U.S. veterans department to start mass layoffs in June

WASHINGTON >> The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin mass layoffs as early as June, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters, as President Donald Trump’s campaign to sharply cut the federal government works its way through a highly politically sensitive agency.

The memo, which is dated March 6, directs the department’s human resources team to begin reviewing the agency’s operations with an eye toward firing civil servants. It said it expects the review to be done by June, after which “VA will initiate Department-wide RIF actions,” using an acronym for reduction in force.

The VA responded to a request for comment by sending a link to VA Secretary Doug Collins’ recent opinion piece in The Hill in which he defended the cuts as “thorough and thoughtful.”

Veterans groups, Democrats, and some Republicans have already voiced concern over the planned reductions at the department, which is seeking to cut more than 80,000 workers from the agency.

The cost-cutting campaign by Trump and his adviser Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, in its first phase has already pushed more than 100,000 people out of the 2.3 million-member federal civilian workforce. Agencies including the VA — which provides services including healthcare to roughly 15.8 million U.S. veterans — have begun to plan reductions in force as part of a planned second wave of cuts.

While there is widespread bipartisan agreement that the federal government needs to be more efficient, the speed of Musk’s campaigns — and their repeated need to rehire fired workers — has drawn criticism. Some 57% of respondents to a Reuters/Ipsos poll last week said they oppose the idea of firing tens of thousands of federal workers.

Federal workers are facing sharp restrictions on spending, including weeks-long bans on purchasing basic office supplies.

At the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at least some workers were ordered to stop using government “purchase cards” used to buy equipment and pay for other expenses for 30 days, with limits reduced to $1, according to an agency email reviewed by Reuters.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration, didn’t immediately respond to an email.

Even by the standard of Musk-driven cuts elsewhere, the scale of the layoffs at the VA is particularly deep and will hit a department that looks after a group that typically garners wide bipartisan support in the U.S., its military veterans.

Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said last week that the job cuts marked an escalation of a “full-scale, no-holds-barred assault on veterans” by President Donald Trump that would put veterans’ health benefits in “grave danger.”

Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who said he learned of the cuts from the media, called it “political malpractice” not to consult Congress about the measures.