President Donald Trump has approved of DOGE making drastic cuts to federal spending and federal workforces, including at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Supporters of Trump in Congress including Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) said he believes that the approximately 80,000 job cuts planned in the coming months at VA won’t affect health care services for veterans.
On the NewsNation program ‘The Hill Sunday with Chris Stirewalt’ Perry said: “It should not affect veterans’ care. And we will scream if it does. I do trust President Trump if he says — and he does — that we’re using a scalpel, not a hatchet.”
Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) said that he trusts that the roughly 80,000 job cuts planned at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will not affect health care for veterans, which the Trump administration has pledged they wouldn’t.
Live updates here: https://t.co/ULaS7Rg4fZ pic.twitter.com/SBGFnCx0eb
— The Hill (@thehill) March 9, 2025
Perry added: “We don’t want any of those services to veterans to be diminished, but we also understand that in government, there is a lot of waste, and if they ferreted out things that are wasteful and not useful to veterans, we need to ensure that we have the money to care for the veterans legitimately that are seeking care.”
President Trump promised to “put veterans first.”
He then fired 6,000 veterans from the federal workforce.@SenBlumenthal led Senate Democrats to try to pass a resolution to reinstate their jobs.
Senate Republicans BLOCKED it.
We will keep fighting for our veterans. pic.twitter.com/rIksgQFY0W
— Senate Democrats (@SenateDems) March 5, 2025
Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee ranking member Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called the cutting of 80,000 employees at VA “a gut punch” and a move that “regards veterans as roadkill on the way to tax cuts through the revenue they’re trying to save.” Blumenthal added: “They’re laying waste to the VA in the name of cutting waste, and they’re doing it with a meat axe.”
Blumenthal said VA Secretary Collins who “continues to insist that his slash & trash cuts will have no impact,” is “Totally out of touch.”
Note: There are currently approximately 480,000 employees in the Department of Veteran Affairs who serve more than 9 million enrollees.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest VA employee union, said of the VA job cuts: “The DOGE plunder of career VA employees, adding to the illegal mass firings of thousands of probationary employees, can only make matters worse. Veterans and their families will suffer unnecessarily, and the will of Congress will be ignored.”