The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to cut 83,000 jobs, slashing employment by over 17% at the federal agency that provides health care for millions of veterans, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press on March 5, 2025.
The department known as the VA manages and directly provides comprehensive services for veterans. Those services include health care, short- and long-term housing options, life insurance, pensions, education stipends, and assistance in jails and courts. The VA also engages in pathbreaking public health research. One-quarter of the VA’s 482,000 employees are veterans.
For the past month, the Trump administration has been cutting federal spending, causing numerous hardships for government employees, the agencies they work for and the people they serve.
But veterans are among those hardest hit, and the impact goes well beyond job loss.
My research on veterans in the criminal legal system illustrates the stark challenges that service members already face as they integrate back into civilian life.
Trump’s budget cuts will make this process only harder. Here are five reasons why.
A protest of layoffs at the VA in Jamaica Plain on Feb. 21, 2025.Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald via Getty Images
1. Eroding the federal workforce
Federal law requires employers to give veterans an advantage in hiring over people who have not served in the military.
Under the 1944 Veterans Preference Act, employers should hire veterans over other candidates and retain veterans over other employees during layoffs. The idea is to compensate for the economic loss of serving in the military and acknowledge the government’s obligation, especially, to support disabled veterans.
Due to this veterans preference, nearly 30% of federal workers are veterans, half of whom are disabled. This means that veterans, who make up 6.1% of the U.S. population, are disproportionately affected by federal worker cuts.
One estimate is that of the 38,000 federal employees fired in the first five weeks of the Trump administration, 6,000 are veterans.
2. Gutting VA health care
Cuts to the federal workforce are also affecting medical care for veterans. The Veterans Health Administration workforce constitutes 90% of the VA’s 482,000 workers, so cuts to VA workers mean cuts to health care.
These cuts come at a time when veterans’ health care needs are increasing. The VA enrolled 400,000 veterans in its benefits system from March 2023 through March 2024, 30% more than the prior year. It also expanded eligibility for former service members to receive VA health care. Trump’s cuts will make it more difficult for the VA to provide health care for these newly eligible veterans.
These cuts roll back President Joe Biden’s investment in the VA to address long-standing staffing problems. The Office of Inspector General’s 2024 report on VA staffing shortages reveals that 137 of 139 VA health centers nationwide report a severe staffing shortage in at least one area, particularly nursing and psychology.
Staff shortages have led to long wait times for care. These wait times vary from days to months, with some VA clinics still so understaffed that they are unable to take new patients for primary care or mental health needs. Staff increases over the past few years shortened wait times while providing care to more veterans.
In 2024, the VA said it was working hard to fill its 66,000 vacancies, aiming to improve health care for the more than 9 million veterans it serves.
Now, just one year later, the VA faces the loss of 83,000 jobs. These cuts may contribute to fundamental changes in VA health care. Rather than help veterans directly, the VA may pay for veterans to seek medical care outside the VA system, leading to higher costs and lower quality.
Other Trump directives will prevent gender-affirming care to veterans. Veterans with diagnoses related to gender identity increased from 2,513 to 10,457 between 2011 to 2021.
3. Destaffing the suicide hotline
In Trump’s cuts to social services, the country’s Veterans Crisis Line, which both the VA and the Department of Health and Human Services oversee, is losing employees to layoffs, despite existing staffing shortages. An estimated 800 to 900 of the 1,130 crisis-line workers have always worked remotely, so ending remote work options will further undermine staffing.
A quote from Abraham Lincoln about the Veterans Affairs mission is affixed to the side of one of the department’s buildings.Government Accounting Office
Current data shows an average of 17.6 veteran suicides per day. Suicide remains the second-leading cause of death among veterans under 45 years old. Current VCL caller data is not publicly available, but staff report that the service fields 60,000 calls a month.
In the past, the VA reported nearly 3 million calls between 2009 and 2017, which led to 82,000 emergency dispatches to prevent veterans from harming themselves. The VA steadily increased crisis-line staffing to address concerns that, given the volume of calls, veterans were not receiving help in a timely manner.
Fewer staff, already suffering from burnout, undermines this work, as callers already at high risk for suicide will face longer wait times and improper care.
The first Trump administration made veteran suicide prevention a policy priority; its latest moves impede this goal.
4. Losing research
The VA’s investment in research, about $916 million a year, has contributed to a comprehensive understanding of veterans’ well-being, meaning the government can target aid toward those in need.
VA research has also helped spark major medical breakthroughs on the link between smoking and cancer, prompting the surgeon general to put warnings on cigarettes, and the most widely used method to measure and treat prostate cancer.
VA research and data are instrumental in the social sciences. There are millions of veterans who come from diverse sociodemographic groups, and social science researchers are able to track them over time.
With overall budget cuts at the VA and the federal workforce reduction, at least 350 VA researchers will likely lose their jobs. That, along with a Trump directive to stop research on how poverty and race shape veteran health outcomes, will undermine not only the general well-being of veterans but also the entire medical establishment’s knowledge about substance use, mental health and deeper insights that VA research can provide on prevention and treatment of cancer and cardiovascular disease.
5. Looming cuts to other benefits
Numerous reports indicate that Republicans in Congress want to reduce so-called entitlements, including food stamps and Medicaid, the health insurance for the country’s poorest citizens.
Cutting Medicaid would hurt veterans’ health, too, because not all veterans have access to federally funded health care through the VA, for a variety of reasons. Estimates show that over the past decade nearly 10% of veterans use Medicaid for at least some of their health care benefits, and 40% of those veterans rely exclusively on Medicaid for all their health care.
Further, approximately 400,000 veterans are uninsured. Given their income, half of these uninsured veterans should be eligible for Medicaid, as long as looming cuts don’t change eligibility requirements.
In addition, 1.2 million veterans received aid through the federally funded supplemental nutritional access program, or SNAP. Working-age veterans face an elevated risk of experiencing food insecurity compared to their nonveteran peers.
Veterans are still overrepresented among the homeless population. Many do not have financial flexibility to make up for these cuts.
Making good on a promise
All Americans are affected by Trump’s federal funding cuts. But as my research shows, the budget-slashing looks to be especially hard on those who served in the military.
The media and political blowback against Trump’s cuts has already begun. Negatively impacted veterans are gaining increasing visibility. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have begun calling on the Department of Defense to prioritize retaining and rehiring veterans.
The first Trump administration committed to expanding services for veterans. Now, it’s executing a stark policy reversal with acute consequences for the very same veterans the U.S. government promised to protect and serve since the country’s founding.
Jamie Rowen, Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science, UMass Amherst
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
