the business meeting:
“Good Morning and thank you. Prior to our January 11 vote to authorize a subpoena regarding documents in the Committee’s investigation into sexual harassment at VA, this Committee had not voted to issue a subpoena since 2016.
When I held the gavel during the last two years of the Trump Administration, this Committee did not issue a single subpoena. There were plenty of occasions we could have issued subpoenas for the sake of performance over real oversight, but we chose to put veterans over politics.
We relied on the independence of the Inspector General to thoroughly identify and investigate wrongdoing, and we chose not to interfere with ongoing investigations to score press and media hits.
Yet now, the Republican Majority this Congress has threatened to subpoena VA on at least a dozen occasions for its supposed failure to comply with the Majority’s impossible requests. This severely cheapens this Committee’s oversight authority.
We have been through this exercise several times before under the current Majority, and the script is highly predictable.
The Chairman makes a vague, onerous, and overly burdensome document request of VA with a purposely unmeetable deadline. VA produces documents in response to the request.
The Majority doesn’t like the answer they receive, screams that VA failed to meet their unmeetable deadline and then threatens to, or in this case goes through with, issuing a subpoena to compel VA to produce documents they don’t have, are already trying to produce, or have already produced.
The question we must ask is why we see such temper tantrums from our current Majority? It is not out of an earnest desire to acquire information and hold VA accountable for its failings. No, clearly it is not. Rather, this subpoena resolution, and frankly the hearing that will follow, is a red herring meant to distract veterans from the truth: that this Republican majority has absolutely nothing to show for its time in charge other than chaos, dysfunction, and paranoia.
I hope the veterans who are watching see this subpoena for what it is, an anti-democratic and purely political effort to stoke conspiracy theories and ultimately suppress efforts to help veterans and their caregivers vote. Why does the Majority want to suppress the votes of veterans and caregivers? We should want all veterans and caregivers to be able to vote. With how much control elected officials wield over veterans’ health care and benefits, the stakes are enormously high for veteran voters, and their voices should be heard. It is dumbfounding to me that my colleagues would take issue with veterans exercising their right to vote, a right they served and fought for and sometimes died to protect.
The Heritage Foundation, the same organization responsible for Project 2025, is using the Republican-led committees across Congress to suppress voter access.
They have literally published a public-facing memorandum outlining strategies to frustrate efforts to encourage Americans to exercise their fundamental right to vote.
But what makes this subpoena particularly weird and confusing, is that its underlying premise is that VA should not promote veterans’ access to voting, though it has been VA policy to do so since the Bush Administration. This policy was most recently renewed during the Trump Administration.
Even weirder, the law underpinning this policy and President Biden’s Executive Order has been in place for thirty years. The National Voter Registration Act explicitly allows states to request that federal agencies or non-governmental agencies accept the designation as a voter registration agency.
Pursuant to this law, VA is partnering with the state of Michigan to be a voter registration agency, but VA has considered partnerships with Kentucky, Georgia, Hawaii, Pennsylvania, and Nevada to help veterans access the polls.
Yet the Majority is insistent that VA’s efforts constitute electioneering or some sort of partisan political effort to affect voting in swing states and districts. How is registering veterans to vote, no matter where they are, inherently partisan or political?
Through the partnership with Michigan, VA is providing voter registration assistance to veterans in very limited circumstances when processing a change of address or during a Public Contact Team appointment. VA employees were given training by state officials, which included a review of prohibited partisan political conduct while assisting veterans with registration as required by law.
If my colleagues are so concerned with states and agencies following the letter of the National Voter Registration Act, why aren’t they spending their time repealing it? Instead, my colleagues are attacking VA for helping veterans register to vote. They are making a mockery of the Committee’s subpoena authority to the most anti-democratic end I have ever witnessed on this Committee. And I am frankly appalled that they have decided to go to these lengths to serve their political aims. This is not Congressional oversight. This is voter suppression.
In the hundreds of documents VA has already produced for the Majority, there is nothing to indicate that VA has violated the law in any way. The only thing I am concerned about in terms of VA’s actions here is why they are not doing more to register veterans to vote.
Later this week Congress is voting on the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship before registering to vote in federal elections. The Majority has no credible evidence that foreign citizens are voting in federal elections; in fact, this is already an illegal practice.
But this Majority has proven that it will never be deterred by facts or evidence, so it is no surprise they are going to plow forward with this bill. I am opposed to it and will be voting no. But what’s shocking is that in their rush to block people from voting, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have decided that blocking veterans from voting is just as important as blocking undocumented immigrants. This subpoena is a gross and obvious effort to stifle veteran voter registration. This is voter suppression.
But again, it is also a red herring, a distraction from the Majority’s inability to lead, their inability to govern, and their inability to accomplish anything meaningful for veterans.
I certainly do not have veterans banging on my door demanding to know why VA is helping veterans register to vote. However, I do have service members stationed overseas contacting my office saying that they need better access to voting – an issue I am working on. I also have veterans and their providers asking me what our plans are to ensure VA has the resources it needs to continue delivering health care and benefits to those who have earned them. So, I must ask who does this Majority serve – veterans or Project 2025?
I also must ask, to what end is this exercise? I have yet to see my Majority colleagues produce any legislation that actually addresses the issues we’ve spent countless hours of Committee time considering in hearings to help improve VA.
All I have seen is wasted time on deeply flawed bills that have no outlook for becoming law because they are Project 2025 pipe dreams that will do nothing to actually improve VA or help veterans.
Mr. Chairman, using the subpoena authority of the Committee to investigate conspiracy theories is beneath us and should never be considered.
The Committee must hold itself to the highest possible standard, because abuse of the subpoena for political gain – especially when it implicates fundamental constitutional rights – is a very real risk.
By fear mongering and stoking conspiracies that VA is doing something nefarious by registering veterans to vote, my colleagues are showing how little they trust veterans to actually exercise their right to vote. But I will say to veterans: I know how smart you are, and that you will see through the Majority’s partisan efforts.
And I know how powerful you are as a voting bloc… I have seen it and felt it.
It is important for everyone to participate in the electoral process, including veterans. And I encourage my colleagues to vote NO on this subpoena resolution. With that, yield back.”
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