Doug Collins says that veteran cases Dept. Lowering 80,000 jobs is a goal

Veteran Affairs Secretary Doug Collins pushed back on reports that his department would beat more than 80,000 jobs, with the argument that Figures quoted In the internal department, memos were only goals and the Democrats of Anxiety Munding accused by saying that the cuts would harm the care of veterans.

“Our goal is a decrease of 15 percent – could be more,” Mr. Collins told the Senate Veteran Committee in his first testimony of Capitol Hill since he was confirmed to President Trump’s cabinet. He added that “nobody has discussed the dismissal of doctors and the firing of nurses.”

Mr. Collins said that Democrats warned that the cuts could weaken the health care of veterans, “tried to scare my veterans and scare my employees.”

In heated exchanges with Democrats, the Lord Collins refused to say which jobs could be cut, with the argument that it would be ‘malpractice’ to publish decisions that have not yet been completed.

Democratic and independent legislators took Umbrage about his caginess and accused him of hiding the impact of the cuts.

“The fact that you will not tell us what the contracts are that are negotiated again, reminds me that there are things in those contracts that you may not want us to know,” said Senator Angus King, regardless of Maine, that “the goal should be efficiency, not a quota.”

Senator Maggie Hassan, Democrat from New Hampshire, told Mr. Collins that “when they set a goal, when they set a goal, decide that they want to achieve it” before they add: “They cannot do a goal and then get angry with us because they ask what the impact of that purpose, of those cuts, would be.”

Democrats were not alone in expressing worries. While most Republicans of the Panel offered support to Mr. Collins, Senator Jerry Moran, the chairman of the Panel, warned that cuts should not be the goal.

“It should not be a fixed number that you are trying to reach,” he said. “It should be about making the department well.”

During the hearing, Democrats wondered if the Trump government had thought of how the cutbacks would influence efficiency. Some claimed that the preservation of roles for doctors and nurses while they would still delay claims from the claims from the claims. Others said that the efforts of the administration to centralize ways and digitize health files would be jeopardized if specialist jobs in information technology would be eliminated.

Many quoted examples of the department that had to hire employees who were initially released as proof that they could not trust the administration to plan spending cuts without keeping the congress informed of the details.

“It is sloppy, and you know,” Senator Elissa Slotkin, Democrat from Michigan, to the Lord Collins, adds that when “you have fired people and then are again assumed that there is no secret plan.”

Mr. Collins acknowledged that mistakes had been made and said that staff members who had been re -adopted in certain functions had since been exempt from cuts. But he denied that one of the cuts had undermined the work of the department.

Under the interrogation of Mr. Moran, Mr Collins emphasized the example of the veterans’ crisis line, with the argument that he had always protected all those who actually answered the phone. ” He said he personally decided to hire all the dismissed employees “because we did not want someone to be wrongly accused that we did not answer the line.”

He also said that the Trump administration was planning to invest more in healthcare services, mentioning the $ 5 billion in extra VA finance that the Trump administration requested from the congress last week for the tax year of 2026.