US Veterans Affairs responds to Sen. Duckworth’s Crystal Lake town hall meeting with veterans

In response to criticism by Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of cuts to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and other federal government agencies – made at a Duckworth town hall meeting in Crystal Lake Saturday – VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz released the following statement to the Northwest Herald:

"As we reform VA, we are guided by the fact that even though the Biden Administration astronomically grew the department’s budget and number of employees, VA wait times and backlogs increased.

“We are doing things differently. Our goal is to increase productivity, eliminate waste and bureaucracy, increase efficiency, and improve health care and benefits to Veterans. We will accomplish this without making cuts to health care or benefits to Veterans or VA beneficiaries.

“We’re conducting a comprehensive, data-driven review of all agencies and processes within the department with the goal of fixing the problems that have kept VA on the Government Accountability Office’s high-risk list since 2015.

“We’re going to maintain VA’s mission-essential jobs like doctors, nurses and claims processors, while phasing out non-mission essential roles like DEI officers. The savings we achieve will be redirected to Veteran health care and benefits.

Our goal is to reduce the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) positions to 2019 levels – roughly 398,000 employees – down from roughly 470,000 employees currently, which is about a 15 percent decrease. But those staff changes have not happened yet."

Kasperowicz also pointed to data indicating VA enrollment has been flat for a decade.