Trump administration to cut more than 80,000 jobs at Department of Veterans Affairs, internal memo says
Mar. 5—WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to cut more than 80,000 jobs in the next six months as part of the Trump administration's effort to dramatically downsize the federal workforce, according to an internal memo sent to staff on Tuesday.
The memo, obtained by The Spokesman-Review and first reported by the trade publication Government Executive on Tuesday, came from Christopher Syrek, the VA chief of staff. He directed the agency to work with the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, the ad hoc team assembled by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and empowered by President Donald Trump to carry out mass layoffs and root out what Musk has called "evil" government programs.
"VA, in partnership with our DOGE leads, will move out aggressively, while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach to identify and eliminate waste, reduce management and bureaucracy, reduce footprint, and increase workforce efficiency," the memo reads in part, adding that a "thorough review of mission and structure" will precede agency-wide layoffs in August "to resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure."
The memo lays out a timeline for the so-called "reduction in force," beginning with a Wednesday meeting to be chaired by VA Secretary Doug Collins. In an attachment, it asks for organizational charts and other information on staffing by March 10, to be followed by internal reviews in each office by April 10, a department-wide review by May 9 and the publication of a reorganization plan in June.
"This effort will require the entirety of VA staff and organizations to work together in a collaborative fashion, as well as to coordinate actions with DOGE and the Administration as a whole, to achieve the desired results within the allotted time," Syrek wrote, adding that the "initial objective" is to reduce staffing to the 2019 level of just below 400,000.
The VA currently employs roughly 482,000 people, the vast majority of whom work in the Veterans Health Administration's nearly 1,400 clinics and hospitals, so hitting the Trump administration's target would mean more than 80,000 job losses, a cut of about 17%. The department's 2019 staffing level preceded a hiring surge aimed at reducing wait times for VA health care and supporting a major expansion of benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits and other toxic substances after Congress passed the bipartisan Honoring Our PACT Act in 2022.
More than a quarter of VA employees are veterans themselves, according to the latest data from the Office of Personnel Management. The department, which employs more people than any other federal agency, has so far seen proportionally smaller cuts to its workforce, even as thousands of VA workers have lost their jobs.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Tuesday, Trump adviser Alina Habba pushed back on criticism of the administration's mass firing of veterans, who make up about 30% of the federal workforce.
"We care about veterans tremendously," Habba said. "But at the same time, we have taxpayer dollars — we have a fiscal responsibility to use taxpayer dollars to pay people that actually work. That doesn't mean that we forget our veterans by any means. We are going to care for them in the right way, but perhaps they're not fit to have a job at this moment, or not willing to come to work."
Link Miles, local president of the union that represents VA doctors and other health care providers at Spokane's Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center, said the cuts will accelerate the VA's increasing reliance on sending veterans to private-sector health care providers, who already don't have the capacity to care for Inland Northwest veterans promptly.
"It doesn't make sense," said Miles, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees Local 1641. "I'd like to see an analysis of data that supports the cutting of nearly 20% of the workforce while still effectively meeting the agency's goals and mission to provide care. Significant personnel cuts seem to directly ignore the VA's challenges of access to care by veterans and hiring and retaining personnel to provide services veterans need."
Miles added that the faulty computer system the VA began testing in Spokane in 2020 has resulted in 30% greater workload for providers and other employees, and reducing the workforce will only compound the challenges faced by veterans, who have more complex health problems than the average American.
Jake Pannell, a disabled Army veteran from Idaho and NFFE's national business representative, said the proposed cuts are "a direct threat to the quality of care our veterans depend on."
"The VA is already short 40,000 to 50,000 workers, and with the PACT Act expanding eligibility, the demand for care is only growing," said Pannell, who worked as a mental health counselor at the VA clinic in Lewiston, Idaho, until taking on his new role in November.
"Slashing 15% of the workforce will make it nearly impossible to keep our promise to those who served. There are plenty of ways to cut fraud, waste, and abuse without gutting the staff that keeps the VA running. Our nation's most valuable resource are the people who show up every day to serve our veterans. Removing them will not fix the problem, only compound it."
Sen. Patty Murray, a Washington Democrat who sits on the Senate VA Committee, raged against the proposed cuts in a statement released Wednesday.
"Donald Trump and Elon Musk are escalating their full-scale, no-holds-barred assault on veterans — and putting the health care and benefits they have earned in grave danger," she said. "It's infuriating that two billionaires think they can fire tens of thousands of people responsible for administering the services and care that over nine million veterans across the country count on. It's flat-out immoral and a breach of the sacred commitment we make to our veterans to take care of them when they return home."
Ken Kizer, who led a transformation of the Veterans Health Administration in the late 1990s, said in an interview that even if there were good reason to eliminate certain positions at the VA, starting by identifying the number of jobs to eliminate is "just a back-asswards way of approaching the problem."
"It's potentially devastating to veterans' care," Kizer said, pointing out that the VA is already "critically understaffed in a number of different personnel categories that directly bear on care that's provided."
As undersecretary for health in the Clinton administration, Kizer said, he significantly reduced staffing in some parts of the department.
"By making very thoughtful reductions and streamlining things where it made sense," he said, "we were able to increase the number of caregivers who were providing hands-on care. But it took time and required being very thoughtful and strategic about how it was done."
"The idea of taking such a dramatic, potentially devastating meat-axe to the VA health care system just doesn't make a lot of sense."
Kizer, who led a "red team" of experts commissioned by the VA in 2024 to produce a report on the state of the department's Community Care program, which sends veterans outside the VA for care in the private sector, said that in many parts of the country, the "community" of non-VA clinics and hospitals doesn't have the capacity to handle an influx of new patients, especially those with the complex health conditions that many veterans have related to their military service.
The department also plays an important role in training the nation's medical and nursing students, about half of whom rotate through VA facilities during their education, Kizer pointed out.
"The private sector is severely understaffed in many parts of the country," he said. "And so if VA downsizes and is unable to conduct its training function, that's going to have substantial ripple effects throughout the entire health care enterprise in this country."
He added that the VA's "fourth mission" of supporting emergency preparedness and disaster response around the country would also be weakened by staffing cuts.
Collins, the VA secretary, has told Congress he intends to accelerate the rollout of the new electronic health record system that was first launched in the Inland Northwest, where it contributed to thousands of cases of patient harm according to the VA's own data. Doing that while simultaneously cutting the department's workforce, Kizer said, "is lunacy."
Orion Donovan Smith's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
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