The news is breaking that devastating cuts are coming to our veteran men and women in uniform – a completely unneeded and preventable disaster.

In line with their goal to squeeze, limit, and defund federal agencies and programs until there's almost no value left in them at all, we expect some 80,000 Veterans Affairs workers to be fired in the coming weeks – without cause and for no good reason.

The VA system handles everything from disability compensation to veteran home loans and life insurance to running over 1,300 VA hospitals and clinics across the country.

This level of reduction is nothing short of starving the agency and it will cost servicemembers vital benefits. Here's what we could see:

• Longer wait times to access healthcare, home loan, and insurance benefits
• Fewer doctors and more patients, resulting in lower quality of care and less time with each patient
• Increased automation so veterans are stuck navigating chatbots and phone systems instead of talking to a live person
• Reduced benefits for future servicemembers who become injured in order to "cut costs"
• Downsizing, outsourcing, and closing hospitals and clinics, leaving patients to seek their own care at expensive private providers

Right now, their goal is chaos, and for them, it doesn't matter if veterans and veteran workers employed by the federal government are in the way or not.

These are vital government services provided only to those who've worn the uniform in honorable service to our country, and we have an obligation to pay out on that promise. The Trump administration must fund and support the care, benefits, and services our veterans deserve – anything less than that is a disgrace.

Heidi

Heidi Heitkamp, Former U.S. Senator for North Dakota
Founder, One Country Project