The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to eliminate as many as 35,000 unfilled health care positions this month, including doctors, nurses, and support staff, The Washington Post reported exclusively on Dec. 13.
The latest round of staffing cuts is in addition to the nearly 30,000 employees who left the agency this fiscal year due to the federal hiring freeze, deferred resignations, retirements, and normal attrition.
The Washington Post reported on the cuts after viewing an internal memo that was shared with regional VA leaders in November and interviewing VA staff and congressional aides familiar with the plans.
AFGE, which represents 85% of the VA’s bargaining unit workforce, was not consulted about the cuts but has heard concerns from members, Deputy General Counsel Thomas Dargon Jr. told the news outlet.
“The VA has been chronically understaffed for years, and employees are obviously going to be facing the brunt of any further job cuts or reorganization that results in employees having to do more work with less,” Dargon said.
Eliminating the unfilled positions will reduce the health care workforce to 372,000 – a 10% cut from last year, the paper quotes the memo as saying.
AFGE National Veterans Affairs Council President M.J. Burke said the cuts are being made despite a projected increase in demand for VA services.
“Our demand for outpatient services is expected to grow by at least 50 percent in the upcoming years, and yet our employee base now is being cut back to 2019 levels,” Burke said. “This move, philosophically, is about the internal starvation of the VA through budget restrictions of needed FTEs in variety of VA programs.”
Burke added that VA employees are dedicated to their jobs, but cutting positions will make their jobs more difficult.
“To say that it won’t affect our downstream quality, specifically of mental health or primary care delivery or capability, is not a logical statement given that the demand for VA services is rising, not dropping,” she said.
Following a Hill briefing by VA officials, House Veterans’ Affairs Ranking Member Mark Takano denounced the move to slash tens of thousands of VA health care positions, noting it’s just one component of a massive reorganization planned for the Veterans Health Administration.
Takano said the VA officials were unable to provide details on the cuts or on the impact they would have on veterans’ health care, and he urged Committee Chairman Mike Bost to hold hearings on the planned cuts immediately.
“VA has failed to provide any evidence that leads us to believe this change is about serving veterans,” Takano said. “It is once again about so-called ‘efficiency’. Trump administration officials are attempting to transform VA into a business while misleading the veteran community. VA is serving an ideology already contained in Project 2025, rather than delivering results for America’s veterans.”
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