President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to cut more than 80,000 jobs from the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a leaked internal memo.
The memo — penned by the department’s chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, and obtained by the Associated Press — says the administration plans to roll back staffing to 2019 levels, which would require eliminating tens of thousands of jobs..
The memo instructs top-level officials to prepare to “resize and tailor the workforce to the mission and revised structure” this August. It also suggests that officials work with billionaire Elon Musk and Department of Government Efficiency to "aggressively" pursue such cuts.
The move would represent yet another round of cuts to the Veterans Affairs department by Trump and his Republican allies, who claim that they will make the cuts without affecting benefits to veterans.
The memo comes after Trump dismissed the inspector general at the VA, Michael Missal. Over his tenure, Missal saw the department save some $45 billion through his oversight.
Democrats in Congress have decried Trump’s planned cuts, with the House Democratic whip, Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., saying at a news conference that “Democrats are here to say in unison we will not allow our veterans to be defined as government waste.”
