Dozens of people rallied outside the Atlanta VA Medical Center on April 26. The National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) and American Federation of Government Employees Local 518 (AFGE Local 518) organized the event to protest announced Trump administration plans to terminate around 80,000 VA employees nationwide. (Jess Mador/WABE)
This story was updated on Friday, May 2 at 11:56 a.m.
Military veterans and healthcare providers say proposed federal cuts to the Veterans Affairs health system would delay care for Atlanta veterans. The Trump administration has announced plans to terminate roughly 80,000 VA employees nationwide.
Administration officials have said the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cuts would reduce the United States VA workforce by around 15% to 2019 employment levels without cutting health care or benefits.
If they are enacted, the cuts are expected to hit the Atlanta VA Medical Center, which had lost some workers in previous rounds of terminations.
Positions considered “mission-critical” were deemed exempt by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, including staff for the Veterans Crisis Line.
VA Registered Nurse Belinda Howard is an Army veteran who has worked at the Atlanta VA for 24 years. Her National Nurses’ Union helped to organize a recent rally against further cuts at the VA.
“We’ve lost essential people that are part of our team — probationary people, logistics people, medical support, supply, environmental services. And that puts a strain on the rest of the staff here to cover some of the work. We nurses want to do our job, but I keep saying that I can’t be the supply person, I can’t be dietary, the secretary answering the phone, and still provide nursing care. They are central tasks for other members of our team and some of those members are gone now,” Howard said.
About 100 protesters participated in the rally over the past weekend, which stretched along an entire block outside the medical center. Some rallygoers waved American flags, some wore their military uniforms, others used a wheelchair or walked with their service dog. For several hours as they marched, held signs and chanted, they were greeted by a steady chorus of supportive horns from passing cars.
Veterans advocates say additional cuts to the Atlanta VA would worsen delays many veterans already experience in accessing health care and other services.
“A lot of veterans have to wait three months before they can even see a specialist or even get their first appointment when they get enrolled in benefits,” said Erika Alexander, a licensed social worker with the Atlanta VA Veterans Crisis Hotline team and President of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 518 at the Atlanta VA.
Members of unions, including the National Nurses Organizing Committee/National Nurses United (NNOC/NNU) and the American Federation of Government Employees Local 518 (AFGE Local 518) posed for a photo outside the Atlanta VA after a protest against potential Trump administration DOGE cuts to the U.S. VA system. (Jess Mador/WABE)
“There will be delays with their income verification, with them getting pharmacy services, resources for shelters in their community, for housing vouchers, transportation. Those are the types of departments that are going to be impacted by the reduction in force,” she added.
VA Sec. Doug Collins has promised the cuts would “streamline” the agency, the second largest after the Department of Defense, to better serve military veterans and their families.
“Because we’re never going to put in jeopardy patient health care or the disability benefits getting to the people who need them, the veterans who have earned them. And so what we’re doing right now is making sure that an agency — which, by the way, has grown over 100,000 people and over several hundred billion, almost a couple hundred billion dollars in the last 10 years — is doing it as efficiently as it can,” Collins told Scripps News in a recent interview.
A recent report from the Government Accountability Office listed the national Veterans Health Administration system as “high risk for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement due to inadequate oversight and accountability in its operations.” The report urged the agency to implement fixes to improve efficiency at its dozens of VA medical centers across the country.
“We’re conducting a comprehensive, data-driven review of all agencies and processes within the department with the goal of fixing the problems that have kept VA on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list since 2015. We’re going to maintain VA’s mission-essential jobs like doctors, nurses and claims processors, while phasing out non-mission essential roles like DEI officers. The savings we achieve will be redirected to veteran health care and benefits,” Pete Kasperowicz, Press secretary, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs said in an emailed statement.
The Trump administration cuts would eliminate employees the VA has added to process claims under the landmark 2022 PACT Act, which expanded health care and benefits for veterans exposed to toxins during their service.
The VA has so far processed more than two million PACT Act claims nationwide, including at least 114,315 in Georgia.
Collins told Scripps News in the same interview that claims processing would continue, calling reports of cuts to health care and benefits “misinformation.”
At the rally, Democratic State Sen. Emanuel Jones, a military veteran whose district includes the Atlanta VA, said he remains skeptical.
“There’s no doubt about this. When you cut the VA hospital, you’re cutting veterans’ benefits,” said Jones.
Jones said his brother died about a year ago at the medical center from cancer after serving nearly three decades in the Army.
“Those additional people that the VA went and hired was to provide services for those like my brother, who we knew had been impacted by those burning pits and that contamination and the water. We knew that the military knew that and we knew there’d be a slew of veterans that would be impacted,” he said. “So at a critical time such as this, we have a president in office that doesn’t care.”
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