On Thursday, Democrat Senator Tim Kaine appeared on CNN’s’ “The Lead” and accused the Trump administration of waging a “war on veterans” with the latest budget cuts.
CNN host Jake Tapper said, “Your reaction to these massive cuts being made to the VA and the cuts that are affecting so many veterans who work for the federal workforce? I imagine your district workers are are hearing from a lot of your constituents directly affected, who are veterans.”
Kaine replied, “You’re right. And look, I’ll give you the punch line, this is a war on veterans. The indiscriminate hiring of federal employees with no strategy trips up veterans. More than any other group as you pointed out, more than 30% of the federal workforce is veterans, and more than half of those are disabled veterans.”
He continued, ‘”The administration has decided to go after probationary employees, which means new employees, new employees come in two varieties. They’re either young people coming into the workforce as young workers or they’re career switchers who come into the workforce later in life. Who are the career, switchers who are probationary? They’re veterans, veterans finish a five, a 20, a 25 year career. They join the federal civilian service. But even though they’ve had a lot of service to their country already when they become a civilian employee for the first time they’re probationers.”
Kaine added, “So the firing of this 30% workforce with disproportionate firing of probationers means that Donald Trump has now fired more veterans than any president in the history of the United States in just six weeks and he’s not done. Then add the VA cuts to it and veterans are being punished in a very egregious way right now.”