WASHINGTON — Republicans on the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs were stumped when asked about massive staffing cuts coming for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Government Executive first reported late Tuesday that President Donald Trump planned to lay off as many as 83,000 people from the VA. The idea is that the agency can reduce staffing levels to pre-pandemic levels.
Raw Story spoke with Sen. Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-AR), who said he can't comment on the plans because he doesn't know anything about the cuts.
"I don't know," he began. "You're asking me for a fully informed thought that is not yet fully informed. I don't know who — which positions they were."
Cassidy said the VA should be modernized in various ways, specifically citing a hearing in which VA officials were asked how they could speed up claim processing.
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According to the VA website's claims inventory, veterans' claims increased in late 2019 and early 2020. At that point there were fewer than 400,000 claims. As of March 6, there were 935,732 pending claims.
"There are tens of thousands of people processing claims," Cassidy said. "And I asked if they could use some sort of — and it was very delayed and it wasn't getting off to the veterans. So I asked, we hired all these people, and it's not getting off to the veterans. Is it possible to do it more efficiently by doing some sort of large language model and get the veterans their determination? And they said, 'we're working on it,' and they're starting off with scanning documents to become PDF files. Now, that is 30-year-old technology."
A chart on the VA's website shows that over 800,000 claims were active in the summer of 2012. Those numbers dropped to the lowest levels in over a decade until the COVID-19 pandemic. In early 2020, claims climbed, eventually reaching more than 600,000 by January 2022 before beginning to fall.
A bill signed in August 2022 aimed to help veterans exposed to chemicals from burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan. Known as the PACT Act, it also provided an increase in help for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange, the chemical used as part of a herbicidal warfare program from 1961 to 1971.
Later that year, the chart appeared to climb from fewer than 600,000 claims to well over 1 million. It peaked in January of last year and has since come down.
The VA has not said why there was such a large increase in claims.
Cassidy wants a faster process for processing claims and sending benefits. In 2023, CBS News reported that a lawsuit alleged that the UnitedHealthcare insurance company deployed an AI model to process claims, which resulted in a 90% error rate. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told Raw Story that Republicans discussed it today and want a "rapid response" method to determine whether the cuts were "an outlier."
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"Are you absorbing attrition? Are they clinical jobs? Are they non-clinical jobs? Are they mission critical or not? We've asked for that and they haven't gotten back yet," Tillis said. He acknowledged he's also unaware on where the staffing cuts are coming from.
"We've gotta outreach to every agency when we hear this," Tillis continued. "We've got to outreach to the agency heads."
"I need to know more about it before I give you a thought," Cassidy also said. "I've given you a lot of thoughts but I don't have any conclusions."
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) pointed Raw Story to his statement on X. He then said that despite being chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, he doesn't have any information about it either.
"My point is that we need to have the information they're basing their decisions on," he said. "Then, it seems to me that unless there's an explanation — I mean, I don't have an explanation. So, there may be one. The goal here, I'm thinking, the goal of going back to 2019, it ought to be how many people do we need to work here to fulfill the mission for veterans."
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said she's "very disturbed about what's happening at the VA."
Collins said she's spoken with Moran and that they've seen "nine firings of individuals," some of whom were "individuals working at the only veterans hospital that we have in the state."
Collins said that they "have an obligation to veterans and these mass firings undermine that obligation."
When he came into office, Trump created the Department of Government Efficiency by executive order. That initiative has been behind the upheaval and dismantling of government agencies. Websites, grants, programs, and employees have been cut or frozen under the promise that Trump will save taxpayers trillions.
