Over the past three months, the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been making huge cuts in federal services, with the stated intention of saving the government money. They’ve cut funding and fired employees from areas they deem unnecessary. The Department of Veterans Affairs is one of those areas.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins said the Trump administration is finally giving veterans what they want. The cuts will improve care and wait times for veterans.
Many veterans in Connecticut don’t see it that way, though.
“I can’t see how cutting is the answer versus trying to optimize care and optimize the workforce. That’s the way you actually can get some positive change,” said Matthew Watson, an army veteran in New Haven.
Matthew served in Military Intelligence as a cryptologic linguist with an Arabic language specialization, and then in Special Operations Civil Affairs. He’s currently pursuing a law degree.
“They're saying that they're firing people that, frankly, don't seem as necessary, but they're all part of the infrastructure,” he said. “When you start taking those people out of the system, all of a sudden, you have all these gaps. I think these things are just going to compound. It's not gonna have immediate effects, but it's going to be a systemic problem, it's going to be a lot harder to fix it.”
His wife, Jamie, is also a veteran. She also served in Military Intelligence as an Arabic linguist. During her service, she suffered two traumatic brain injuries — one in 2017, and one in 2021 during a parachuting accident.
They have five children, too.
“What worries me most is losing access to the specialized care that I need. These aren’t luxuries; this is the stuff that helps me manage symptoms, and the symptoms are disabling,” Jamie said. “My condition and, truly, truly, my life changed significantly for the better when I started using VA services. I had been previously with providers in the community. ”
She said her care has been life-changing, and it’s made all the more difference to get it from other veterans.
“It is a different kind of kinship when you walk into a VA medical facility to be among people who, regardless of the era in which they served, we all get it,” she said. “We did something that very few people around us have done. These providers do it because they want to be there. It is a continued service.”
Now, the Watsons are worried about the quality of their care and wait times.
“For me, I'm worried about increased wait times, and particularly providers being overwhelmed. That's something that I've already talked to my providers about,” said Matthew. “They were overwhelmed even before, and so now they're just going to be that much more. They're obviously not going to get any less overwhelmed.”
“Long term we’re gonna see that cuts to the VA are going to mean fewer specialists and longer wait times, longer wait times just to get through to be able to place a request for an appointment,” said Jamie. “I know for certain that there have been longer wait times in just reaching the VA call centers to get routed for calls.”
The cuts have also left some veterans without jobs.
Gabriel Pedreira is an organizer for the American Federation of Government Employees in District 2, which includes Connecticut. The AFGE is the largest union for federal employees in the country.
“We don’t even know if they’re looking at what they’re cutting,” Pedreira said. “When you cut jobs at the VA, you’re also cutting jobs for veterans.”
He said many employers don’t like to hire veterans, and the VA (and the federal government more broadly) are the largest employers of veterans. A third of the VA's employees are veterans.
He said the Trump administration started firing probationary employees because they are the easiest people “to get rid of” since they don’t have the same rights as union members.
Pedreira also said there’s no union at the VA anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. The Trump Administration declared the master agreement between the VA and his union null and void. He says the only VA employees with union representation now are VA police officers.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) is the Ranking Member for the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. He held a shadow hearing on April 2nd to address the impacts the cuts have had on veterans. (Since Democrats are the minority in the House, they can’t technically hold official hearings.)
He said he hoped his Republican colleagues would attend the hearing and had invited VA Secretary Collins, but Collins did not attend.
“These firings have disproportionately affected our VA and veterans workforce, and the harm to them individually will become painfully clear,” Blumenthal said. “They have suffered from uncertainty, financial distress and emotional hardship in ways that I think Elon Musk and Donald Trump need to understand.”
Six veterans testified at the hearing. One of them was Marine Corps veteran Gabriel D’Altri, from Vernon. He was fired from his job at the IRS just five days before his probationary period would’ve ended. He has been reinstated due to a court order, but he says he still hasn’t gotten paid.
“There should be a little bit more transparency, and I think both sides should work together on this. This isn’t a political issue, it’s a non-partisan issue,” D’Altri said. “It just scares me because veterans are a community where suicide is prevalent. About 17 veterans a day kill themselves. I don’t want to see that happen, I don’t think anybody wants to see that happen.”
Matthew Watson said the fallout from the cuts won’t just affect veterans.
“It’s hard to see what is happening at the VA when you’re not someone who has to utilize the VA, but this stuff, it ripples. Don’t think it doesn’t affect you if you’re not in the veteran community or even adjacent to it, it will,” he said.
Jamie Watson said she wants to get a message out.
“Listen to us, really, really listen. ‘Thank you for your service’ is not enough, and it falls really, really flat when the work is not being done to protect what it is that we need and deserve,” Jamie said.
They say if they lose their VA services, they’ll have to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket just for medication. They say they’ve had issues with providers, getting appointments, and high copays before utilizing the VA health services.
Earlier this month, Blumenthal and 21 Democrats proposed the “Putting Veterans First Act,” a bill to oppose the cuts. Blumenthal says the bill aims to reinstate all fired veterans, prevent future mass firings, and prohibit DOGE from accessing veterans’ private data.
In response to this WSHU story, VA Press Secretary Peter Kasperowicz issued the following statement: "VA health care has been on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list for more than a decade, and GAO says VA faces “system-wide challenges in overseeing patient safety and access to care, hiring critical staff, and meeting future infrastructure needs.” Under Secretary Collins, VA is working hard to fix these and other issues. Unfortunately, many in the media, government union bosses and some in Congress are fighting to keep in place the broken status quo. Our message to Veterans is simple: Despite major opposition from those who don’t want to change a thing at VA, we will reform the department to make it work better for Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors."
