SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — The Veterans Affairs layoffs have started with congressional members reporting at least 2,400 VA employees out of work as of Monday.
Now, VA employees are bracing for another round of cuts, with 80,000 VA workers expected to be given their walking papers.
“A recent report that VA is going to either privatize or going to eliminate and replace the call centers,” said Mike Levin, a congressman from the 49th District.
Levin fears older vets, without the ability to navigate automated systems, might fall through the cracks.
“It will be a lot more difficult if there are not actual human beings on the other end of the line at the VA,” Levin said.
The Trump administration through Elon Musk and the Doge team says they are trying to find waste fraud and abuse all over the government and the VA has not been an exception. The local San Diego group Veterans for Peace are not taking the proposed cuts lightly.
“This is going to affect people who have been suffering from agent orange in the Vietnam era. This is also going to affect people from my own post 9/11 era who have been exposed to toxic burn pits like there were on the base where I was at Bagram,” said Ian Mooney, an Afghanistan Army Vet and President of Veterans for Peace.
U.S. Army Vet Ian Mooney spent 14 months in Afghanistan and says the VA has been a wonderful resource after the war and vets fear expected VA cuts.
“Anger mobilizes people and we have seen an upsurge in recruitment and we are marching with it,” Mooney said.
“The promise is that when you are done serving the country you’re going to get great healthcare and we are going to all we can to serve you as just as well you served us and we are never going to live up to altogether, but we are going to do our best to try,” Levin said.
Veterans for Peace is planning a rally at waterfront park in downtown San Diego Saturday at noon.
