Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins pushed back on reports that his department would slash over 80,000 jobs, arguing that figures cited in internal department memos were merely goals and accusing Democrats of fear-mongering by saying the cuts would harm veterans’ care.
“Our goal is a 15 percent decrease — could be more, could be less,” Mr. Collins told the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee in his first Capitol Hill testimony since being confirmed to President Trump’s cabinet. He added that “no one has discussed firing doctors and firing nurses.”
Mr. Collins said that Democrats warning that the cuts could weaken veterans’ health care were trying to “scare my veterans and scare my employees.”
In heated exchanges with Democrats, Mr. Collins refused to say which jobs might be cut, arguing that it would be “malpractice” to publicize decisions not yet finalized.
Democratic and independent lawmakers took umbrage at his caginess, accusing him of trying to cover up the impact of the cuts.
“The fact that you won’t tell us what the contracts are that are being renegotiated makes me think there are things in those contracts that maybe you don’t want us to know about,” said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, adding that “the goal should be efficiency, not a quota.”
Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat of New Hampshire, told Mr. Collins that “most people, when they state a goal, decide they’d like to reach it,” before adding, “they cannot set out a goal and then get angry at us for asking what the impacts of that goal, of those cuts, would be.”
Democrats were not alone in voicing concerns. While most of the panel’s Republicans offered support for Mr. Collins, Senator Jerry Moran, the panel’s chairman, warned him that cuts should not be the goal.
“It ought not to be a set number you’re trying to reach,” he said. “It ought to be about right-sizing the department.”
During the hearing, Democrats questioned whether the Trump administration had thought out how the cuts would affect efficiency. Some argued that preserving roles for doctors and nurses while laying off claims processors would still delay care. Others said that the administration’s efforts to centralize payroll systems and digitize health records would be compromised if information technology specialist jobs were eliminated.
Many cited examples of the department having to rehire employees who were initially let go as evidence that they could not trust the administration to plan cuts without keeping Congress apprised of the specifics.
“It’s sloppy, and you know it,” Senator Elissa Slotkin, Democrat of Michigan, told Mr. Collins, adding that when “you have fired people and then they’ve been rehired, that’s not a secret plan.”
Mr. Collins acknowledged that errors had been made and said that staffers rehired to certain positions had since been exempted from cuts. But he denied that any of the cuts had undermined the department’s work.
Under questioning from Mr. Moran, Mr. Collins highlighted the example of the Veterans Crisis Line, arguing that he had always “protected all those who actually answered the phone.” He said that he personally decided to rehire all laid-off staff “because we didn’t want anybody to falsely accuse that we were not answering the line.”
He also said that the Trump administration planned to invest more in health care services, mentioning the $5 billion in extra V.A. funding that the Trump administration requested from Congress last week for the 2026 fiscal year.
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