#Middlebury #Veterans #Staff #Benefits
The staffing cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs continue. As of today, another 585 non-mission-critical or duplicate contracts are terminated, out of 90,000 existing contracts totaling $67 billion. This will put $900 million back in the kitty to be spent on veterans, their caregivers, families and survivors.
That’s a lot of money. It makes me wonder how those contracts came to be in the first place. The canceled contracts covered such services as taking minutes at meetings, leadership coaching, mentoring staff, creating meeting agendas and creating PowerPoint slides (laughingly called “executive support.”) Are those not things that staff should be doing?
These contract cancellations are on top of the additional 1,400 probationary positions that were eliminated (employees who had worked for the VA for less than a year), saving $83 million to be spent on veterans for benefits, services and health care. Meanwhile, plans continue to fill 300,000 mission-critical positions at the VA that were exempted from the hiring freeze. These include: 94,000 nurses, 8,300 psychologists, 12,000 pharmacists and 3,000 physical therapists – all hands-on for care of veterans.
I do, however, worry about the VA Office of Inspector General in all of these cuts. I hope cool heads prevail and they take a moment to realize just how much money the VAOIG saves by identifying, investigating and auditing VA waste. At this time I can’t find any mention of staff cuts at the VAOIG, thankfully. Recent updates on their activities show scammers being caught for fraud ($1 million), fraud ($300,000) and more fraud ($392,000). In the last 12 months, the OIG has derailed schemes totaling $3 billion being stolen from the VA.
If anything, I would wish that the VAOIG be listed as a “mission critical” department and have their staff doubled. My second wish would be that the penalties (prison time, fines and restitution) also be doubled. Too often the criminals seem to get only a slap on the wrist for their scams against the VA.
© 2025 King Features Synd., Inc.
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