VA officials said that while the VA had been considering a department-wide RIF (reduction in force) to reduce staff levels by up to 15%, employee reductions through the federal hiring freeze, deferred resignation program (DRP), retirements and normal attrition have eliminated the need for this RIF.

They said the numbers break down as follows:

• VA had roughly 484,000 employees on Jan. 1, 2025, and 467,000 employees as of June 1, 2025, a reduction of nearly 17,000.
• Between now and Sept. 30, the department expects nearly 12,000 additional VA employees to exit through normal attrition, voluntary early retirement authority ) or the deferred resignation program.

VA officials said the department has multiple safeguards in place to ensure the staff reductions do not impact veteran care or benefits, adding that all VA mission-critical positions are exempt from the DRP and VERA, and more than 350,000 positions are exempt from the federal hiring freeze.

Meanwhile, VA officials said improvements to the department’s efficiency is being tracked, and provided some examples. They said the VA disability claims backlog is down nearly 30%, after it increased 24% during the Biden administration.

They said the VA is processing record numbers of disability claims, reaching 1 million claims processed for FY25 on Feb. 20 and reaching 2 million claims by June. They said the VA has also implemented “major reforms” to make it easier for survivors to get benefits, after what they said were serious problems during the Biden administration.

Officials said the VA is accelerating the deployment of its integrated electronic health record system, “after the program was nearly dormant for almost two years under the Biden Administration.” They said the VA is also phasing out the treatment of gender dysphoria.

“Frankly, this commonsense reform should have been done years ago, but only President Trump and Secretary Collins had the courage to do it,” the press release read.  They said the VA also “ended DEI” at the department, reversing what they described as “the divisive Biden-era policies and stopping more than $14 million in DEI spending.”  They also said the VA has brought more than 60,000 VA employees “back to the office.”

“Since March, we’ve been conducting a holistic review of the department centered on reducing bureaucracy and improving services to Veterans,” said Collins. “As a result of our efforts, VA is headed in the right direction — both in terms of staff levels and customer service. A department-wide RIF is off the table, but that doesn’t mean we’re done improving VA. Our review has resulted in a host of new ideas for better serving Veterans that we will continue to pursue.”

VA officials said the VA is currently exploring a number of additional reforms to improve operational efficiency. They said as of July 7, the Veterans Health Administration, Veterans Benefits Administration and National Cemetery Administration all run “duplicative and costly administrative functions that can be centralized or restructured so they can each focus on their core missions of health care, benefits and burial services, respectively.”

They said to that end, the VA is reviewing the centralization of support functions to streamline operations and improve support to veterans, including areas such as police, procurement, construction, IT, budgeting and others.

They said the VA operates 274 separate call centers that are not connected to one another. They said the centralized call center with modernized systems would lead to quicker and better service for Veterans and could be run with fewer staff members.

They said the VA has a proven payroll system that processes paychecks for more than 200,000 VA employees, but some 50 VAMCs still process their own payroll. They said the VA is working to consolidate payroll for all employees under the VA Time and Attendance System, which will save time, money and resources.