Republican members of Congress and the Trump administration are doubling down on their attack on veterans and their benefits in the FY2026 funding bill, rejecting an effort by Democratic committee members to defund the mass reduction in force at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
At a committee markup of the fiscal 2026 funding bill for military construction and Veterans Affairs on June 10, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., offered an AFGE-backed amendment to the funding bill to prevent the Trump administration from recklessly mass firing 80,000 VA employees to meet the arbitrary goal of 15% reduction in staffing. The VA started by firing 2,400 probationary employees but was blocked by the courts, which ruled that these firings were illegal and there was no thought behind them.
“The secretary said many times or has claimed many times that he won't fire doctors, nurses, counselors or really anyone at the Veterans Health Administration. If that's true, that he'll need to take all of his staff reduction from the Veterans Benefits Administration, which basically would eliminate it, and we all know that that's not realistic or responsible. So if this goal is real, he'll need to cut staff at the Veterans Health Administration guaranteeing that veterans’ healthcare will be harmed,” she said.
“VA always already has a tough time recruiting doctors and other health care professionals it's a competitive market and private hospitals and clinics often pay more,” she added. “And it's not just medical professionals who ensure veterans receive quality care at VA. It's everyone who makes a hospital run. Does this administration really believe that the arbitrary firing culture it's creating at the VA will make it an attractive place to work? No one wants to work at a place where the threat of being fired for no reason looms over their head every day.”
The congresswoman also pointed out the fact that the VA doesn’t even know how to carry out this massive RIF and had to hire the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to do it.
“Don’t any one of us forget when this administration says that it will clearcut 80,000 plus VA staff, that’s 20,000 actual veterans that they'll put out of work. It's an ugly threat from the administration that's fired more veterans than any other administration in history.”
Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Elon Musk and his DOGE team have no idea what they’re doing as they had very little experience with government other than getting money from it, and so they don’t understand what federal workers do and don’t do.
“I believe strongly that there is not a person alive who knows what an 80,000 reduction would have as an adverse consequence,” he said. “The Doge group, Musk himself and others in the administration who said “We're going to reach a number,” and they knew how to reach numbers. Now of course the courts have said they did not do so legally, but they had no idea of the consequences of what they were doing because they didn't take the time to do it.”
Republican members, however, voted the measure down, allowing the Trump administration to proceed with its mass layoff that will hurt the ability of the VA to provide care for veterans. This would ultimately result in the VA sending veterans to for-profit providers who are not equipped or specialized to take care of veterans’ specific needs.
But pushing veterans out of the VA is the point as the Republican-led bill seeks to expand privatization and didn’t address the administration’s attempted illegal transfer of $343 million to for-profit providers without proper approval from the committee.
“I had to forcefully remind the [VA] secretary that congressional approval is not a suggestion; it is legally required,” Wasserman Schultz said. “Without provisions to address these abuses and prevent them from occurring again in the future, this community committee's power of the purse is drastically weakened, and it sets a horrible precedent that I'm quite sure my Republican colleagues would be outraged over if a Democratic administration behaved in the same way.”
Veterans understand what would happen if the administration goes ahead with the layoff of 80,000 employees at the VA. They gathered in Washington D.C. June 6 to protest the planned cuts.
The federal government is the largest employer of veterans, who make up about 30% of the federal workforce compared to only 6% in the civilian workforce. Nearly 640,000 veterans worked for the federal government before Trump’s layoffs. More than half of them are disabled. Veterans fired from their jobs feel betrayed by Trump.
Trump’s birthday parade costs $45 million
While Trump is working to slash the VA with plans to fire over 80,000 VA workers and cut essential services for veterans, he was spending upwards of $45 million for a vanity parade to celebrate his 79th birthday on June 14.
It’s outrageous that he ordered tanks, aircraft, and thousands U.S. military service members to march through D.C. to celebrate himself at a time when his administration is cutting service for veterans.
According to a recent poll, 70% of veterans opposed the military parade, including majorities of both independent and Republican veterans. Most GOP lawmakers planned to skip his parade.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has officially walked back its plan to lay off more than 80,000 employees as part of the Elon Musk-led “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) initiative.
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