The Trump administration said Monday that it expects the Department of Veterans Affairs to lose nearly 30,000 employees by October due to a mix of resignations, early retirements and attrition amid a hiring freeze.
The agency said the mass exodus would “eliminat[e] the need for a large-scale reduction-in-force,” or RIF, which was expected to cut the agency’s headcount by as much as 80,000. The administration appears to have recognized that the prospect of a RIF has alarmed many veterans who rely on the VA for their care and raised concerns even among Republican lawmakers.
VA Secretary Doug Collins claimed in a statement that the loss of personnel meant the agency was “headed in the right direction.”
“A department-wide RIF is off the table, but that doesn’t mean we’re done improving VA,” Collins said.
Thousands of VA workers have left the department this year through the Trump administration’s “deferred resignation” offer and other early retirement programs meant to push employees out of government. Many chose to exit public service rather than face a future of likely staff and budget cuts.
The VA said Monday that it had 467,000 employees as of June 1, down 17,000 from Jan. 1. It projects another 12,000 will leave by the end of September, “through normal attrition, voluntary early retirement … or the deferred resignation program.”
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The VA is the largest federal agency other than the Defense Department and a massive employer of those who served in the U.S. military. While the bulk of its employees work on the health care side, roughly 30,000 help process veterans’ claims through the Veterans Benefits Administration.
As HuffPost reported last month, morale has plummeted at VA health care centers in recent weeks as workers fear the loss of more personnel. VA nurses and doctors said many of their co-workers were considering taking jobs at private hospitals because they believe the agency’s services would deteriorate.
“It is difficult to picture a future in which the VA thrives,” one surgeon said.
The agency has tried to assure politicians and the public that health care and benefits services wouldn’t go downhill with a smaller staff. The VA said Monday that it has many “duplicative and costly administrative functions” that could be streamlined to save money, including by consolidating its call centers into one “centralized” system.
Democrats have been skeptical of the Trump administration’s claims that the VA can reduce staff without hurting health care. In a Senate hearing late last month, Sen. Jon Ossoff (Ga.) asked Collins how many doctors and nurses the agency plans to employ next year, given that the administration has proposed cutting several billion dollars in medical services spending.
“How do you justify this cut to medical services, and who are you going to fire in order to pay for it?” Ossoff asked.