VA employee calls BS on DOGE firing him after getting 'cash bonus' for good work
Some Democratic lawmakers plan to pack the House chamber Tuesday night with fired federal workers to hear President Donald Trump's address to Congress. One person expected to be there is an Army veteran who until recently worked at the Veterans' Administration and was laid off around the same time he received a bonus check for "outstanding performance."
Adam Mulvey told CNN's Kate Bolduan that he plans to attend the president's speech as the guest of Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL).
"Tonight, I'd like to hear what the overarching plan is," Mulvey said. "I understand there's areas to cut and there's ways we can tighten up the budget, and we probably need to. But I don't think the way we're doing it is correct. We're going about it in a haphazard manner."
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Mulvey said he worked for a federal health care center in Illinois that serves veterans and active-duty military recruits from Naval Station Great Lakes, and that he and his colleagues had discussed the DOGE firings hitting other federal agencies.
"We've been hearing about different things in the media, but none of us there expected it would touch the VA because our mission is so important, and the patients that come in our doors are so important and need the care that they're getting," Mulvey said. "So, I received a call from my supervisor, who's also a disabled veteran, Gill. He told me he heard there were rumors that employees were getting emails about terminations. I quickly got my work phone, and looked down and there it was: I saw an email saying that I was terminated."
Mulvey continued, "The part that was hard to swallow at first is that it said I was terminated for performance. Every employee from the VA and across the federal government that has been terminated has received the same carbon-copy email that says, 'Your firing is based on your poor performance.' You know, nothing could be further from the truth. I just received a performance evaluation where I received the highest ratings. In fact, yesterday I received my final paycheck from the federal government and it included a cash bonus for performance exceeding the standards for the year, so to be terminated and fired from a layoff for financial reasons is one thing. But to be told it's based on my poor performance, I think that was very disingenuous."
Watch the clip below via CNN.