Democrats in the U.S. Senate released an alarming report Thursday, concluding that downsizing at the Veterans Health Administration under the Trump administration has increased wait times for care and severely reduced the VA’s ability to serve its 9.1 million eligible veterans.
Though VA leadership scaled back the planned elimination of about 72,000 positions it announced early last year, the administration’s radical downsizing of government continues to have wide-ranging and harmful effects — including for our nation’s heroes.
Shortly after President Donald Trump returned to office last year, and amid the reckless and wanton destruction inflicted by Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, VA Secretary Doug Collins announced plans to reduce staffing at the VA by 15%, or about 72,000 employees. In July, the VA backtracked on mass layoffs and moved to reduce staff through buyout offers, the federal hiring freeze, resignations, retirements and “normal attrition.”
As 2025 drew to a close, VA officials instructed managers in the agency’s health care system to eliminate between 25,000 to 35,000 more positions, mostly by canceling jobs that were vacant. That included positions for doctors, nurses, mental-health care providers and support staff.
Many of the jobs date back to the COVID health crisis, VA officials said, and are no longer necessary. They argued that the positions being vacant was proof that they aren’t needed and that cutting them will not have any detrimental effects on care for veterans.
Let’s hope all that’s true. The new report from Democrats on the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs suggests otherwise.
Using publicly available data from the VA, the report found the department reduced its workforce by 40,000, with 88% of those losses in the health system. That includes 3,000 registered nurses, nearly 1,900 claims processors and more than 1,000 physicians. It says wait times for mental health care are now more than 40 days in 15 states, including 52 days in Virginia.
This substantial reduction in staff comes on the heels of the largest expansion of eligibility for health care and benefits in the VA’s history, the passage of what’s known as the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act in 2022. That long overdue legislation made it easier for veterans who have been exposed to Agent Orange, burn pits and other toxic substances during the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan or any combat zone after 9/11 to get help.
During the Biden administration, VA officials encouraged veterans to seek help at the VA rather than requesting referrals to private doctors. The Trump administration however, has said they want to encourage more veterans to look outside the VA system for medical help.
It’s worth remembering that long wait times to see a VA doctor or mental-health professional have been a problem for several years, including at facilities in Hampton Roads. The long wait times are one reason VA facilities have been trying to fill vacant positions. Another is that medical and mental-health workers may feel overworked. News that efforts will no longer be made to fill vacant positions may cause even more employees to seek work elsewhere.
VA spokesman Peter Kasperowicz told the Military Times that the Democrats’ assertions were based on fiction — that actual staff reductions were only 30,000, that overall wait times for mental health services were far shorter than the extreme examples cited, and that the administration’s actions wouldn’t affect care or benefits for eligible veterans.
“(Committee Ranking Member Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-CT) sat on his hands throughout the entirety of the Biden Administration, when VA failed to solve all of its most serious problems,” Kasperowicz told the publication.
What’s clear is that members of both parties, and especially members of Hampton Roads’ congressional delegation, should examine the situation closely and provide the oversight necessary to ensure the VA is fulfilling its obligations to those who served.
We owe an enormous debt to those who wore the uniform, and it will be to our lasting shame if we fail to honor those promises.
