WASHINGTON — House Republicans reprimanded leaders of Veterans’ Affairs education programs at a Tuesday subcommittee hearing for “wasting billions and millions” of federal funds on recent projects, including the process to digitize the GI Bill.
“We’re not going to do this anymore. I’ll be in office for at least a year and a half, or whatever is left. I don’t care,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), chairman of the House VA’s Economic Opportunity subcommittee.
The Republican members of the committee signaled their determination to rein in overspending and delays at the $300 billion VA.
Although it was just his first week in the job, the programs’ acting executive director Ken Smith was brought in to testify before the committee and subjected to grilling.
GOP lawmakers criticized recent initiatives, including revamping the GI bill and career training services to veterans as part of the Dole Act passed in 2024.
Republican lawmakers branded the efforts as failures because they were late and costlier than anticipated.
“So help me understand how the common denominator is that we are always over budget, under delivering and as a result of that, we have less to invest in the services that veterans have earned,” Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) said
The committee also berated the pair for the growing number of VA employees employed in the education service programs in recent years.
They criticized the department’s ballooning budget.
“You’ve bloated bureaucracy and actually shrunk the ability of veterans to get education benefits,” Van Orden shouted across the room.
Democrats asked whether President Donald Trump’s federal hiring freeze and anti-DEI agenda would hurt the VA department.
“They’re talking about doing some of these policies in an effort to starve out some of our dedicated public servants and cut the workforce at the VA,” Morgan McGarvey (D-Ky.) said.
Rather as the meeting progressed, the GOP representative’s criticism echoed the initiatives led by Elon Musk’s DOGE team.
The VA recently started working with a DOGE employee last week. An official VA spokesperson confirmed that the employee would focus on “identifying wasteful contracts, improving VA operations and strengthening management of the department’s IT projects,” common strategies that Musk and his team have started to implement across a wide swath of federal agencies.
With its over $300 billion budget, the GOP representatives said VA could become a prime target of the kind of budget cutting promoted by DOGE.
