FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Matt Dorsey
(202) 550-6987
November 20, 2024
Washington, D.C. – Today, the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE), a union representing 110,000 federal employees, is sounding the alarm about what the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – an unofficial entity operating outside of the federal government – would do to our nation’s veterans if Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy achieve their stated goals of reducing the federal workforce by 75 percent and cutting federal spending by $2 trillion annually.
The federal government is the single largest employer of veterans in this country. There are currently 2.278 million civilian federal employees and nearly 30 percent of them are veterans. If DOGE follows through on proposed threats, and lays off 75 percent of the federal workforce, an estimated 481,950 veterans will be laid off.
“Every person in this country needs to know that if Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy get their way, nearly half a million veterans will go jobless,” said Randy Erwin, National President of the National Federation of Federal Employees. “The very objective of this so-called Department of Government Efficiency is hostile to our cherished American veterans.”
The pain that DOGE would inflict on America’s veterans would not end there. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) employs nearly 371,000 health care professionals and support staff at VA medical facilities across the country. It is also responsible for administering benefits programs for Veterans, their families, and survivors. A 75 percent reduction in staff, about 278,000 total employees, would cripple the services currently provided to veterans in the U.S.
“If Musk and Ramaswamy execute their stated plans, the VA healthcare system as we know it will collapse,” continued Erwin. “When it does, we will be breaking the promise we make to our men and women in uniform that if they serve this country, they will be cared for afterward. This country is better than that. We simply cannot let that happen. There is a lot of talk about keeping promises these days. Keeping our promise to our veterans is the one we should be most worried about when it comes to this so-called Department of Government Efficiency.”
“It is clear that Musk and Ramaswamy simply do not understand how the federal workforce is staffed or operated,” concluded Erwin. “When they make absurd claims about government waste and bash dedicated federal employees, they conveniently leave out the fact that the civil service is the same size as it was in the 1950’s, although the size of the American population has roughly tripled. Per capita, the federal government is the smallest it has ever been in American history. In fact, many critical agencies and services are chronically understaffed. Reducing the federal workforce to a quarter of what it is now would be catastrophic to not only veterans, but the entire American public.”