Official portrait of Douglas Collins, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs
WASHINGTON, DC — VA Secretary Doug Collins appeared before both the House and Senate for the first time since his confirmation, facing harsh criticism on the administration’s plan to cut as many as 83,000 VA staff by the end of the fiscal year.
In his congressional appearance last month, Collins defended his actions as a necessary step to pare down a bloated bureaucracy, but Democrats accused him of weakening VA healthcare and contributing to an atmosphere of fear among federal workers.
The Senate VA Committee hearing grew particularly hostile at times, with Collins talking over Democratic senators and challenging their line of questioning.
“[I’ve been met with a barrage of false rumors, innuendo, disinformation, speculation, implying firing doctors and nurses, forcing staff to work in showers and chaos in the department. None of which have been backed up,” he declared. “Because we canceled some contracts for work for the VA that we should be doing in-house, and we let go of one-half of 1% of non-mission critical employees. The Department of Veterans Affairs is not a federal jobs program.”
On the plan to cut 83,000 positions, Collins said that the number is simply the department’s goal and that Democrats’ repeating it as fact was mischaracterizing him.
“There is a goal of looking at a 15% reduction,” he said. “You have stated already that I’m going to fire 83,000 employees.”
Democrats found Collin’s reasoning to be convoluted and accused him of playing word games.
“Most people when they state a goal want to reach it,” declared Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) after a particularly heated back and forth with the VA secretary. “Just tossing out big numbers and cutting before you’re measuring is not the way to do it.”
But when pressed for exactly which contracts have been cut and how exactly the administration will choose which employees to fire, Collins was unwilling to provide specifics. Regarding the contracts, he said VA is in the process of renegotiating some of them, and he would provide Congress with a list when it’s finalized.
“It’s been two months. [You cut] 585 contracts. The fact that you won’t tell us the contracts that are being renegotiated makes me think that there are things in those contracts you maybe don’t want us to know about,” said Rep. Angus King (I-ME).
King also challenged Collins on the goal of cutting 83,000 employees in an effort to bring VA back to 2019 staffing levels.
“If you’re talking about restructuring VA, shouldn’t you be talking about where you need restructuring and not start with an arbitrary number,” he said. “That presupposes the result that there are that many unnecessary jobs. It seems to be you ought to do an analysis of where the duplication is.”
He added, “There have been seven significant veterans’ bills passed since [2019] including the PACT Act, one of the most significant expansions of VA benefits in recent American history. And yet the goal is going back to that particular year. The goal should be efficiency and not a quota.”
It wasn’t just Democrats who were seeking specifics from Collins.
“I don’t believe cuts are real unless there’s a rescissions package sent to the U.S. Congress so we can codify those cuts,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), referring to a bill that rescinds funding already approved in an appropriations bill. “When I see that rescissions package, if it’s at odds with what I consider to be in the best interest of VA, I may vote against it.”
Collins repeatedly defended any proposed VA cuts by reminding lawmakers that VA had promised that no critical healthcare staff would be affected. During a discussion about cuts to employees working at the Veterans Crisis Line, Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) explained that protecting only front-line employees is a fundamental misunderstanding of how healthcare functions.
“Every military commander understands that our warfighter’s effectiveness, indeed their lethality, depends on a fully resourced diverse network of enablers possessing the capability and capacity to support a given missions’ requirements,” she said. “You can’t just invest and rehire the pilots of the aircraft and not retain the refuelers and mechanics who fix that aircraft.”
At a separate House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing on the administration’s proposed budget for next year, questioning again turned to staffing cuts.
Ranking Democrat Mark Takano (D-CA) presented Collins with a quote from an anonymous VA psychiatrist who said, “I have felt harassed by and have diminished faith in the leadership of the VA secretary who continually throws VA employees under the bus and has shown no interest in learning about the concerns of his front-line staff. His line about VA now putting veterans first particularly irks me. In my 15 years working at two different VA medical centers, I know we have always put the veteran first.”
Collins said that this psychiatrist has nothing to worry about and is “exactly the kind of person I want to see at the VA.”
“You should be happy because you can actually do your job now,” Collins said. “Because you have a secretary who wants to cut the red tape, wants to cut your decisions, so we don’t have to continually get in our own way.”
The full VA budget had not yet been made public, with the White House releasing only a “skinny budget” containing broad funding goals and few details of how exactly money would be allocated. The White House is requesting a discretionary VA budget for FY2026 of $134.6 billion, with an additional $52.6 billion for the Toxic Exposures Fund. This represents an increase of 17% above FY2025 enacted levels.
