WASHINGTON, DC --  After valiantly serving their country in uniform and coming home, many veterans take a job in the civil service, putting their skills and training to work for the federal government in a variety of critical roles.

Over the last few weeks, thousands of military veterans – who account for nearly one-third of the federal workforce – were unfairly given pink slips by the Trump Administration as part of an arbitrary mass-firing purge of federal workers.  Adding insult to injury, senior White House counselor Alina Habba today quipped that many veterans are “not fit to have a job at this moment or not willing to come to work.”  At the same time, the Trump Administration’s apparent plan to cut over 80,000 jobs from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) was exposed in an internal memo obtained today by The Associated Press.

U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), a veteran who served in the U.S. Army and is a member of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees VA funding, is outraged by the Trump Administration’s duel insults to America’s veterans.  Reed says the White House denigrating veterans and slashing the VA's workforce is part of the Trump Administration’s broader betrayal of veterans and military families, all in the name of generating more revenue to fund a billionaire-first tax windfall.

“Donald Trump likes to talk a good game about respecting veterans, but his own staff has reported he calls them suckers, treats them with disdain, and now he’s talking about firing thousands of veterans, slashing VA staffing levels, and denying veterans access to the benefits they earned.  Ms. Habba’s false and reprehensible suggestion that veterans aren’t fit to work is an insult to the hardworking, patriotic men and women who have worn the uniform.  She’s empowered to cast those types of aspersions by a president who has made a career out of insulting, bullying and suing Americans of all kinds,” said Senator Reed.

In discussing the sweeping purge of federal workers, Habba questioned the capability and willingness of veterans to work, stating: “...we have taxpayer dollars, we have a fiscal responsibility to use taxpayer dollars to pay people that actually work. That doesn’t mean that we forget our veterans by any means. We are going to care for them in the right way, but perhaps they’re not fit to have a job at this moment or [are] not willing to come to work.”

According to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s latest count in the fall of 2021, there were 636,937 veterans employed by the federal government.

“Our veterans work hard and have families to support.  They are being callously terminated via e mail with no respect for their service and then they are insulted by senior White House staff as lazy and “not fit to have a job.”  Give me a break.  This is totally disgraceful and the Trump Administration should apologize, reverse course, rehire these veterans, and step back from their plan to undercut the VA’s ability to care for our nation’s veterans,” said Reed.

The AP reports: “Michael Missal, who was the VA’s inspector general for nine years until he was fired last month as part of Trump’s sweeping dismissal of independent oversight officials at government agencies, told the AP that the VA is already suffering from a lack of “expertise” as top-level officials either leave or are shuffled around under the president’s plans.”

More than one-in-four employees at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs are themselves veterans.