|
Listen to article
|
The administration of President Donald Trump has set its sights on excising approximately 80,000 positions from the federal entity tasked with administering health services and ancillary benefits to America’s veterans, a directive revealed in an internal memorandum acquired by Agence France-Presse on Wednesday, March 5, 2025.
This substantial reduction within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) marks a bold extension of Trump’s sweeping fiscal retrenchment agenda, orchestrated under the aegis of billionaire confidant Elon Musk—a maneuver that has swiftly drawn sharp censure from Democratic lawmakers attuned to its politically charged implications.
The memorandum articulates that the VA, in tandem with Musk’s newly constituted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is poised to streamline operations by excising redundancies, curtailing administrative overhead, consolidating physical infrastructure, and enhancing workforce productivity—a blueprint for transformation that underscores the administration’s relentless pursuit of leaner governance.
“A portion of the savings garnered will be reinvested in the veterans we serve and the systems required to support our workforce and execute our mission,” it says.
The initial aim is to return staffing at the VA — which is responsible for providing benefits including health care, education and disability pay to veterans — to the 2019 level of 399,957 employees, according to the memo.
The VA said in early February it employed more than 479,000 people, meaning about 80,000 jobs would be cut under the plan.
Some Democratic lawmakers slammed the planned cuts, including Representative Mark Takano of California, who said in a statement: “This deliberate dismantling of VA’s workforce… isn’t just dangerous — it’s an outright betrayal of veterans.”
Read also: Musk’s DOGE Team Faces Setback As Employees Resign En Masse
“These cuts won’t just impact those seeking health care. They will create chaos across every aspect of VA — delaying benefits, straining claims processing, and making it nearly impossible for student veterans and schools to get the assistance they need.”
Senator Patty Murray of Washington has voiced dismay over the proposition by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk to eliminate tens of thousands of positions within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), asserting that such a move jeopardizes the welfare of more than nine million veterans nationwide who rely on the agency’s meticulously administered services—a critique delivered with palpable indignation on Wednesday, March 5, 2025.
She contended that this initiative constitutes a grave ethical transgression, undermining the solemn obligation undertaken by the nation to ensure comprehensive care for its returning servicemen and women—an affront she deems antithetical to America’s covenant with its military veterans.
Since reclaiming the presidency in January 2025, Trump has unleashed an expansive campaign to curtail federal expenditure and dismantle bureaucratic edifices, fulfilling a cornerstone pledge from his electoral platform—a transformative agenda that has reverberated through the corridors of government.
In pursuit of this vision, he enlisted Musk—previously a prominent campaign benefactor now elevated to a pivotal advisory role—to helm the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), an entity that has already excised thousands of federal roles and precipitated upheaval across multiple agencies, triggering a cascade of legal challenges in its wake.
