PORTLAND, Ore. (KATU) — Trump administration cuts to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) that could impact up to 80,000 employees may have significant impacts in Oregon, where 63,782 of those jobs raked in over $191 million in income during the first quarter of 2024, according to the Oregon Employment Department.
More than 25% of the VA’s workforce nationwide is comprised of veterans. Beyond layoffs, state Democratic lawmakers worry a nationwide reduction of roughly 15% to the VA would result in longer wait times for local veterans.
“Cuts of 80,000 people from their workforce will devastate the benefits side, the healthcare side, and even the cemetery authority,” said Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth.
Oregon House and Senate Republicans declined to comment.
The cuts were announced Tuesday in an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press. In the memo, the VA’s chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, told top-level officials at the agency that it had an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That would require terminating tens of thousands of employees after the VA expanded during the Biden administration, as well as to cover veterans impacted by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act.
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After national news outlets reported on the cuts, VA secretary Doug Collins took to social media to defend the decision.
“The VA has been a punching bag among veterans, congress, and the media for decades. Things need to change,” he said in a video post made to the social media site X (formerly known as Twitter). “The money we are saving by eliminating non-mission critical and duplicative contracts is money we are going to redirect to veteran facing healthcare benefits and services.”
Evans and other Oregon House Democrats say the move is bound to slow VA response times and impact local veterans.
“I never would have imagined the party of John McCain would turn its back on the veterans like this administration has,” Evans said, noting that he served 20 years in the service. “I spent about 11 years on active duty, actually. So I have young men and women that I know that were permanently harmed because of their service. I personally was involved in missions where people didn’t come back.”
White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that the president “refuses to accept the VA bureaucracy and bloat that has hindered veterans’ ability to receive timely and quality care.” She added that the changes would “ensure greater efficiency and transparency” at the VA.
In 2024, the VA experienced its highest-ever service levels, reaching over nine million enrollees and delivering more than 127.5 million health care appointments, according to the agency’s figures.
However, Michael Missal, who was the VA’s inspector general for nine years until he was fired in February as part of Trump’s sweeping dismissal of independent oversight officials at government agencies, told the AP that the VA is already suffering from a lack of “expertise” as top-level officials either leave or are shuffled around under the president’s plans.
“What’s going to happen is VA’s not going to perform as well for veterans, and veterans are going to get harmed,” said Missal, who was a guest of Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., at Trump’s Tuesday address to Congress.
Oregon Democratic lawmakers say they are working with local VA offices to make sure things are still running as efficiently as possible for local veterans, however, there is only so much they can do.
Mark Ronning, a veteran, and managing attorney at Northwest Veterans Law helps veterans who have been denied a disability claim to appeal the decision with the VA.
“If the VA had the personnel that were well trained to get the decisions right, to say, ‘Yes, you do suffer from this disability,’ and, ‘Yes, Congress does authorize benefits for that disability,’ then we would be out of a job because we only do appeals when the decision gets wrong, when when the benefits that Congress has provided are denied by the VA. And that can take, sadly, an appeal can take one to two years at the local level,” Ronning said, noting that if the appeal ends up going to D.C. it could be delayed by many more years still.
“I can’t imagine that the efficiency will improve by eliminating that large number of people,” he added.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
