Democratic MP Chris Deluzio from Pennsylvania joins veterans who protest on Tuesday, May 6, 2025, outside the US Capitol against the planned cuts of the Trump government. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
Washington – veterans and democratic legislators on the Capitol Hill protested on Tuesday against the planned cuts of the Trump government for the Department of Veterans Affairs, which includes around 80,000 jobs.
The group gathered shortly after the VA Secretary Doug Collins in front of the US Capitol in front of the Senate Committee for Veteran affairs, where he questioned the cuts to improve the efficiency of the department.
A lot of former service members who were not read for sale by senators and representatives sentenced this argument as a “nonsensical”, as Senator Richard Blumenthal, Top Democrat in the Veterans Affairs Committee.
“We will not allow veterans to be cheated by this administration,” said Blumenthal from Connecticut. “I just came from a hearing with the VA secretary, and to say that it was a disappointment is a great understatement. This hearing was a shame.”
“Non-stop smear campaign”
Jose Vasquez, Executive Director of Common Defense, the Advocacy Group, which organized the press conference, said: “You call this efficiency, but we call it betrayed.”
Vasquez, a veteran of the army, which was recently supplied by the VA in New York due to a cancer tumor on his pancreas, said: “Millions of veterans are dependent on VA every day-survivors on cancer, toxic exposure, traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress.”
He claims that the agency’s workers, many veterans, were the goal of a “non-stop smear campaign”.
“Why? Simply. Because a small group of greedy billionaires prefers to get tax cuts rather than pay for the real war costs,” Vasquez.
Trump’s ephemeral Doge organization under the direction of the top campaign donor Elon Musk reduced around 2,400 VA jobs in early March.
Collins, a former MEP of Georgia, who is still working in the Air Force Reserve, presented a plan in early March to return VA staff from 398,000 values ​​in 2019, of the currently around 470,000 positions.
The legislator informed the senators on Tuesday that he “carried out a thorough review of the structure of the department and staff throughout the company”.
“We will keep the missed jobs of VA like doctors, nurses and damage processors, while we run non-missionary roles such as interior designers and DEI civil servants.
Collins resigned during the hearing, including Sen. Elissa Slotkin from Michigan, who told the secretary: “There is no way that all 80,000 are in these job fields” and referred to his comment on Dei and interior designers.
“I have a problem to understand how the veterans get the same or better care in Michigan what we want,” said Slotkin, who served three tours in Iraq as a CIA analyst.
GOP says VA has to change
Many Republicans on the committee have retained the VA, as Senator Thom Tillis from North Carolina said: “
“If we just say that everything has to stay the same and only have to add more money and more people, then they see it wrong,” said Tillis, adding that he is “open to suggestions” and will check the proposal for reducing the workforce.
Collins criticized the boost in attitudes of the former President Joe Biden, who signed the PACT Act, the greatest expansion of the VA advantages in decades.
The law opened the care until about 1 million veterans Anyone who developed certain conditions and cancer after exposure to combustion pits in Iraq and in Afghanistan as well as to Vietnam veterinarians who were exposed to the agent orange.
The Republican Senator Kevin Cramer from North Dakota said that Collins was “beaten” because of the possible 80,000 cuts. “Correct me when I lie wrong, but I think 52,000 fresh positions were added between 2021 and 2024.
“I don’t think,” Collins replied.
But at the rally, the democratic MP Chris Deluzio, a former naval officer who served in Iraq, defended the expansion of the PACT Act.
“At that moment, as so many toxic veterans of my generation, orange veterans from the Vietnam era, we finally get the advantages you deserve because of the PACT law that we should invest in the resources for VA, and Donald Trump and his team do the opposite”, do Deluzio, which represents in Pennsylvania.
