By BEN FINLEY and STEPHEN GROVES
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) — Stephen Watson served in the Marines for 22 years and receives care through the Department of Veterans Affairs for a traumatic brain injury. He supports President Donald Trump and adviser Elon Musk’s cost-cutting program — even if it affects the VA.
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“We’re no better because we’re veterans,” said Watson, 68, of Jesup, Georgia. “We all need to take a step back and realize that everybody’s gonna have to take a little bit on the chin to get these budget matters under control.”
Gregg Bafundo served during the first Gulf War and has nerve damage to his feet from carrying loads of weight as a Marine mortarman. He says he may need to turn to the VA for care after being fired as a wilderness ranger and firefighter through the layoffs at the U.S. Forest Service.
“They’re going to put guys like me and my fellow Marines that rely on the VA in the ground,” said Bafundo, 53, who lives in Tonasket, Washington.
The Trump administration’s move to end hundreds of VA contracts — initially paused after public outcry — and ongoing layoffs are affecting the nation’s veterans, a critical and politically influential constituency. More than 9 million veterans get physical and mental health care from the VA, which is now being examined by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
The VA manages a $350 billion-plus budget and oversees nearly 200 medical centers and hospitals. Veterans have shown up at town hall-style meetings with Republican lawmakers to voice their anger, and groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars are mobilizing against cuts.
The department is considering a reorganization that could include cutting 80,000 jobs, according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Veterans were much likelier to support Trump, a Republican, than Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, in November’s presidential election, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of the American electorate conducted in all 50 states. Nearly 6 in 10 voters who are veterans backed Trump, while about 4 in 10 voted for Harris.
Joy Ilem, national legislative director for the nonpartisan group Disabled American Veterans, said her group was studying how the ongoing cuts might affect care.
“You could lose trust among the veteran population over some of these things that have happened and the way that they’ve happened,” Ilem warned. “And we do fear damage to the recruitment and retention of hiring the best and brightest to serve veterans.”
The White House said last week that it wants to slash $2 billion worth of VA contracts, which would affect anything from cancer care to the ability to assess toxic exposure. The department quickly paused the cuts following concerns about the impact on critical health services.
VA Secretary Doug Collins told Fox News Channel this week that the effort was focused on “finding deficiencies.”
“Anything that we’re doing is designed and will not cut veterans’ health or veterans’ benefits that they’ve earned,” he said.
In a Tuesday statement to The Associated Press, VA press secretary Peter Kasperowicz said the agency “is putting Veterans at the center of everything the department does.”
“Every dollar we spend on wasteful contracts, non-mission-critical or duplicative activities is one less dollar we can spend on Veterans, and given that choice, we will always side with the Veteran,” Kasperowicz wrote.
Republicans have pointed out that the VA has rehired employees who were let go during an initial round of layoffs in February, such as those working for a crisis hotline. However, during a subsequent round of layoffs, the VA cut 15 other employees who were in jobs supporting the crisis line, including a trainer for the phone responders, according to congressional staff who are tracking the cuts.
The VA has long faced calls for reform
The VA has been plagued for years by allegations of poor medical care and excessively long wait times. Investigators a decade ago uncovered widespread problems in how VA hospitals were scheduling appointments after allegations that as many as 40 veterans died while awaiting care at the department’s Phoenix hospital. A group of employees accused the department of retaliating against potential whistleblowers. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, eventually put into place a program allowing veterans to go outside the VA system to seek medical care. The Choice Program was extended by Trump during his first term.
Richard Lamb, who was shot down twice in Vietnam as an Army helicopter crew chief, said the department should be “cut to the bone.”
Lamb, 74, said he broke vertebrae each time his helicopter was shot down. Decades passed, he said, before a VA doctor acknowledged he had compression fractures. Lamb later had a private doctor perform surgery on his back after he said the VA wouldn’t perform the procedure.
“I’d be happy to see VA, not torn down, but cleaned up, cleaned out and recast,” said Lamb, who lives in Waco, Texas. “The VA is supposed to be a wonderful thing for veterans. It’s not. It sucks.”
Daniel Ragsdale Combs, a Navy veteran with a traumatic brain injury, strongly disagrees.
Ragsdale Combs, 45, suffered his injury while running to respond to an order on an aircraft carrier and striking his head above a hatchway. He receives group therapy for mental illness brought on by the injury but says he had heard those sessions might be canceled or reduced due to staffing shortages.
“I’m deeply concerned because the VA has been nothing but great to me,” said Ragsdale Combs, who lives in Mesa, Arizona. “I’m angry, upset and frustrated.”
Lucy Wong relies on a team of VA doctors in the Phoenix area to treat her scleroderma, an autoimmune condition that attacks connective tissue. She said she developed the disease as a medical technician in the Navy in the 1980s, working with toxic chemicals and enduring extreme stress.
Driving is difficult. She worries that the VA will cut Uber rides to her medical appointments, among other things.
“I ask if Trump is cutting anything back here, and the reply is, ‘Not yet,’” Wong said.
Josh Ghering, a former Marine from Parsons, Kansas, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he had to fly to San Antonio for an appointment with a neurologist before he was medically retired for back issues, including herniated discs. He questioned why he couldn’t get the same appointment closer to home.
“I think they’re headed in the right direction,” Ghering, 42, said of DOGE. “But they’re going to have to be more thorough with what it is they’re doing, to make sure they’re not cutting jobs that are needed.”
Will service members be expected to accept VA cuts?
The nation’s service members have never been a political monolith — and the same holds true for their views on the VA. But the split between two Marines on opposite sides of the country raises a question not just about DOGE but about America’s military: Who is expected to sacrifice?
Watson, the former Marine in Georgia, sustained various injuries while serving, including a traumatic brain injury when a cable snapped and a crate fell on him. He said he’s willing to accept fewer visits to his VA doctor and forgo other conveniences as a matter of service to the country.
“Many veterans who voted for Trump understood this was going to be his policy and are now screaming bloody murder because the axe is going to fall upon the VA,” Watson said. “And to me, that’s just a little bit self-centered.”
Bafundo, the Marine in Washington state, pushed back against the idea that all Americans are making a sacrifice when, as he sees it, it’s really falling back “on the little guy.”
America’s billionaires won’t be shouldering any of the burden, he argued, while Musk, who’s the world’s richest person, and others pay little, if any, taxes.
“If we’re going to sacrifice, the wealthy need to sacrifice, too,” he said. “And, frankly, they don’t.”
This story has been corrected to show that decades passed before a VA doctor acknowledged Lamb’s compression fractures. A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that a private doctor discovered the injury.
Groves reported from Washington.
