Veterans Affairs carves out potentially hundreds of thousands of staffers from ‘buyout’ offer

President Donald Trump’s administration is creating an exemption for an estimated 200,000 workers at the Department of Veterans Affairs who won’t be eligible to take the “buyout” aimed at slashing the federal workforce. The Veterans Affairs Department’s Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer on Thursday sent out a bulletin to human resource officials providing guidance on implementing the deferred resignation program, including referencing a list of “excluded positions.” That list, in a separate Excel spreadsheet titled “Copy of VA List of Exempted Occupations for DPR,” contains categories of staff that are deemed vital, including primary care physicians, nurses, psychologists, addiction-related peer support apprentices, other medical specialists and key technical staff like engineers. The exemption list includes more than 140 occupations, the American Federation of Government Employees said. AFGE, a union representing VA workers, estimates that amounts to more than 200,000 workers who are no longer eligible for deferred resignations. “VA worked closely with the White House and the Office of Personnel Management to identify more than 130 occupations within the department that will not be eligible for the Deferred Resignation Program,” a VA spokesperson said via email. The administration says most employees who take the offer will be paid till September and won't have to continue working. But the new exceptions come amid confusion at the agency over who exactly is allowed to take the offer. Employees were told that even if they took deferred resignations, they were to continue working until their supervisor confirmed them to be on leave status. "We've wasted millions of dollars in taxpayer resources over the last two weeks in emergency town halls and reading, trying to decipher FAQs and memos for a program that it sounds like broad swaths of the federal government are not going to be eligible for,” Thomas Dargon, deputy general counsel at AFGE said. “And so the uncertainty, hysteria that's come from this, I would say, is the opposite of government efficiency. Pulling people away from the jobs at the VA, taking care of veterans, doing the work they were hired to do." Veterans Affairs already has staffing issues. In fiscal year 2024, the agency’s health facilities reported a total of 2,959 severe occupational staffing shortages, per a 2024 report. And every year for the last decade, the agency has had a severe shortage of nurses. It also consistently lacks enough psychologists with 61 percent of facilities reporting a shortage last year. The Trump administration initially set a deadline for Thursday at midnight for federal workers to opt into the deferred resignation offer. However, a judge this week paused that deadline while a legal challenge worked its way through the court. The new deadline for workers to accept the offer is Monday at 11:59 pm.

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