Trump administration plans to cut 72,000 jobs from VA

The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to cut approximately 72,000 jobs, roughly 15 percent of its current workforce, VA Secretary Doug Collins confirmed Wednesday.

Collins said in a video statement that, as the VA conducts its “department-wide review of its organization, operations and structure” — in accordance with President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) workforce optimization Initiative — it is taking “a pragmatic and disciplined approach to eliminating waste and bureaucracy.”

“Our goal is to reduce VA employment levels to 2019 in strength numbers, roughly 398,000 employees, from our current level of approximately 470,000 employees,” Collins said in the video. “Now that’s a 15 percent decrease. We’re going to accomplish this without making cuts to health care or benefits to veterans and VA beneficiaries.”

Collins’s statement comes after The Associated Press reported on an internal memo describing plans to cut 80,000 jobs as part of an “aggressive” reorganization of the agency this summer.

The memo, sent by VA chief of staff Christopher Syrek, said the agency-wide reorganization would take place this August and instructed top-level officials to prepare to “resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure.”

Syrek’s memo reflected Collins’s statement that the agency plans to cut enough employees to return to 2019 levels of staffing. Doing so would require cutting tens of thousands of jobs at the VA that were created under the Biden administration, including through the 2022 PACT Act, which expanded coverage to veterans affected by burn pits.

Government Executive first reported on the internal memo.

The department has already undergone waves of workforce cuts under Trump, including 1,400 employees axed last Monday and 1,000 cut earlier in February.

Collins also announced the cancellation of up to 875 contracts last Tuesday, but the department paused that effort the following day amid outrage from Democratic lawmakers and veterans’ groups.

Collins defended the workforce cuts in his video statement on Wednesday, saying, “There are many people complaining about the changes we’re making at the VA, but what most of them are really saying is, ‘Let’s just keep doing the same thing that the VA has always done.’”

“No, not gonna happen,” he said. “The days of kicking the can down the road and measuring VA’s progress by how much money it spends and how many people it employs, rather than how many veterans it helps, are over.”

He also acknowledged the news coverage of the VA layoffs recently but said they are necessary to improve service to 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,” Collins said. “But the federal government does not exist to employ people. It exists to serve people. At the VA, we are focused on serving veterans better than ever before, and doing so requires changing and improving the organization.”

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the largest VA employee union, issued a statement slamming the layoffs and saying the VA will no longer be able to fulfill the will of Congress if it returns to 2019 level of staffing.

The union’s national president, Everett Kelley, said most of the employees “were hired explicitly to provide the benefits provided for in the PACT Act” and called on Congress “to intervene in these un-American tactics and put a stop to Elon Musk’s DOGE rampage through America’s most cherished agencies in a blatant attempt to justify privatizing government services.” 

“The VA has been severely understaffed for many years, resulting in longer wait times for veterans in need. The DOGE plunder of career VA employees, adding to the illegal mass firings of thousands of probationary employees, can only make matter worse. Veterans and their families will suffer unnecessarily, and the will of Congress will be ignored,” Kelley said.

“Until Elon Musk and Donald Trump came on the scene, America never turned its back on our veterans and their families,” Kelley added. “Their reckless plan to wipe out the VA’s ability to deliver on America’s promise to veterans will backfire on millions of veterans and their families who risked their lives in service for our country.”

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), who sits on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said in a recent CNN interview that he couldn’t guarantee that health benefits and care would not be cut but defended the restructuring of the agency as essential for making sure it works efficiently for the American people.

“Look, I care for our veterans. One out of 10 constituents of mine are veterans. It’s a real issue in eastern North Carolina,” Murphy said. “But the real issue is also when somebody can’t get benefits and they’ve put off their doctor’s appointments for eight or 10 months when they can’t get care. That is where an agency has failed.”

“We’re trying to get an agency that actually works for the people that it’s supposed to be taken care of,” he added.

Updated at 7:05 p.m. EST