Out military vet and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says he’s “p*ssed off” with President Donald Trump’s “slash-and-burn” proposal to cut 80,000 employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). An estimated 25% of VA employees are military veterans, according to PBS.
A memo issued last week from VA Chief of Staff Christopher Syrek told top VA officials that the agency seeks to cut its workforce back to pre-2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000 workers. The VA workforce expanded after the passage of the 2022 PACT Act, a law signed by then-President Joe Biden which employed additional VA workers to help aid veterans suffering from exposure to toxic burn pits at military institutions.
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While VA Secretary Doug Collins said Trump’s proposed “efficiency” cuts are necessary to get rid of “government waste” and won’t affect veterans’ healthcare or benefits, Buttigieg doubted Collins’ claim. Buttigieg voiced his doubt in a recent chat with Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, who also agreed with him.
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“How can we not be p*ssed off when we see them coming after the workers who take care of our veterans, many of whom are veterans themselves?” Buttigieg asked Rieckhoff. “They’re going to slash-and-burn so much of the VA.”
Rieckhoff said, “The destabilizing effect [of the proposed cuts] is already hurting [veterans’] morale. It’s hurting their families. It’s removing their focus. It’s killing recruiting. We’re gonna have a hard time recruiting at VA for a generation because of this kind of disruption…. This is wrong and stupid and short-sighted and damaging and bad, not just our collective mental health, but even for our national security.”
Rieckhoff and Buttigieg said they’re both hopeful that the proposed cuts can inspire people from across the political spectrum to vocally pressure elected officials to oppose the cuts.
“This could be an empowering moment for so many veterans, so many families and so many Americans,” Buttigieg said. “There’s a lot of folks in Congress who are incredibly nervous about this, a lot of congressional Republicans who know better, but … [who can at] least can be pushed, to stand up to this sort of thing.”
Rieckhoff added, “They have no solution for what all these unemployed veterans are supposed to do. They’re not offering them an off ramp into another job. Elon Musk [the head of the unofficial Department of Government Efficiency who is overseeing extreme cuts to federal department funding and workforces] isn’t hiring them at Tesla or SpaceX. So they’re gonna go out, you know, and they’re gonna collect unemployment, right?”
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