Service Members Will Suffer with Robert Wilkie Leading Veterans Affairs

The Senate failed our nation’s veterans yesterday by confirming Robert Wilkie as the head of the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Democrats who voted to confirm him despite his alarming track record have demonstrated yet again just how far removed they are from the people they claim to represent.

I, like many active and retired service members, depend upon the VA for my healthcare. Wilkie’s strong support for the privatization of the VA healthcare system make him a terrible choice to lead the agency. I fear he will accelerate the GOP’s attempts to bleed the VA dry by funneling more and more of our tax dollars away from the VA system and towards private and religious healthcare providers. Active duty and retired military serve our country; we must provide the VA with the resources it needs to best serve our service members. The government can’t do that by privatizing our healthcare system out from under us.

Wilkie’s record shows that he does not have service members’ best interests at heart. He was a key architect of Trump’s transgender ban, which is an outright attack on the many transgender service members who have served our country. His longstanding open hostility to LGBT+ community makes me question his ability to oversee a healthcare system that is tasked with treating all of our service members equally.

Our senators let us down yesterday. Our country deserves better. When elected, I pledge to stand up for all of us and fight back against Trump’s dangerous agenda.