(SRN NEWS/REUTERS) – Gainesville’s Doug Collins, the new head of the Department of Veterans Affairs, is stirring up a hornets’ nest with his plan to cut more than 80,000 workers from the agency. An internal memo outlining the planned cutbacks and seen by Reuters is drawing condemnation from military veteran groups and Democrats.
The VA’s chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, sent a memo to senior agency officials on Tuesday, telling them the goal was to return the agency to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That would mean cutting about 82,000 staff.
The scale of the planned layoffs at the VA is far greater than proposed cuts at other government agencies, and will hit a department that looks after one of the most beloved groups in the U.S., its military veterans.
“Now, we regret anyone who loses their job and it’s extraordinarily difficult for me especially as a VA leader and your secretary to make these types of decisions but the federal government does not exist to employ people. It exists to serve people,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins said in a video posted on X on Wednesday. VA Secretary Doug Collins on X: “The days of kicking the can down the road are over. We owe America’s Veterans solutions! https://t.co/KDHMefOWOH” / X
The VA provides a huge array of benefits and medical help to veterans and critics of the plan said the cuts will adversely impact that care.
Everett Kelley, head of the American Federation of Government Employees which represents 311,000 VA employees, said, “veterans and their families will suffer unnecessarily.”
Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the job cuts marked an escalation of a “full-scale, no-holds-barred assault on veterans” by the Trump administration that would put veterans’ health benefits in “grave danger.”
Jerry Moran, Republican chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, indicated he was not entirely happy with how the cuts were being implemented and called on the VA to work with Congress to “legislate necessary changes.”
“The VA is in need of reform but current efforts to downsize the department and increase efficiency must be done in a more responsible manner,” Moran said in an emailed statement.
Anna Kelly, a White House deputy press secretary, said Trump will preserve veterans’ benefits, but will not stand for the “bureaucracy and bloat” at the agency.
Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, sounded surprised by the size of the planned cuts. “I’m sure the VA can be reduced. But if you’re a veteran, you read it in the paper, it kind of rattles you,” Graham told reporters.
Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said the job cuts appeared to be one step in a plan to privatize VA services. “It’s a shameful betrayal,” Blumenthal said in a statement.
During his first term as president, Trump in 2018 signed a law that expanded veterans’ access to private sector healthcare paid for by the VA.
Naveed Shah, political director of Common Defense, a grassroots veterans group, decried the planned layoffs.
“He’s gutting the system that was designed to care for our brothers and sisters in arms.”