Takano, Blumenthal, King, Colleagues Demand Full Accounting of Cancelled VA Contracts

WASHINGTON –Today, Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Committee member Senator Angus King (I-ME), and  House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Ranking Member Mark Takano (D-CA) led a group of lawmakers demanding that VA Secretary Doug Collins immediately turn over complete, updated list of VA contracts that have been cancelled or are being considered for cancellation. The lawmakers also condemned Secretary Collins for misleading Congress, the public, and most importantly, veterans about the scope and impact of these cancellations.

“Since February, our Committees have made more than a dozen requests, many of them bipartisan, for you to provide Congress with the complete lists of Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) contracts you have cancelled or proposed be cancelled. Today, we write to once again demand these lists,” wrote the lawmakers in a letter to VA Secretary Collins. “In addition, we are requesting a briefing from VA officials on the process by which contracts were and continue to be identified and cancelled, any meaningful advance consultation with career VA officials whose programs are impacted by these cancellations, and all activities of the VA-designated Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) personnel or liaisons and other DOGE personnel involved in VA programs, operations, and management. Our requests for information on DOGE operations at VA began on February 12, 2025, and to date have received no substantive response.”

The lawmakers emphasized the total lack of transparency around Collins’s chaotic contract cancellation, which he bragged about on social media, stating it would save VA two billion dollars: “On February 24 and 25, 2025, you publicly celebrated on social media your plan, carried out with Elon Musk and DOGE, to cancel hundreds of VA contracts you claimed were for “PowerPoint slides and meeting minutes” and you indicated were valued at $2 billion. After you had given the orders for career officials in the Department to start the cancellations, a list of more than 870 contracts was leaked to Congress and the media…When the true purpose and impact of your mass contract cancellations were exposed, you and your leadership team directed career officials to pause some cancellations, stating in an internal email, “VA Leadership is reconsidering previous guidance,” and “further contract reviews will be conducted to arrive at a new final decision.” Records show some contracts previously cancelled at your direction were then reversed while others remain cancelled.”

The lawmakers slammed Collins for his attempt to “hide the truth from Congress” regarding the contracts the Department cancelled: “If this was in fact a consultative and deliberate process, why did the Department have to reverse your orders of just a few days prior to blindly terminate hundreds of contracts?... Now, more than two months later, Congress is still waiting for accurate and complete information on the contracts you have cancelled, the contracts you have restored after being cancelled, the process the Department is using, and documentation for the savings generated and reinvested. When asked about receiving this information and a briefing on DOGE’s operations at the Department, your leadership stated simply that VA “will not be providing a briefing on the issue.”

The lawmakers also highlighted an incomplete, inaccurate list of more than 445 contracts VA claims to have cancelled, which the Department provided Congress on May 16th. They pointed to the multiple inaccuracies of the data the Trump VA provided, including how at least 80 of the contracts listed were terminated during the previous Administration, “wildly inaccurate value/savings figures” for numerous contracts, and how a number of contracts on the list do not appear in the official Federal government system of record—the Federal Procurement Data System—as being cancelled. The lawmakers noted that all of these issues call into question the accuracy of the data provided to Congress and point to Collins’s chaotic process of identifying and canceling contracts.

The letter was led by U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Angus King (I-ME), and U.S. Representative Mark Takano (D-CA), and was joined by Committee members and U.S. Senators Patty Murray (D-WA), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), and U.S. Representatives Julie Brownley (D-CA), Morgan McGarvey (D-KY), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-FL), Delia Ramirez (D-IL), Nikki Budzinski (D-IL), Herbert C. Conaway, Jr. (D-NJ), and Maxine Dexter (D-OR).

Link to the letter here.

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