By Christian Martinez
(Reuters) -The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs will make two-thirds fewer employee cuts this fiscal year than it first targeted, reducing staff by about 30,000 people rather than 80,000, the agency said on Monday.
The agency employed about around 480,000 people at the start of the Trump administration and expects to end the fiscal year in September with nearly 450,000 staff. Under President Donald Trump’s program to downsize the federal government, the agency had planned to reach just under 400,000 employees.
That proposal drew widespread condemnation from military veteran groups and Democrats.
The agency said in a statement it was on pace to reduce its staff “through the federal hiring freeze, deferred resignations, retirements and normal attrition.” It did not say why it no longer needed to make further cuts.
The scale of the original planned layoffs was far greater than proposed cuts at other government agencies and potentially posed a political risk for Trump, who portrays himself as a champion of the U.S. military and its members.
Between January and June, the agency shed nearly 17,000 employees and expects “nearly 12,000 additional VA employees to exit” by September 30, the VA said.
“A department-wide RIF is off the table, but that doesn’t mean we’re done improving VA,” VA Secretary Doug Collins said in a release, referring to a reduction in force, which means permanent layoffs.
Just under 9 million veterans were enrolled in the VA Health Care System in March, according to the VA website.
(Reporting by Christian Martinez, editing by Ross Colvin and Cynthia Osterman)
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