By Chris Cameron & Nicholas Nehamas

The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to reduce its workforce by more than 80,000 people, according to a memo seen by The New York Times outlining part of President Donald Trump’s escalating efforts to slash the federal bureaucracy.

The memo, which was first reported by the trade publication Government Executive, calls for the department’s workforce to go from more than 482,000 workers as of late last year to 399,957. Some of those cuts could be made by offering early retirement or severance payments, but earlier efforts to entice employees to quit their jobs voluntarily fell short of the Trump administration’s stated goal to drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce.

Doug Collins, the secretary of Veterans Affairs, released a video statement Wednesday announcing the cuts, saying — as he has previously — that health care services and benefits would not be cut under the Trump administration and that 300,000 positions at the department had been labeled “mission critical” to ensure that services would not be interrupted.

If that “mission critical” designation remains, the cuts would have to come from a pool of about 182,000 workers — eliminating more than 40% of the noncritical workforce at the department.

“There are many people complaining about the changes we’re making at the VA,” Collins said. “But what most of them are really saying is, ‘Let’s just keep doing the same thing that the VA has always done.’”

He later added, “We’ll be making major changes, so get used to it.”

The workforce reductions would be a major escalation of the downsizing that has already occurred at the Department of Veterans Affairs, which provides health care for military veterans. The Trump administration had already fired more than 2,400 employees at the department — cuts that have led to political pushback from Democrats and even some Republicans.

Democrats denounced the move, noting that aggressive cuts at the department had already affected some services for veterans and that a law signed by President Joe Biden had significantly expanded the veterans benefits system, requiring more staff.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, described the plan as a “shameful betrayal,” accusing the Trump administration of “starving” the VA’s ability to meet demand to justify privatizing the department.

Everett Kelley, the president of the union representing most workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs, condemned the plan in a statement, saying that the department “has been severely understaffed for many years, resulting in longer wait times for veterans in need.” The firings, Kelley said, “can only make matters worse.”

In addition to its primary mission of providing veterans with care and serving as the nation’s backup health care system, the department also oversees some medical research and manages veterans benefits programs — like pensions, banking, home loans, insurance, job training and funding for college degrees. The department also manages the nation’s hallowed military cemeteries and investigates fraud in the veterans benefits system.

Those programs and the department’s sprawling health care system employ administrators as well as physicians, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, technicians, clerks, accountants, cemetery groundskeepers and case workers.

It is unclear where the cuts will come from and which programs would be most affected.