Veterans around the country may soon be facing the impact of President Donald Trump’s federal cuts, as the Department of Veterans Affairs is set to cut 83,000 jobs.
As many prepare for the mass layoffs, Jamie Rowen from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst says that veterans are particularly sensitive to federal cuts.
The Department of Government Efficiency is looking to reduce staffing levels for the VA back to where they were in 2019. While Rowen some feel this decision makes sense, as there’s currently around 480,000 employees for the department, she says there’s a reason those jobs were created.
“The problem is that the federal government decided to expand eligibility for healthcare to 400,000 new veterans, which is a great thing over the last few years,” Rowen said.
With more veterans being benefits eligible, the workload has increased for the VA and the addition of employees over the last half decade has had a positive impact.
“The increase in staffing has actually decreased wait times for the VA and really improved care, and there’s really good evidence of that,” Rowen said. “So, just deciding on a workforce cut based on a year, 2019, doesn’t show good planning.”
While DOGE is behind the federal mass layoffs, Rowen says that not all Republicans appear to be on board with the quick decisions to eliminate jobs.
“Interestingly, Republican legislators yesterday introduced bills to suggest that we could take a few months to decide whom to cut,” Rowen said. “And the Democrats actually came with a different bill that said, ‘We need to be honoring our promise to veterans,’ or actually legal obligation to veterans.”
Not only are lawmakers looking to keep VA jobs, but they want to ensure that the department isn’t hit with the broad sweeping cuts that every agency is facing.
“Everyone knows there’s waste in the government, but cutting jobs just to cut jobs doesn’t cut waste in the government. It actually cuts necessary services for veterans,” she said.
While Trump and his supporters are looking to streamline the government and make things more efficient, Rowen says that the inverse could instead be true.
Unlike the private sector, Rowen stressed that the elimination of government services won’t create a space for another entity to come in and fill it like we would see in a free market.
“It’s not like there’s competing governments and the best one is going to enter the space and do the services,” Rowen said. “The fact is we have one government, it does services, and when we flash and burn all of those services, we don’t even realize we’re getting, there will not be anyone entering to fill that space. That is the nature of the private sector versus the public sector. They’re different.”