{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-statement-on-watchdog-report-exposing-the-trump-administrations-reckless-cancellation-of-contracts-serving-veterans", "Blumenthal Statement on Watchdog Report Exposing the Trump Administration's Reckless Cancellation of Contracts Serving Veterans", "2026-09-23", "2026", "2026-09", "Democrat", "Senate", "CT", "Richard Blumenthal", "B001277", "www.blumenthal.senate.gov", "blumenthal", "https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press", "scraper", "[WASHINGTON, D.C.] \u2013 U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Ranking Member of the Senate Veterans\u2019 Affairs Committee, released a statement on a new report from the Department of Veterans Affairs\u2019 (VA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) exposing the Trump Administration and DOGE\u2019s reckless cancellation of contracts at VA beginning in 2025. The report details a chaotic cancellation process directed top-down by DOGE, Secretary Doug Collins, and Senior Advisors at VA, resulting in contracts called without veteran-impact assessments and inaccurate cost saving estimates.\n\n\u201cThis report confirms my repeatedly expressed concerns that VA has recklessly cancelled hundreds of contracts with no consideration of the impact on veterans or VA operations. These cuts harmed veterans and were hidden from Congress and the public by senior VA officials. Secretary Collins owes us answers on how VA will replace lost services and how much this fiasco has cost taxpayers in arbitration, settlements, and reinstatements. Veterans and taxpayers deserve transparency and a full public accounting.\u201d\n\nKey findings of the report reveal:\n\nA top-down process led by DOGE, Doug Collins and political leaders, rather than a process driven by VA subject matter experts.\n\nOIG reports that only after contracts were marked for cancellation did VA leadership ask officials to justify their proposed cuts. In addition, questions about the cancellations\u2019 impact on veterans were not asked until the contracts were identified for termination.\n\nA haphazard process and timeline: \u201cIn some cases, VA officials were given two weeks to complete their review. In others, they were given only a few hours to review hundreds of contracts. VA senior advisers and Department of Government Efficiency representatives directed them to terminate the contracts on February 25, 2025, regardless of the incomplete reviews.\u201d\n\nDue to the reckless cancellation process, VA subsequently reversed some contracts that were already cancelled: \u201cFor example, OIG also found that contracting officers initially terminated an additional 100 contract actions but later reinstated them.\u201d\n\nDOGE and VA advisors\u2019 lack of familiarity with contracting processes and terminology led to \u201cconfusion, frustration,\u201d and made tracking cancelled contracts difficult.\n\nVA repeatedly submitted inaccurate data to Congress and touted false information to the public. For example, in May 2025 DOGE and Doug Collins reported saving $120.9 billion through contract cancellations. However, this report reveals the true savings were not even one percent of that amount.\n\nThe report does not include data independently obtained from VA that reveals an additional 32 contracts were reinstated \u201cdue to direct patient care.\u201d Additionally, OIG did not review an additional 103 contracts that were descoped and 842 not renewed due to DOGE during the same time period.\n\nSince 2025, Blumenthal and Congressional Democrats have sent multiple requests to VA Secretary Doug Collins asking for the complete and updated list of VA contracts cancelled or proposed for cancellation. This report shows that VA failed multiple times to submit accurate data and are still in the process of correcting mistakes their process created.\n\nIn January 2026, Blumenthal and the Senate Veterans\u2019 Affairs Committee released a report detailing the Trump Administration\u2019s lack of transparency and false savings claims arounds its cancellation of thousands of contracts providing services to veterans and supporting VA operations. This report detailed how Trump Administration officials employed a flawed AI model from DOGE to cancel approximately 2,000 contracts for veterans and VA facilities and let another 14,000 expire without any plans for renewal or replacement services. The Trump VA also falsely claimed to have saved $120.8 billion, more than the entirety of total VA contract spending in fiscal year 2024, by cancelling 445 contracts. In addition, at least 80 contracts the Trump Administration claimed to cancel, in order to boast about supposed \u201csavings,\u201d were actually terminated under the Biden Administration between 2021 and 2024.\n\nIn June 2025, Blumenthal led a spotlight forum to examine these contract cancellations with employees whose companies had a VA contract cancelled by DOGE, including a veteran-owned small business, an expert in cancer registries which are among the cancelled VA contracts, and an expert in federal contracting oversight and transparency. These witness underscored the harm of the cancellation of contracts on veterans and the sudden cancellation of their companies contracts without cause.\n\n-30-", 1, "2026-09-26T09:43:57Z", "2026-09-26T09:44:55Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.blumenthal.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/blumenthal-statement-on-watchdog-report-exposing-the-trump-administrations-reckless-cancellation-of-contracts-serving-veterans"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.3582890387624502, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}