2 days Ago By Matthew Medsger
A plan by the Trump Administration and Special Government Employee Elon Musk to drastically cut the number of employees serving veterans at the Department of Veterans Affairs was met with swift condemnation, with one Bay State congressman labeling the move as a knife to the back of everyone who has served. In a memorandum dated March 4, Trump’s VA chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, warned the VA’s “Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, and Other Key Officials” that the Department which annually serves millions of American military veterans will soon face staff sharp staffing cuts under a “reduction in force and reorganization plan.” The memo cites a drive toward “efficiencies” ordered by President Trump and indicates the VA’s cooperation with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
“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,” Syrek wrote. In pursuit of that effort, the Chief of Staff says the VA will need to see its workforce cut in order to “return to our 2019 endstrength numbers of 399,957 employees,” meaning a cut of about 83,000 jobs. This follows rapid expansion of the VA under the Biden Administration, which hired an additional 61,000 VA employees in 2023 alone, and significant growth seen there under Trump’s first administration.
According to U.S. Rep.
Stephen Lynch, “there is something different going on in our country right now. Something sinister. Something dangerous.
” “It has never been an American tradition to punch down at the weakest and most vulnerable in our society. And we have never abandoned our veterans. We honor them.
Until now,” Lynch told the Herald. According to the Boston Congressman, in his first days in office Trump fired 2,400 VA employees directly tasked with processing disability claims for veterans injured during their service. Trump’s Administration then, Lynch said, cut personnel from the veterans suicide hotline.
“And let us not forget – veterans benefits are special – we are talking about benefits that are owed for services rendered. Each of these veterans have honorably and courageously fulfilled their obligation to our country and in many, many cases they bear the scars visible and invisible as a result of that service,” Lynch said. VA Secretary Doug Collins, a former congressman and military chaplain, said in an interview published Thursday by the Military Times that if funding and staff were the answer at the VA, there wouldn’t be any issues.
“If the answer was money and people, then we should have solved our problems at VA a long time ago,” Collins said. “The problem is not resources at this point. The question is, ‘are we utilizing that function the best way we possibly can?’” At a press conference held Wednesday in response to Trump’s Tuesday night address to a joint session of Congress, U.
S. Rep. Katherine Clark, the House Minority Whip, said that in addition to getting ready to fire about 20% of the VA’s staff, the Trump Administration has simultaneously set its sights other programs that impact veterans.
“They’re cutting SNAP benefits that feed more than 1 million veterans. The Medicaid coverage is being cut that covers 3 million military families. And Social Security checks that support nearly 8 million veterans,” she said.
According to Lynch, the cuts couldn’t come at a worse time for the VA, which is currently facing a backlog of 250,000 unprocessed disability cases. That, Lynch said, “means months of waiting for those veterans who are waiting for treatment or benefits or both.” “And now Trump has just announced the firing of 80,000 more employees at the VA.
That is shameful, especially considering that 27,000 of those who are being fired are veterans themselves. Trump and Musk have stabbed our veterans in the back,” he said..
