Christopher Syrek, chief of staff at the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA), sent a memo ordering VA officials to work with the Dept. of Government Efficiency on an upcoming purge of the agency’s workers.
Over 80,000 positions are expected to be terminated between now and the end of August. Around 20,000 of those unemployed will be veterans.
Syrek told top-level officials at the agency that it had an objective to cut enough employees to return to 2019 staffing levels of just under 400,000. That would require terminating tens of thousands of employees after the VA expanded during the Biden administration, as well as to cover veterans impacted by burn pits under the 2022 PACT Act.
Associated Press
The VA has already laid off a few thousand employees.
