KANSAS CITY – The Department of Veterans Affairs is preparing to lay off up to 80,000 workers in the coming weeks in the latest phase of the Trump administration's efforts to reshape the federal workforce, according to an internal memo obtained by ABC News.
ABC’s Ben Siegel joined Kansas City’s Morning News with details on the plan. You can listen to the entire interview here:
In a March 4th memo to senior agency leaders, the agency's chief of staff said the VA's "initial objective is to return to our 2019-end strength numbers of 399,957 employees" as part of the Department of Government Efficiency-led wave of large-scale firings and reorganization of agencies.
The VA is the second largest federal agency after the Department of Defense. Veterans of US Wars make up about a quarter of the agency's workforce.
One of the reasons the VA workforce has grown in recent years is because the agency has been providing more care and coverage to a greater number of veterans, following the passage of the bipartisan PACT Act in 2022. That law expanded and extended coverage and benefits to veterans of the Gulf War and Post-9/11 deployments exposed to toxic burn pits in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries.