The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
After veterans protested last week at the Ohio Statehouse, a spokesman for President Donald Trump is saying that tens of thousands of proposed staff cuts to the Department of Veterans Affairs won’t hurt Ohio vets. However, he didn’t specify how the reforms would work, and he didn’t specify that no care providers such as doctors and nurses would be ousted.
About two hundred turned out last Friday to protest 2,400 cuts that have already been made, along with 80,000 more that are planned. Many were also standing up against what they consider the new administration’s unconstitutional conduct — including that the VA cuts were proposed by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, a private citizen acting in an unofficial capacity.
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“Our current government is not abiding by the Constitution,” said Todd Stemen, an Army veteran who now lives in Cleveland. “We all have checks and balances in our life and the government has checks and balances. They’re not abiding by the oath they took to the Constitution. We’re trying to remind them that we the people are the ones who dictate whether they keep their jobs or not.”
Earlier this week, after a story about the protest was published, VA spokesman Peter Kasperowicz sent an email asking to provide “perspective.”
“The Biden Administration astronomically grew the department’s budget and number of employees, and VA wait times and backlogs increased,” was the first. “We are doing things differently.”
In response to follow-up questions, Kasperowicz said the VA added 52,000 employees between 2021 and 2024 and increased the agency’s budget by $89 billion. And he said wait times for primary care increased by 8.6 days over the same period. For mental health care, the increase was 5.7 days over that period, and for specialty care, the increase was 14 days, Kasperowicz said.
But the agency still faces shortages amid growing caseloads.
The VA cares for more than 9 million veterans. Its Office of the Inspector General last August reported that the agency’s health service still faced “severe occupational staffing shortages.” And its caseloads are reportedly growing rapidly. Meanwhile, the VA last year reported falling wait times over the previous year despite the growing caseloads.
Kasperowicz also said that the VA has been on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list since 2015.
“In other words, VA has had serious problems for at least ten years running,” Kasperowicz said. “That’s why our efforts to reform the department are so important.”
But while Musk’s group has decided how many people to fire, it apparently hasn’t figured out what to do to fix problems.
Kasperowicz wasn’t specific about how the Trump administration would improve VA services.
“Rather than throwing more money at the problem and hoping for the best like the Biden administration did, we’re setting up a structure and process to reform the department,” Kasperowicz said. “We’re going to run through a deliberative process and find ways to improve care and benefits for Veterans without cutting care and benefits for Veterans.”
Asked if any providers such as doctors, dentists, physical therapists, nurses and mental health professionals would be among the tens of thousands Musk wants to lay off, Kasperowicz didn’t answer directly.
“We’re not talking about reducing medical staff or claims processors, we’re talking about reducing bureaucracy and inefficiencies that are getting in the way of customer convenience and service to veterans,” he said.
The spokesman also denied that the shakeup so far has interfered with services.
“VA has laid off 2,400 probationary employees in non-mission-critical positions, such as publicists, interior designers, and diversity, equity and inclusion officers,” he said. “That’s one half of one percent of VA’s workforce. So the notion that these layoffs are causing issues across the department is false.”
But Reuters on Thursday reported that the shakeup at the VA has already resulted in cancellation of some vets’ appointments. And, with veterans making up a quarter of the VA staff, uncertainty over their future employment is leading many to require mental health services, the story said.
As it rushes to slash federal workers and spending the efforts of the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency have been riddled with mistakes. In the case of the VA, it canceled support contracts as the agency tries to speed the rollout of its new Electronic Health Record.
The new system, which will cost at least $16 billion, is meant to facilitate care. The Trump VA walked back some initial cancellations, but not until after many of the affected companies had laid off staff, Federal News Network reported Wednesday.
