A sign marks the headquarters of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 20, 2025.REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo / Reuters

The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to cut more than 80,000 workers from the agency, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters, drawing condemnation from military veteran groups and Democrats.

The VA's chief of staff, Christopher Syrek, sent a memo to senior agency officials on Mar. 5, telling them the goal was to return the agency to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That would mean cutting about 82,000 staff.

The memo directed agency staff to work with tech billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency to make the cuts. It stated that two goals were to "eliminate waste" and "increase workforce efficiency".

The scale of the planned layoffs at the VA is far greater than proposed cuts at other government agencies, and will hit a department that looks after one of the most beloved groups in the U.S., its military veterans.

"Now, we regret anyone who loses their job and it’s extraordinarily difficult for me especially as a VA leader and your secretary, to make these types of decisions, but the federal government does not exist to employ people. It exists to serve people," Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins said in a video posted on X on Mar. 4.

The VA provides a huge array of benefits and medical help to veterans, and critics of the plan said the cuts will adversely impact that care.

Everett Kelley, head of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 311,000 VA employees, said, "veterans and their families will suffer unnecessarily."

Musk and his team have been tasked by President Donald Trump to slash the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy. To date about 25,000 workers across the U.S. government have been fired, according to a Reuters tally, and another 75,000 have taken a buyout, out of the 2.3 million federal civilian workforce.

Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the job cuts marked an escalation of a "full-scale, no-holds-barred assault on veterans" by Trump and Musk that would put veterans' health benefits in "grave danger."

Jerry Moran, Republican chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, indicated he was not entirely happy with how the cuts were being implemented and called on the VA to work with Congress to "legislate necessary changes."

"The VA is in need of reform but current efforts to downsize the department and increase efficiency must be done in a more responsible manner," Moran said in an emailed statement.

Anna Kelly, a White House deputy press secretary, said Trump will preserve veterans’ benefits, but will not stand for the “bureaucracy and bloat” at the agency.

Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, sounded surprised by the size of the planned cuts. "I'm sure the VA can be reduced. But if you're a veteran, you read it in the paper, it kind of rattles you," Graham told reporters.

Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, said the job cuts appeared to be one step in a plan to privatize VA services. "It's a shameful betrayal," Blumenthal said in a statement.

During his first term as president, Trump in 2018 signed a law that expanded veterans' access to private sector healthcare paid for by the VA.

Naveed Shah, political director of Common Defense, a grassroots veterans group, decried the planned layoffs.

"He's gutting the system that was designed to care for our brothers and sisters in arms."

News of Mar. 4 memo came on a day when the Trump administration suffered a temporary setback in its efforts to cull workers from the federal bureaucracy.

A board that reviews the firings of federal employees has ordered the U.S. Department of Agriculture to temporarily reinstate thousands of workers who lost their jobs as part of the layoffs spearheaded by Trump and Musk.

The Trump administration walked back on Mar. 4 a directive to fire probationary workers after a federal judge ruled that their mass terminations were illegal.

The Office of Personnel Management, the human resources arm of the federal workforce, revised a memo to state that it is not advising agencies to fire probationary workers on performance-related grounds.

An OPM official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was up to individual agencies what to do with their probationary employees, and they can still be let go.