Despite the Veterans Affairs Department keeping most of its employees working through the government shutdown, the agency’s leader said on Wednesday, the funding lapse is having significant impacts on key services for former military members.
Around 30,000 VA employees are currently furloughed as a result of the shutdown, VA Secretary Doug Collins told reporters, which is nearly double the number the department originally planned to send home without immediate pay. That figure will climb higher next week when VA furloughs most of its central office, but still represents less than 10% of its workforce.
Virtually all of the Veterans Health Administration, where most of VA’s employees work, is currently working and getting paid on time using multi-year funds. Disability and other payments are still going out, though Veterans Benefits Administration staff are currently working without pay. Most of the National Cemetery Administration is furloughed, Collins said, though some employees have been brought back to allow burials to continue.
Still, the secretary said, veterans are missing out on critical services, such as vocational training and employment assistance for those transitioning out of the military.
“Right now they can’t do it. They’re shut down,” Collins said. “So we have some people who are trying to make a life outside of their time in the service, and they can’t do this because Congress has decided that they want to shut the government down.”
More than 100,000 enrollees in VA’s Veteran Readiness and Employment program are not currently receiving counseling or case management services, VA said, and 16,000 separating service members are missing out on briefings on the transition to civilian life. It added that more than 900,000 beneficiaries in VA’s education programs cannot contact the dedicated phone line.
In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Wednesday, Collins said the shutdown was making veterans question “the government’s commitment to those who have served.”
“Veterans should never have to doubt that their nation will uphold its commitments to them, and our dedicated employees should have to worry about feeding their families or paying the bills, especially as so many continue to work tirelessly every day,” Collins said.
Collins has at times ostracized the VA workforce through his various efforts to trim it and his comments that the department does not exist to provide jobs. On Wednesday, he echoed the Trump administration’s position that existing federal law does not require VA to provide back pay to furloughed workers—in contravention of the statute Congress passed and President Trump signed into law in 2019—and such retroactive compensation will require new legislation.
Veterans service organizations have also called on lawmakers to reopen the government, laying out more ways their members are being hurt.
“The graves are unmaintained in full measure,” Mario Marquez, American Legion’s government affairs executive director, said last week. “How much more disrespect can you demonstrate than that alone?
He lamented the pause on transition services and said that in the midst of a suicide epidemic, the normal outreach efforts are not happening.
“So these problems are not administrative,” Marquez said. “They are a moral failure by our government.”
Democrats in Congress have accused Collins of “weaponizing” the shutdown by exacerbating its impacts. They specifically pointed to VA’s decision to cut off assistance with congressional inquiries seeking to resolve issues raised by veteran constituents and noted that VA should use the multi-year funding Congress has provided to keep those services running.
“We take those concerns or their specific cases directly to VA and advocate on their behalf,” Democrats from the House and Senate VA Committees said. “Thus, any delay in responding to this outreach or dispatching their cases will cause harm to the veterans we serve.”
Collins on Wednesday did not address that concern directly, but said the issues impacting VA would be resolved if the shutdown were ended.
“It’s time for my friends across the aisle to vote to open the government,” Collins said. “Quit holding my veterans hostage.”
