Leaked VA memo calls for up to 83,000 layoffs to reduce workforce to 2019 levels
111 comments
·March 5, 2025AcerbicZero
tylerflick
I haven’t found it any worse than many private health systems. The one thing the VA has going for it, is it’s a single medical network. I’ve only seen this replicated elsewhere at Kaiser.
blindriver
Holy hell, they hired 83,000 people since 2019? Does no one care we are $36T in debt? 40% of our income taxes go to paying just the interest on our debt!
Raidion
It's not the hiring people that's the problem. Assuming those people "cost" 300k a year all in (benefits/offices,etc) which is probably high, that's $24 billion. The government spent $6.8 trillion, cutting these jobs cuts spending by .3891%.
Cutting the people without cutting the programs won't do much and is (IMO) a problem in that you should be able to access government services in a way that the writers of the laws (house/senate) have clearly agreed to. When you're cutting this widely, it's hard to believe you're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
nameless912
This is the thing that keeps making me so angry when I hear so called "budget hawks" get mad about the number of federal employees. Payroll is _not the problem_!! All of the federal payroll is something like 10-15% of the government's expenditure. Firing _everyone_ would only cut costs by 10-15%. There are plenty of programs (read: bloated defense contracts and corporate subsidies) that we could cut to save costs instead, and we wouldn't crater the federal workforce like we are now.
You can be mad about the government spending money on things you believe are unnecessary, and you can even want to fire the people related to that program! But across the board personnel cuts don't fix the appropriations issues and will waste money in inefficiency, waste and loss as the folks that are left have to pick up the pieces.
Does the federal government employ too many people? I dunno, maybe. Do we fund too many programs? Yeah, probably. But these cuts are _fucking insane_.
araes
Part of the personal issue also. Notably, not especially Democrat or Republican related. Both administration groups for years.
The Defense part especially seems crazy. Per USASpending.gov [1], last year the federal government spent $9,700,000,000,000. Despite all the talk that Covid budgets were short term event, they never actually went back down. Dropped to $9T in 2022, and then started rising again. Post-Covid surge was $6.6T in 2019, then jumped to $9.1T in 2020. $10.1 in 2021.
[1] https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function
At the same time, post-Covid, the Defense Department budget has been rising at about $100,000,000,000 / yr for the last three years. 2021: $1.1T 2022: $1.2T 2023: $1.3T 2024: $1.4T
(To be fair in comparison though, the largest other single items, Medicare / Social Security, have also been rising fast. 2021: 1.4 / 1.2, 2022: 1.5 / 1.3, 2023: 1.6 / 1.4, 2024: 1.6 / 1.5 )
However, with the DoD, what have we got from that much spending? Incredibly depressing slides from The War on the Rocks like this one about the incomprehensible gap in shipbuilding capacity? A factor of 232x? The US only has 100,000 tons of shipbuilding? That's a single neo-Panamax cargo ship. [1]
[2] https://www.twz.com/alarming-navy-intel-slide-warns-of-china...
Or this one from Military.com, that the government does not know where $151 million of $225 million collected from soldiers for food supplies on garrisons was actually spent. [3] Fort Stewart, 87% of funds redirected. Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, 63% redirected. All but two bases left more than half of the money for food unspent. $225 million doesn't mean almost anything to the government, yet $460 of mandatory / month deduction in paycheck for a Basic Allowance for Subsistence that then goes "somewhere" matters quite a bit to individual soldiers. And the defense budget rose $100B every year for years.
[3] https://www.military.com/daily-news/investigations-and-featu...
Anyways, specific examples of the issues I have with current government spending and the way it's allocated.
blindriver
I really hate this attitude. "$24 billion a year is nothing compared to the deficit so we should just ignore it and keep spending."
Spending cuts have to start SOMEWHERE. Saying $24 billion is ignorable is insane. We are in a critical debt situation and my children's future is at stake.
efnx
The attitude comes from a point of analysis, and the argument that follows is that we can save by cutting spending in specific areas that we overspend in (military) and we could rake in lots more in taxes by making the rich _pay their fare share_.
The current firing of government workers is about political alignment, not about cost. Cost is a pretext.
kstrauser
Here are the official spending numbers[0]. The largest categories are:
* Social Security
* Medicare
* National Defense
* Interest payments
* Health
* Income Security
* VA Benefits
Which of those categories are we overspending on? Which specific cuts do you want to make? It's impossible for one to claim they're serious about saving money without talking about slashing Social Security, Medicare, and the military, which together make 40% of the budgets, so... which are you in favor of reducing?
When you've cut your budget as far as you can and you're still losing money, the only solution is to make more money. Here, that means taxes, and specifically that we must start taxing the rich. I'm not saying that as some far-left "eat the rich" kind of thing, but as basic arithmetic and economics. We need more revenue, and it has to come from somewhere.
[0] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
marcusverus
It's an intentionally deceptive framing, so you should hate it. $24 Billion is $183 per taxpayer per year. I sure as hell think $180/year is a lot of money, and if the government is going to forcibly take 1/4 of my friggin' salary every year, they really ought to be at least as careful with my money as I am!
beebaween
very fraction of a percent counts... small things add up quickly...
Idk why this is a political issue? As a progressive I also support firing people who aren't producing effective outcomes for veterans. With all we save that money SHOULD be used to actually help veterans.
apical_dendrite
Why do you think they aren't producing effective outcomes? The administration's track record is that it cuts indiscriminately, without considering the impact, and then sometimes tries to backtrack and rehire people when critical things break.
WalterBright
> cutting these jobs cuts spending by .3891%
A billion here, a billion there, soon it adds up to real money.
nameless912
But how much extra waste will be generated by losing the experts in these bureaucracies? Of course some of them are redundant, but some of them have the proverbial bathroom codes and are irreplaceable. These cuts are incredibly irresponsible; cutting _programs_, along with the staff associated with those programs, is IMO wrong but at least workable as a long term cost reduction strategy. Just slashing staff left and right is malpractice.
apical_dendrite
Congress passed the PACT act that expanded healthcare and disability benefits for veterans who had been exposed to burn pits, agent orange, and other toxins.
These are decades-old problems that the government refused to address until 2022.
lenerdenator
> Holy hell, they hired 83,000 people since 2019? Does no one care we are $36T in debt? 40% of our income taxes go to paying just the interest on our debt!
In short: no, no one cares. Particularly not the guys in the party who are carrying out these cuts.
The main reasons we are, in the year 2025, spending so much on interest, are:
1) A financial crisis that required massive bailouts 2) A pandemic crisis that required massive bailouts 3) Two wars in the Middle East that cost a lot of money 4) Perhaps the most important one here: a steadfast refusal by about half of the country to have a realistic, adult conversation about government revenues since George H.W. Bush said "Read my lips: no new taxes", which solidified the Reagan practice of deficit spending and the belief that any and all private holdings of massive amounts of money were still better than giving that money to the government, regardless of the economic reality.
The VA hospital in your nearest city is a drop in the bucket.
throw0101a
> Holy hell, they hired 83,000 people since 2019?
Given that there's been a fairly steady ~2.9M federal employees for a few decades now, 83k isn't that much:
* https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CES9091000001
> Does no one care we are $36T in debt?
The GOP certainly doesn't, given that they keep cutting revenue:
kstrauser
If the average VA employee cost were $100,000, which I suspect is way more than they pay the average staffer, then those VA employees' annual pay would be about 1/4000th of that debt.
There are way, way worse things we could be wasting our money on than providing the decent healthcare we promised our veterans.
oooyay
Elsewhere you commented this:
> Veteran suicide can be massively helped with psilosibin and ketamine therapy, things that I hope RFK Jr will implement quickly.
This take combined with the immediate cuts at the VA when DOGE opened up are reminiscent of when Trump publicly toyed with putting us all on antidepressants [1]. I'm curious when people who hold the opinions you do just pull the wool off and admit you'd prefer (or just be okay with) us drugged up or dead? Are you afraid someone will judge you for saying you'd rather have a dead veteran than doing what the American people promised to the people who fought their wars?
1: https://www.propublica.org/article/donald-trump-veterans-spr...
blindriver
It sounds like you know NOTHING about ketamine or psilosibin therapy and are just talking hot air.
Unlike SSRIs which changes brain chemistry and you need to be on it for the rest of your lives, most people suffering from PTSD recover after a single treatment. That's why ketamine and psilsobin therapy is being pushed by everyone who cares about veteran suicides.
Educate yourself.
oooyay
I do happen to know a thing or two about them. They're just not silver bullets for veteran suicide, PTSD, or cPTSD in the way you're describing them. They help and should be available for sure. I've advocated for them in the past on this very forum.
> most people suffering from PTSD recover after a single treatment.
That is incorrect. Ketamine therapy for PTSD or cPTSD (what most at the VA have) requires years of treatment. Psilocybin therapy is the same; I live in Oregon where we have clinics and practitioners for this stuff. None of those clinics claim that one time treatment will cure you.
I am a veteran and obviously do care about veteran suicide otherwise I wouldn't be calling out this gobbledegook you're spreading on a public forum in lieu of all the various different kinds of work the VA does.
mindslight
These days I just assume that anybody driving focus to the "debt" and specifically "paying interest on the debt" has no idea what they're talking about. Write it on the blackboard 50 times: the budget of a sovereign nation issuing a reserve currency is not analogous to household finances!
As a follower of Austrian economics, monetary creation by the government most certainly does matter. But this myopic focus on "debt" completely hides the actual separate dynamics like domestic people/institutions parking their savings, foreign entities buying treasuries for longer term stability, or the political martingale of accounting for legislative monetary creation as paper "debt" to the Federal Reserve.
The current cries about government spending are basically aiming at killing the goose that lays golden eggs because some people got frustrated by having to spend some of the proceeds of selling the eggs on the goose's own feed.
WalterBright
The problem with the debt is interest is paid on it. Keep adding to the debt, and the interest payments will cause a doom loop ending in fiscal catastrophe.
If the government instead switched to simply printing more money, we'd have runaway inflation, and history tells us what happens next (Weimar Republic).
mindslight
The elephant in the room is the continual creation of new money by the Fed by dumping it into the financial industry, while the legislative government itself has been hamstrung (and is now being killed) by this "debt" narrative (eg a good chunk of that debt is just to the Fed itself!). The consumer price inflation from the first Trump term caused the first spate of fiscal responsibility the Fed (and thus the government as a whole) has had for the past several decades. Going forward, the productive path is to tamp down on the monetary creation being done by the Fed, let the asset bubbles cool down, and be comfortable with the legislative government spending newly-created money for deliberate goals.
bpt3
Are you aware of the percentage of all federal spending that is consumed by interest on the debt, and more importantly the forward looking projections for that metric?
If so, how can you claim said debt is meaningless?
mindslight
What do you mean "consumed" ? Government spending is only hard-limited by keeping up this Federal Reserve dog and pony show that seeks to handicap the government's own monetary sovereignty. What you're actually talking about is the risk-free interest rate given out to entities that park their money in Treasuries, which is itself set by the government!
This is most certainly not to say that the government could just create an unlimited amount of money and expect there to be no repercussions! Rather the overall point is that it's specious to analyze a government budget in terms of "debt", especially while giving a pass to all of the monetary creation that happens outside of the legislative (loans issued/bought by the Fed).
ravedave5
Neither side cares we are in debt, see the spending plan put forth.
simonsarris
It's so difficult to evaluate this stuff from afar.
In 2019 there were 399,000 workers. Now 482,000. In 2022, the Biden admin tried to slash 50,000 workers and was stymied, and then the VA hired 61,000 the following year.
What's the right number? I'm sure people leaning one way politically will confidently say one thing, though they may have said something else in 2022, and vice versa. I find it hard to have a problem with a plan if its at least partially originating internally, and its hard to say there's no problem if the current and previous administration were both trying to curtail growth.
apsec112
The PACT Act was a new bipartisan statute, passed in 2022, that expanded the VA's responsibilities and how many people were eligible:
CharlieDigital
I feel like this should be higher because of facts.
The PACT Act is perhaps the largest health care and benefit expansion in VA history.[22] The PACT Act brings these changes:
- Expands and extends eligibility for VA health care for Veterans with toxic exposures and Veterans of the Vietnam, Gulf War, and post-9/11 eras
- Adds 20+ more presumptive conditions for burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic exposures
- Adds more presumptive-exposure locations for Agent Orange and radiation
- Requires VA to provide a toxic exposure screening to every Veteran enrolled in VA health care
- Helps VA improve research, staff education, and treatment related to toxic exposures
myko
I only have health care now due to the PACT Act. Absolutely pissed about what is happening to the VA now.
unsnap_biceps
My biggest issue is that the current cuts are not being done with any sort of plan beyond "What can I get away with". Hiring at big organizations is complicated and people are not fungible no matter how much companies like Amazon push them to be. Wanting to slash 50k and hire 61k could make total sense if the overlap of skills is limited or non-existent.
I'm pretty left leaning these days, and I'd be fine with cuts, even large cuts around, just with intention and reason behind them. I'm not a fan of the tear it all down that's going on right now.
AcerbicZero
I get this vibe, but I also wonder roughly how much intentionality and thought went into hiring these folks in the first place? Kinda seems like when it comes time to hire they're mostly focused on "what can I get away with".
unsnap_biceps
Like any large company, this does happen and the fix is the same. You replace someone at the top with a mandate to change the culture and they take hard looks at things and replace at the next level down as needed, and rise and repeat until you've replaced enough folks that the ship has turned around. It takes time, but it's the healthy way to turn the ship. There's nothing special about government employment being any different than private sector.
redeux
The primary problem with the VA is not the staffing level, it’s the quality of care and responsiveness. If these additions were put in place address those problems then I’d argue they’re necessary. We made a commitment to our military members when they agreed to the oath of enlistment/office and we aught to live up to that.
The VA doesn’t and shouldn’t have unlimited funds but at the same time, cutting personnel without addressing the core problems seems like it’s only going to make things worse for veterans.
myko
> it’s the quality of care and responsiveness
Both great in my experience, and in my friends I have seen in the VA system.
That said, I still hear old veterans bitch about it like it sucks, even as they're completely taken care of and hand held throughout the care process.
kstrauser
I'm a vet and so are many of my friends. I expect and demand that the VA honor the pledges it made to them. However, you might be right about some of that. Some of the VA complaints I've heard didn't sound that bad compared to what I've experienced with private insurance and large hospital systems. Which is not to say that it can't be, or shouldn't be, better! It should be, for everyone! But I confess that "I had to argue with the VA to approve my hearing aids" isn't exactly worse than trying to get UnitedHealthcare to pay for an ordered MRI.
lenerdenator
I don't think too many people have an issue with the idea of "right sizing" the government. It's an organization meant to achieve goals; there's an approximate number of people needed to do this and anything beyond is waste.
What rubs a lot of people the wrong way is an executive branch run by billionaires acting with no constitutional or statutory authority to terminate the employment (and vital benefits that come with it) of tens of thousands of ordinary people without any real consideration for the institutional knowledge being lost, all in the name of "efficiency" and "cost savings", while the people in the executive branch have far more value than they could have ever produced in a human lifetime, and stand to benefit the most from such destruction.
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jorblumesea
Ignoring the obvious humanitarian aspect of it (veteran suicide rate, societal promises of healthcare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honoring_our_PACT_Act_of_2022), politically you have to wonder why do this. Vets usually vote conservative, are often employed by the VA. It's an economically unstable time with other administration policies like tariffs. It won't reduce the deficit by any significant %. VA hospitals are often a source of general healthcare to fill gaps in the system.
lenerdenator
"Government doesn't work. Here, we'll prove it."
Ever since Reagan said "I think you all know that I've always felt the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." there's been a cadre of monied business interests who want to replace all government with "private" services, basically making themselves the new royal families of the US.
hello_moto
> the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help
That pretty much sums up the difference between USA vs the rest of Western countries.
In the US, People are protecting themselves from their own Government.
Other Western Countries, The Government is there to protect the people (and the people understand this).
jakeogh
... until they outlaw silent prayer?
jorblumesea
In this case it's directly firing your voter base. It's the same with medicaid, social security and other cut proposals. Tariffs also.
People care the most about their own wallet and income. The policies have no indirection or subtlety.
techpineapple
I sort of have to hand it to republicans, I am impressed by their commitment to slash spending even in the face of hurting their own constituents, like at least they're consistent.
On the other hand, it's amazing that people seem to hear "Republicans will make the Government better" Rather than "Republicans will slash and burn the Government regardless of who it hurts" even when they're not particularly quiet about it.
redeux
Vets aren’t as conservative as you might think and they’re a vulnerable population without a strong collective voice. The vets that actually have a voice were usually officers who showed little empathy for the rank and file to begin with, so why would they now?
mystraline
65% of veterans voted for trump.
They voted for this. Sounds like they chose their destiny, to die in a gutter homeless and no medical care. And with other public benefit cuts, low/no food stamps, delayed or stopped social security.
Its hard for me to actually care. They knew the debacle and hate, and they voted for it.
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unsnap_biceps
It really seems like that a large number of politicians no longer seem to think that their actions will impact future voting. And I mean this on both sides, there's a lot of inaction on the D side. I wonder if popularism has just broken our electorate where they're convinced everyone is going to vote the way they are going to vote regardless of who they're voting for and thus there's no need to actually represent their constituents anymore.
Y_Y
What future?
DrillShopper
> there's a lot of inaction on the D side
Not true - I've gotten five fundraising texts today.
Now effective action? Not wrong.
scarface_74
If you are in a safe Republican district and you probably are because of gerrymandering, your concern is not losing to a Democrat, it’s being primaried by a Trump endorsed Republican funded by Musk where he also uses X as a bully pulpit.
The main things that many Trump supporters care about is fighting for “American culture”, trying to stymie it from becoming a minority majority company, those evil trans people using the wrong bathroom, immigrants bringing diseases and crime and woke something or other.
blindriver
Veteran suicide can be massively helped with psilosibin and ketamine therapy, things that I hope RFK Jr will implement quickly.
bdangubic
yea, if you watched / listened / observed / ... RFK Jr you can definitely conclude that he is ALL ABOUT drugs and more drugs... :)
jajko
I presume you guys mean the man, when he was still a boy, frequently tortured his pets to death? Even his own family was openly disgusted by him. That's really a leader into healthy lifestyle, not sure for whom though
KingOfCoders
The plan is to have no government agencies at all, but to have private companies run everything,
like jokingly in this Fry and Laurie sketch
null
hello_moto
The Administration actions are all to fund the $4.5 trillion tax cut.
* DOGE - Cut Expenses
* Tariff - Bring Revenue (another form of Tax, the victimized countries can't/don't influence USA politics); this is essentially Sales/VAT Tax without being said as Sales/VAT Tax.
* Cutting Aids - Cut Expenses
* Ukraine - Cut Expenses
They're looking for all avenue to fund $4.5 trillion tax cut for the Billionaires.
That is the main logic and reason behind all these moves, not the smoke and mirror they said to the media.
hypeatei
That's not the main reason either, actually. There is no way that you're going to find $4.5T in "waste, fraud, and abuse" unless you consider anything you don't like as that.
What they're really doing is handicapping as much as possible to make government appear inept so that they can come in and privatize.
hello_moto
They don't really care if the end result is to make Govt inept for privatization.
If that happened, good, otherwise, the Rich will still get their tax cut.
No matter what, The Rich wins.
dnissley
Yeah all these cuts could be reasonable steps towards financial responsibility. Provided they put the savings towards funding future liabilities and paying off debt. Unfortunately that won't happen and we'll basically be in the same bad financial position as before, if not worse.
kstrauser
> Provided they put the savings towards funding future liabilities and paying off debt.
This is me laughing bitterly. We know darn well that's not what'll happen.
xnx
The goal is to rhetorically balance the "savings" from firing people with the additional giveaways to the rich to a low numeracy audience. The deficit and debt will continue to increase, but at least we will also get a recession.
hello_moto
Recession is good for The Rich. They can scoop asset and suppress wage.
Hard to say how this will actually go but as a vet, I've had some pretty poor experiences with the government support networks as a whole, and the VA is no exception; I know the VA has improved from the horror days of 03-06 but it certainly feels like it could have done so much more, especially after we got out of Iraq and the overall operation tempo dropped.
I have friends who were hurt 15+ years ago now, and have been through the ups and downs of the VA system; its just sad that after all that time they're still struggling (occasionally at least) with basic things and keeping their care going.