March 10, 2025 11:59 AM UTC

Vets On The Chopping Block While Gabe Evans Whistles Dixie

• 4 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Reuters reports via USA TODAY that massive job reductions at the Department of Veterans Affairs as part of the Trump 2.0/Musk administration’s gutting-in-force of the federal workforce, far beyond the elimination of some 1,000 probationary VA employees and other examples of what human resource bean-counters call “low-hanging fruit” that already took place last month, will commence in June:

The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin mass layoffs at the politically sensitive agency as early as June, according to a memo reviewed by Reuters.

The memo, which is dated March 6, directs the department’s human resources team to begin reviewing the agency’s operations with an eye toward firing civil servants. It said it expects the review to be done by June, after which “VA will initiate Department-wide RIF actions,” using an acronym for “reduction in force.”

…The scale of the layoffs at the VA is greater than proposed cuts at other agencies and will hit a department that looks after a group that typically garners wide bipartisan support in the U.S., its military veterans.

Last week, the VA under new Secretary Doug Collins announced the plan to fire some 80,000 full-time employees, effecting the Department’s wholesale “restructuring” as part of the new administration’s larger slashing of the federal workforce. Since an estimated 25% of the VA’s employees are themselves veterans, there’s no way that this mass layoff can happen without inflicting severe economic hardship on thousands of military veterans–and that’s before we start talking about the harm to all veterans entitled to VA services from the reduction in the quality of care that must inevitably result from the firing of such a large percentage of the Department’s workforce.

As for why the VA appears to be taking a larger proportional hit in the DOGEing of the federal government than other agencies, despite that being one of the worst political choices they could make? Last week, Colorado’s freshman Republican Rep. Gabe Evans, who used pictures of himself in uniform in practically every campaign ad, was asked about the plan to slash over 80,000 jobs from the VA on CBS News. And Evans’ answers, conforming to a lengthening pattern, were not good:

MAJOR GARRETT: I want to ask you about something else that was publicized today. A memo at the Veterans Administration is suggesting that there would be job cuts of up to 83,000 in the Veterans Administration workforce, taking it back essentially to its size in 2019 before the PACT Act was passed and people were hired in order to administer the benefits therein. Are you comfortable with reductions in workforce at the Veterans Administration of that size?

GABE EVANS: So I spent 12 years in the U.S. Army. Clearly, I am a military veteran. I come from a long line of military service members. And the question that we need to be asking here is, how do we make sure that we are most efficiently providing the critical services that our veterans deserve and are entitled to? And just this morning, I actually sat down with a major national, national veterans service organization, and I asked them those specific questions. Have we seen services to veterans interrupted? Have we seen any of those services impaired? And what they told me is that while there’s a lot of noise in the space, they have not seen any services to veterans that have been impaired or Impacted by this…

Full stop. First of all, Evans doesn’t identify which “veterans service organization” he talked to who assured him that the layoffs at the VA so far have not “impaired or impacted” services to veterans. For all we know, Evans gets his information from Veterans for Trump. Either way, Evans’ claim that nobody has been impacted by the layoffs that have already occurred has been contradicted by stories across the nation showing evidence of exactly that. As the New York Times reported yesterday:

While Trump administration officials have promised to preserve core patient services, initial cuts at the V.A. have nonetheless spawned chaotic ripple effects. [Pols emphasis] They have disrupted studies involving patients awaiting experimental treatments, forced some facilities to fire support staff and created uncertainty amid the mass cancellation, and partial reinstatement, of hundreds of contracts targeted by Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

In short, whoever told Gabe Evans that services to veterans have not been impacted by the DOGE campaign was lying. It’s either that, or Evans himself is knowingly lying.

As for what happens this summer when the next and much larger round of job cuts hits the VA? Evans says to call his office if there’s a problem, but since there’s already a very big problem Evans won’t admit to that seems like a waste of time:

EVANS: And as my standard request is always, I ask them if you hear of any specific situations where benefits directly to veterans are interrupted, please let me know so that we can find out how to prevent that from happening again. But as of just this morning when I met with a major veterans service organizations, they told me they are not aware of any impacts to services to veterans.

GARRETT: Right. But that is before a potential reduction in workforce of 83,000. [Pols emphasis] Are you confident there will be no loss of services if you take 83,000 veterans or employees out of the Veterans Administration?

EVANS: The goal, again, is to make sure that our veterans are receiving the benefits to which they are entitled and that they are receiving those as efficiently and as quickly as possible. And so that’s something that I’m committed to…

So far, the only “commitment” Gabe Evans has shown is covering the Trump administration’s backside, and denying the obvious effect of firing thousands of people who take care of our nation’s military veterans. The men and women who both sides agree we shouldn’t be “economizing” at their expense. Like immigrants and working families on Medicaid in Evans’ district, veterans are an interest group Evans should naturally care about based on his own experience.

We’re about to see how many of these core constituencies Gabe Evans is willing to betray to stay loyal to Donald Trump.