{"id":47846,"date":"2025-07-08T05:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-08T05:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/47846\/"},"modified":"2025-07-08T05:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-08T05:10:08","slug":"va-secretary-vows-during-dallas-visit-that-massive-jobs-cuts-will-not-weaken-patient-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/47846\/","title":{"rendered":"VA secretary vows during Dallas visit that massive jobs cuts will not weaken patient care"},"content":{"rendered":"

Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins<\/a> on Monday dismissed worries that federal job and spending cuts would weaken health care for veterans, saying the sprawling agency will actually improve service for its patients.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the Dallas VA Medical Center<\/a> in Oak Cliff, Collins said the cuts are targeting duplicate services and some contracts and that improving care is his top priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always promised we would never take out of patient care, and we have kept that promise,\u201d said Collins, marking his first visit to Texas since taking the helm of the organization this year.<\/p>\n

Collins\u2019 visit came the same day Veterans Affairs<\/a> announced it is on track to cut 30,000 employees from the agency by the end of September. <\/p>\n

Political Points<\/p>\n

Get the latest politics news from North Texas and beyond.<\/p>\n

The cuts are a result of the federal hiring freeze, deferred resignations and normal attrition. Because of those moves, the agency said it will no longer be forced to conduct a larger reduction in workforce, as it initially planned.<\/p>\n

The number of job vacancies in North Texas, which has roughly 7,000 employees, was not immediately clear Monday.<\/p>\n

More than 350,000 positions deemed critical are exempt from the federal hiring freeze, Collins said Monday, ensuring that veteran care will not be affected. At the start of this year, the agency had about 484,000 employees, about a quarter of whom are veterans themselves.<\/p>\n

The cuts are part of efforts by the Trump administration\u2019s Department of Government Efficiency,<\/a> formerly spearheaded by entrepreneur Elon Musk<\/a>, to dramatically trim the federal workforce.<\/p>\n

Related:\u2018Heart-wrenching\u2019: Dallas-area veterans protest Trump\u2019s job cuts at VA<\/a><\/p>\n

Collins said the cuts are making the agency more nimble. The VA says its disability claims backlog is down nearly 30% since Trump took office, and the agency is processing a record number of disability claims, reaching 2 million claims by June, more than a month faster than the previous year. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe only have one constituency, and we\u2019re going to serve that constituency well, and that is the veterans,\u201d Collins said. <\/p>\n

Some veterans pushed back against the cuts at the agency. <\/p>\n

\u201cCutting jobs won\u2019t necessarily make the VA more efficient. If they\u2019re making cuts, what are they doing to make it better?\u201d said Albert Zapanta, a retired major general in the U.S. Army who lives in Irving. \u201cI don\u2019t think they have an answer for that yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Veterans groups say health care should be a bipartisan issue and not subject to sweeping federal cuts.<\/p>\n

In 2024, the VA experienced its busiest year, reaching more than 9 million enrollees and delivering more than 127.5 million health care appointments.<\/p>\n

Lengthy waits at the VA have long been a critical issue for patients. In April of last year, the agency said it had cut wait times<\/a> by 11% for primary care and 7% for mental health care, compared with the same times the previous year.<\/p>\n

Ken Watterson, president of the Veterans Resource Center in Dallas who served in the Marines, said he would welcome reforms if they improve service.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need better health care, period,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins on Monday dismissed worries that federal job and spending cuts would weaken health…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":47847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,1596,69,1141,80,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,36790],"class_list":{"0":"post-47846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-health-care","12":"tag-politics","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa","21":"tag-veterans-and-military"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114815895428497717","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}