Deep Workforce Cuts at VA, Pentagon Backed by Republican Spending Bills

Sondria Linford, 533^rd Commodities Maintenance Squadron, stands at attention with her Airman Leadership School classmates August 21, 2017, at Hill Air Force Base, Utah. (Todd Cromar/U.S. Air Force photo)

Posted: June 13, 2025 --- Military.com | By Rebecca Kheel

Published June 12, 2025 at 10:45 am

U.S. House Republicans are on track to allow job cuts at the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to proceed in the annual spending bills for each department. The House Appropriations Committee's fiscal 2026 defense appropriations bill includes a cut to civilian personnel funds that Republicans said accounts for the Pentagon's plan to slash about 45,000 civilian jobs.

The full committee is debating the bill Thursday after it was advanced out of the defense subcommittee earlier this week. Meanwhile, at a full committee debate Tuesday night about the fiscal 2026 VA appropriations bill, Republicans rejected a Democratic amendment that would have pumped the brakes on the VA's plans to fire about 80,000 employees.

House Republicans are moving forward with the 2026 appropriations process even as the Trump administration has yet to provide Congress with its full, detailed budget request. Republicans have described the top-line dollar figures in their bills, which are based on the White House's so-called skinny budget request, as "interim." In the defense appropriations bill, Republicans are proposing a total of $831.5 billion for the Pentagon, which is essentially flat compared to this year.

The White House also requested a flat budget for the Pentagon. But it argued that when its request is combined with a separate $150 billion defense budget boost working its way through Congress right now, the defense budget will hit a record $1 trillion. GOP defense hawks have fumed at that reasoning, arguing they crafted the $150 billion bill to be in addition to a regular $1 trillion defense budget. But House GOP appropriators are using the same reasoning as the White House in defending their proposal.

"Together, with the significant defense funding advancing through Congress as part of the reconciliation process, the FY26 bill will lift total defense spending over $1 trillion in the next fiscal year, representing a historic commitment to strengthening and modernizing America's national defense," House Representative Ken Calvert, R-Calif., Chairman of the Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee, said in a statement this week.

The funding in the House appropriations bill would go toward providing service members with a 3.8% pay raise next year. On the civilian side, though, the bill would endorse the hefty cuts being pushed by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the advisory agency previously led by billionaire Elon Musk before he left the White House, got into a public feud with the president, and then backed off the feud.

The bill would codify "both the department's cooperation with DOGE and streamlined functions and management improvements at the Pentagon," as well as cut "$3.6 billion and almost 45,000 civilian full-time equivalents to capture Workforce Acceleration and Recapitalization Initiative efforts," according to a GOP summary. The Pentagon announced in March that it was aiming to slash about 5% to 8% of its civilian workforce, or about 50,000 to 60,000 jobs.

While officials initially planned to achieve the cuts through a mix of hiring freezes, firings and resignations, they have increasingly relied on resignations as firings have run into lawsuits and other hurdles. DOGE first offered a program to employees across the federal government in January, and the Pentagon reopened the deferred resignation offer for its employees in April. The program allows government workers to leave their jobs while still getting paid until October, or risk getting fired later.

In written testimony this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said about 22,000 employees were approved for deferred resignation in January and noted the second window for deferred resignation in April without saying how many employees took the offer then. Service officials previously said they were poised to lose thousands of employees after the April window.

Meanwhile, the VA is planning its own DOGE-inspired mass firings. Under a memo leaked earlier this year, the department is supposed to have more details on its plans to fire up to 83,000 employees this month and could start the firings by August. The VA has signed an agreement with the Office of Personnel Management, essentially human resources for the federal government, to help with the firings, news outlet Government Executive reported this week.

The fiscal 2026 VA appropriations bill proposed by House Republicans does not address the VA firings one way or the other. But Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., ranking member of the Appropriations Committee's VA subcommittee, offered an amendment during Tuesday night's debate on the bill that would have blocked any "reduction in force," as such mass firings are formally called, unless Congress specifically approves it.

"There is absolutely no way that the secretary can achieve his goal without it having an impact on the health care provided to our veterans," Wasserman Schultz said at the committee meeting. "Does this administration really believe the arbitrary firing culture it is creating at the VA will make it an attractive place to work? No one wants to work at a place where the threat of being fired for no reason looms over their head every day."

The amendment was voted down along party lines, 27-34, with Republicans arguing it was unnecessary. "The bill as written and the budget request does not include personnel cuts," said Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, the chairman of the committee's VA subcommittee. "VA has reinforced health care and benefits by safeguarding … mission-critical positions to ensure uninterrupted services."

While appropriators are ignoring potential staff cuts at the VA, they appear uneasy about other cuts at the department. In the nonbinding report that accompanies the bill, lawmakers expressed concern that recent contract cancellations at the VA have been done haphazardly and without congressional approval.

"The committee is concerned that the department canceled many contracts and purported to reprogram funding originally dedicated to these contracts without proper analysis on the impacts to the veteran community, or without transparency about which contracts were ended, or proper notification to Congress," said the report, which was released Tuesday night after the committee approved the bill.

"If the department seeks to reprogram previously appropriated funding, congressional approval is required by law." The report called on the VA to provide lawmakers with a list of all contracts canceled since January that includes "a detailed analysis of the decision-making process that led to the cancellations," as well as a list of where the funding from the canceled contracts was redirected to.