A plan to cut staff at the Department of Veterans Affairs by 15% has led to morale falling at the agency, The Washington Post reported.
The cuts would see 83,000 employees laid off, although VA Secretary Doug Collins has pledged that frontline health care workers and claims processors will be spared, the Post said.
Thousands of employees have opted for early retirement, with many saying they took the early retirement believing they'd be laid off anyway, the Post reported.
Employees at the VA told the Post people feel "fearful, demoralized and paranoid," with one saying veterans now check in on them.
A spokesman for the VA, Peter Kasperowicz, dismissed the concerns, pointing out the numerous issues under the Biden administration that the Post ignored.
"During the Biden Administration, VA failed to address nearly all of its most serious problems, such as benefits backlogs, rising health-care wait times and major issues with survivor benefits," Kasperowicz said in a statement to the Post. "The far-left Washington Post refused to cover these failures because it would have made the Biden Administration look bad. The people you spoke with are probably being misled by The Washington Post's dishonest, far-left fearmongering.
Cuts are expected to hit the agency's central office that houses 19,000 employees at the Veterans Health Administration, the Veterans Benefits Administration, and the National Cemetery System, and the VA said it also looking at combining duplicate offices to cut staff, the Post said.
"No decisions have been made with respect to staff reductions," Kasperowicz said.
Veterans groups have expressed concern that the cuts could harm veterans who rely on the VA for medical care while also noting that veterans make up a quarter of the agency's workforce. The PACT Act, which expanded benefits for veterans exposed to toxics like burn pits, has led to a rise in disability claims but also allowed the agency to hit new milestones in claims processing speed, the Post reported.
"Iraq felt safer than being a VA employee currently does," a veteran and VA communications worker privately told Hill staffers in a written submission shared with The Post. "My leadership in Iraq cared about me as a human and didn't just see me as a number."
Sam Barron ✉
Sam Barron has almost two decades of experience covering a wide range of topics including politics, crime and business.
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