The Department of Veterans Affairs no longer plans to fire tens of thousands of employees this year, but still expects to shed nearly 30,000 workers through various types of resignations and retirements, the department said Monday.
The announcement walked back previous plans, first revealed in a leaked memo in March, to fire as many as 83,000 employees as part of the Trump administration’s overarching goal to slash the size of the federal government — plans that sparked fierce pushback from veterans and Democrats and muted concern from Republicans.
Now, the VA said in a Monday press release, federal hiring freezes, deferred resignations, retirements and “normal attrition” are “eliminating the need for a large-scale reduction-in-force.”
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“Since March, we’ve been conducting a holistic review of the department centered on reducing bureaucracy and improving services to veterans,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a statement. “As a result of our efforts, VA is headed in the right direction — both in terms of staff levels and customer service. A department-wide RIF [Reduction in Force] is off the table, but that doesn’t mean we’re done improving VA. Our review has resulted in a host of new ideas for better serving veterans that we will continue to pursue.”
Nearly 17,000 employees have left since the beginning of the year, while another nearly 12,000 are expected to leave before the end of the fiscal year in September, the release added.
The VA staff cuts are part of an overall plan to shrink the federal government that has been led by the White House’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, an advisory agency that was headed by billionaire Elon Musk before he left the administration and publicly clashed with President Donald Trump.
In the March memo, the VA had said its “initial objective” was to go back to 2019 staffing levels.
That goal would have essentially reversed the hiring spree that the VA went on during the Biden administration as part of its efforts to implement the PACT Act, the sweeping toxic exposure law that expanded VA health care and benefits to millions of veterans.
Veterans raised alarms that such deep cuts would be impossible to achieve without hampering their health care and benefits. Among their efforts to prevent the cuts were large rallies in Washington, D.C.
After Monday’s announcement, some veterans groups applauded the reversal.
“This is a sigh of relief for the veterans who depend on the timely delivery of care and benefits, and a far cry from estimates that circulated in March,” Veterans of Foreign Wars National Commander Al Lipphardt said in a statement Monday. “While the VFW supports fiscal responsibility in the VA, such a large-scale RIF would most certainly have been devastating to all veterans, not just those the VA employs. Thankfully, President Trump and VA leadership heard our voice and approached this task with the care and precision it demanded.”
Collins had repeatedly defended the planned mass firings as necessary to trim what he viewed as a bloated bureaucracy and insisted that no veterans services would be harmed.
With the department still on track to lose about 30,000 employees even with the firings scuttled, the VA continued to insist in its Monday release that there are “multiple safeguards” to ensure veterans’ care and benefits aren’t affected.
But Democrats are still sounding the alarm, saying that 30,000 resignations would mark a historically large cut.
“This announcement makes clear VA is bleeding employees across the board at an unsustainable rate because of the toxic work environment created by this administration and DOGE’s slash and trash policies,” Senate Veterans Affairs Committee ranking member Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said in a statement. “This is not ‘natural’ attrition, it is not strategic, and it will inevitably impact veterans’ care and benefits — no matter what blanket assurances the VA secretary hides behind.”
The prospect of mass firings at the VA was one of the few developments of the second Trump administration that elicited at least some public concern from Republicans.
When the memo first leaked, Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said that any cuts needed to be done “in a more responsible manner” and promised to draft a bill to ensure more congressional oversight, though he has yet to introduce such legislation. Meanwhile, House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., said in a March statement that he had “questions about the impact these reductions and discussions could have on the delivery of services.”
Both chairmen applauded Monday’s announcement that the VA is forgoing mass firings.
“From the very beginning, I have long said that I had full confidence in Secretary Collins and the Trump administration to make the right decision surrounding any plans to reduce VA’s workforce,” Bost said in a statement. “With today’s announcement from Secretary Collins, those who have spent the last six months yelling from the sidelines should have held off their criticism of potential plans until a plan was actually in place.”
Moran, for his part, said Collins’ decision ensures “veterans are at the center of any changes at the VA” and “provides greater certainty to VA employees and the veterans they serve.”
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