PHOENIX — On the 81st anniversary of D-Day, veterans took to the streets across the country to push back against the proposed 83,000 job cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs.
“This came when President Trump came in and said, overall, that we need to take a look at how we do our government across the board,” VA Secretary Doug Collins told ABC15. “So, we looked at a reduction in force number that would roughly be about 15%, that was a goal, that was a target.”
While hanging out at the local American Legion Post 2, Buddy Cook, an Army veteran, alongside his friend Danny Galvez, told ABC15 they are concerned about the impact of potential job cuts could have on their healthcare.
"The VA is the second largest federal employee group at 470,000 people, 470,000 VA employees take care of 9 million vets, do the math,” Cook said. "We're understaffed now. You're going to cut it even further? Well, that makes little to no sense. Where are you going to cut it? How are you going to cut them? Who's going to get cut?”
Secretary Collins underscored that patient care and benefits will not be impacted, and that the agency is looking at duplicity within certain departments.
"We have a lot of folks who don't touch veterans directly. They're in either duplicative roles or they're in roles that, frankly, would be nice if it is something that you don't have when you're trying to take care of veterans and service,” Collins said. "So, for us, you're looking at HR duplicity across the system. We're looking at payroll, which was being done at 60 locations, instead of being centralized here at the central office. That's hundreds of employees. It's that kind of a look that's not been done.”
Cook, who is enrolled in the VA system in Phoenix, said he couldn’t see his provider for months despite being told during an emergency room visit to book an appointment within five days. He doesn’t believe shrinking the workforce, when wait times are already too long, is the answer.
“Making changes is not getting rid of people, it's changing the structure on how it's done,” Cook said. "I think they're going at it in the wrong direction.”
But Collins says he sees it differently — he wants the agency to reduce staff in areas that don’t directly work with veterans and put more resources on the front lines.
“How are we taking away and slimming a workforce and then putting our resources back to our front line? How is that going to help? Because it's actually going to put more doctors, put more nurses, give more resources,” Collins said.
When asked what roles specifically within the agency would be cut, and if veterans, who make up more than 25% of the VA workforce could be at risk of losing their job, Collins declined to go into detail saying both the Senate and the House have been briefed on the plans, adding that the focus is on “making this department the best it can be."
“They know the areas that we're trying to identify as the most pressing parts that we if we go through this, these are the areas of that will give us the most success, and still, at the same time again, not affect patient care and not affect disability claims, because we're going in the right direction with those,” Collins said. "I know what will happen if we try to get into certain areas, that's just demoralizing, and for people who may or may not be a part of what's going on. We just need to focus on one thing, and that is making this department the best it can be to take care of the veterans.”
Collins said reports about requesting the Phoenix VA hospital to cut its staff by 15% is a “lie.”
"It's not wrong, it's a lie. And the other issue is, is that we're going to be looking all across our VA platform. We have 470,000 employees. We're bigger than the active-duty Army, and so when we look at this, they'll come from all kinds of places,” Collins said, adding that the 15% reduction in workforce was a goal, “no one ever said that was a mandatory cut.”
