Sen. Murray slams Trump, Musk over Veterans Affairs cuts while others defend need to trim fat

Senator Patty Murray (D-Wa.) slammed President Donald Trump and Elon Musk during a press conference Tuesday morning over Trump’s proposed plans to lay off some 80,000 workers at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) across the country.

During the half-hour long event, several veterans and former workers recently fired from VA facilities in Washington shared their stories and potential impacts to the departments they abruptly left behind.

Murray also took the opportunity to call Trump’s proposed plan “an attack on the federal workforce.”

“When I hear that they plan to fire over 80,000 more VA workers, you can bet I will not be quiet about this because those staffing cuts are a benefit cut to our veterans,” Murray said. “What Trump and Musk are doing is disrespectful, it’s unpatriotic, and it’s ungrateful.”

Trump announced the proposed plan weeks ago after initiating other cuts to multiple other government offices. This week, a leaked memo said the administration included reducing the VA workforce to 2019 levels.

Army Supply Sergeant laid off from Seattle Veterans Affairs office

One of Murray’s guest speakers was a 12-year Army Supply Sergeant veteran who was laid off in February from the Seattle VA office where she helped manage the VA’s supply chain.

“I was shocked and deeply disappointed when I received an email … notifying me of my immediate removal from my position,” Future Zhou said. “I was left with the task of informing my supervisor, my section chief and HR of this decision.”

Zhou still visits the VA as a patient and said she often meets with her former team.

“Our supply team is now more than seven days behind on placing critical supply requests for medication and equipment in our hospital,” she explained. “Our supply techs have had to cut their night shifts, limiting deliveries to our clinics. I saw nurses going down the hallway to collect their own supplies in order to continue to provide quality care to our veterans.”

Christian Helfrich started working at the VA Puget Sound in 2005 and has been working with teams of doctors to conduct research on improving the quality of care for heart attack patients at the VA of Puget Sound.

Their goal was to use electronic health records to identify VA patients with heart disease who may not have been prescribed the best combination of medications or who have been misdiagnosed and might have heart failure instead. Helfrich was laid off after the Trump Administration terminated the grant he was working under.

“What’s going on right now isn’t a two-way door where you can tear down the VA, see what happens, and it you don’t like it, go back to the way it was,” Helfrich said. “This is a one-way door. If we tear it down now, it is going to take years or decades to build back.”

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A look at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ budget

The president has said his proposed VA cuts are part of a plan to downsize the federal workforce to help balance the federal budget. Without any cuts, the VA faces a $15 billion budget shortfall.

In response to Trump’s proposed plan, many Republican members in Congress — who agree with the proposed cuts — have requested clarity from Trump’s and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) office on their strategy to implement those cuts.

In a recent statement, Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chair Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said while the VA is “in need of reform,” efforts to downsize “must be done in a more responsible manner,” according to Politico. In a recent interview last week, Moran added the numbers of workers laid off must be “justifiable.”

According to The Hill, in a letter to VA Secretary Doug Collins, Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) asked for a review of the VA’s workforce reduction process and suggested he consider rehiring laid-off personnel.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs has a responsibility to those it serves to exercise the utmost degree of discipline when reducing the workforce,” Barrett wrote. “We must collectively recognize that any veteran who hangs up their boots and continues to serve their country at the VA is cut from a different cloth. It is incumbent upon us to treat them with the dignity and respect they deserve, even if separation is warranted.”

During a recent Cabinet meeting at the White House, Secretary Collins reportedly stressed the VA needs to be strategic about making cuts. According to The New York Times, Trump agreed and said the VA should keep smart employees and get rid of bad ones.

Murray said she considers it a moral responsibility to care for veterans and their families. Her father, David Johns, was a veteran who received a Purple Heart during World War II and relied on VA benefits to receive care battling multiple sclerosis.

“I am asking everyone to join me in demanding that the Trump Administration to reverse course on these massive staffing cuts,” Murray said during her press conference. “So, I’m going to raise hell and raise the alarm and raise up the voices of the veterans who can speak, firsthand, about what is at stake here.”

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