Rupa Bhattacharyya
Appearances
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
That's right.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
Through DOJ. I was appointed by Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the back end of the Obama administration and then served for six years through the Trump administration and part of the Biden administration.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
That's right. And basically, my job was to make sure that those who were injured by the September 11th attacks, mostly because they were at the sites and breathing in the toxic dust, got the compensation that they deserved.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
Yes, apparently.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
Honestly, it just makes me sad. I spent my entire career in federal government until I left in 2022.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
And throughout all administration across party lines and through all of it, every single person that I worked with, agencies across the government, their only goal is to administer the programs that Congress passed and that the executive branch wants administered according to its rules and its processes. That's what we do. That's our job.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
It was our guiding principles. Yes. And it was the way that we ran the program was we wanted to be fair to claimants, faithful to the statute, and accountable to the taxpayer.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
It was the World Trade Center Health Program, which is our sister program.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
That's the one that administers health care to people. So it's actually even more important because it provides these responders and survivors who worked at the World Trade Center site, at the Pentagon, at Shanksville, who are now sick with the health care that they need. Eighty five thousand people who worked at one of the sites or who lived in Manhattan have been certified. Right.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
with one or more 9-11-related conditions. And so the cuts that were made were indiscriminately made to cut almost 20% of the staff of the health program, which would have been devastating.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
All of those things. It means that people who are going to sign up for medical monitoring, over 140,000 people are monitored. 10,000 people tried to sign up for monitoring last year. Those applications wouldn't get processed or there would be delays in processing them.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
There would be delays in certifying the conditions as 9-11 related, which means that there would be delays in getting them health care and delays in getting their compensation from the VCF, which depends on those certifications. It means that additional conditions couldn't be determined as potentially eligible because the studies that would have funded that were being taken away.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
It means that the oversight of the program, which is largely run through contractors... The actual people looking for fraud.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
Got cut, too.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
About a week later, thanks to the intervention of the New York congressional delegation. Shout out definitely to Representative Andrew Garbarino of Long Island.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
But Senator Schumer and Jill O'Brien were also instrumental in that.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
Yeah, if you don't, I mean, it's a sad commentary, right, that the only reason that program was saved is because there are Republicans who are willing to go to the president and ask him to reinstate it. And thankfully, and I'm grateful that he did, but not every program has that constituency.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
And we shouldn't live in a world where the only programs that get saved are the ones where Republicans are willing to reinstate. to put their stamp of approval on it.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
So we certainly tried not to be adversarial. That was not our goal. But I think one of the things that sort of gets lost in all this conversation about efficiency is that part of the reason government is inefficient, part of the reason that bureaucracies exist, is because we are trying so hard to make sure that there isn't waste, fraud, and abuse in our programs.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
The reviews and the processes and the things that seem to take a long time that sort of hang us up are there for a reason. They're there because we want to make sure that we are being appropriate stewards of the public's money.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
And that we're handling these programs responsibly. Is it too much sometimes? Maybe. But the way to solve it isn't just to go in and indiscriminately cut people out.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
So I'll say two things. First of all, there are very, very routine and rigorous processes in place at all federal agencies to try to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse. There are the inspector generals, the VCF underway.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
There were the inspector generals. There's the Government Accountability Office. OMB does a budget process to make sure that money's being appropriately allocated to the right programs. And there's annual fiscal audits. So every step of the way, there is something happening to try to make sure. But those programs, all of that process only runs if you have the staff there to do it.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
You need staff who understands the programs, who can answer questions, who has expertise. The second thing I would say is that if you're going to eliminate inefficiencies in programs, the people you have to talk to are the people who are running the programs. That's what I did when I started at the VCF.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
So that's a really good question that I wish I had an answer to. I'm not sure that I do. I'm not sure that I do. What I do know is that we have, especially in the context of the 9-11 programs, the VCF, the World Trade Center Health Program, we have seen over and over and over again these responders who are sick go back to the Hill over and over and over to try to keep these programs funded.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
It's happening again.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
Right. The World Trade Center health program is facing a crisis. It's still a few years out, and so that makes it hard for Congress to focus on it. But the fact of the matter is, is that if you don't know whether you're going to be funded a few years from now, you have to make decisions today about how many people you take into the program, because you need to make sure that the money lasts.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
I had this exact same problem in 2018 when we reauthorized the VCF. I had to cut awards by 50%. In the middle of it.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
Because we didn't have enough money.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
But that is exactly what is happening to the World Trade Center health program right now. And Dr. Howard, who was a Trump appointee, who was reappointed to his position in the last part of the Trump administration, is going to have to make decisions very soon about how many people he can continue to allow into the program if they don't re-up the funding.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
And so members of Congress, including New York delegations, are reintroducing that bill on Wednesday. It's already been agreed to twice and been stripped twice, once in 2022 and once just in December when the funding bill fell apart.
The Daily Show: Ears Edition
Jon Stewart Challenges DOGE's Reckless Budget Cuts | Rupa Bhattacharyya
So hopefully this time around, you know, these responders and these survivors, many of them have PTSD, many of them have very severe health conditions. To have to go up again and again and again to ask for this funding is just...