The internal memo accessed by AP, instructs top-level staff to prepare for an agency-wide reorganisation in August to “resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure.”
The Veterans Affairs Department, expanded under the Biden administration, now plans to reorganise and restructure the workforce. According to an internal memo obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, the reorganising process includes cutting over 80,000 jobs from the sprawling agency that provides health care and other services for millions of veterans. The VA’s chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, told top-level officials at the agency Tuesday that it had an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000.
‘Resize and tailor the workforce’
The memo instructs top-level staff to prepare for an agency-wide reorganization in August to “resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure.” It also calls for agency officials to work with the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency to “move out aggressively while taking a pragmatic and disciplined approach” to the Trump administration’s goals. The Government Executive first reported on the internal memo.
Veterans have already been speaking out against the cuts at the VA that so far had included a few thousand employees and hundreds of contracts. More than 25 per cent of the VA’s workforce is comprised of veterans.
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that the president “refuses to accept the VA bureaucracy and bloat that has hindered veterans’ ability to receive timely and quality care. By making the VA workforce more efficient, President Trump and Secretary Collins will ensure greater efficiency and transparency for our nation’s heroes while preserving the benefits they earned.” The VA last year experienced its highest-ever service levels, reaching enrolment figures to over 9 million veterans and delivering more than 127.5 million health care appointments, according to the agency’s figures.
VA lacks “expertise”
Michael Missal, who was the VA’s inspector general for nine years until he was fired last month as part of Trump’s sweeping dismissal of independent oversight officials at government agencies, told the AP that the VA is already suffering from a lack of “expertise” as top-level officials either leave or are shuffled around under the president’s plans. “What’s going to happen is VA’s not going to perform as well for veterans, and veterans are going to get harmed,” said Missal, who was a guest of Sen Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn at Trump’s Tuesday address to Congress.
(AP inputs)
