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Memorial Day Peace Rally 2025: Nichols and Williams
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Fact Sheet Veterans’ Healthcare & VA Staffing
FACT SHEET April 17, 2025
No Cuts to Veterans’ Healthcare and VA Staffing
- Currently 25-30% of VA employees are veterans. To date, 2,400 VA employees have already been fired. In total, 6,000 veterans have been let go from federal employment.
- To date there are 18 million living veterans, comprising 6.1% of the population. Nine million veterans received care visits at the VA in 2023. The VA System is the largest integrated healthcare network in the country. More than six million veterans have service-related disabilities.
- Cuts to VA healthcare services for veterans have already occurred despite assurances to the contrary by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins.
- The recent freeze on hiring and “return-to office” mandate adversely impacted the Veterans’ Crisis Line (SUICIDE HOTLINE) and eliminated the mental health tele-visit program. The Veterans’ Crisis Line takes 60,000 calls per month. There are 17.6 suicides by veterans per day, and this rate is increasing. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for veterans under 45 years of age.
- The VA was a leader in tele-health care until these services were completely eliminated for veterans who live distant from a VA medical center. This directly impacts veterans living in rural areas.
- Projected cuts will also affect management of medical supplies, appointments and transportation.
- In 2025, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs attempted to cancel 875 contracts. These contracts included mission-critical items such as sterilizing equipment and maintenance of generators, boilers and scanning machines. These cuts were later “walked back” because the services were critical to the VA medical centers.
- The Office of the Inspector General completed its annual audit of the VA in 2024. The August 2024 Report revealed a severe shortage of employees in 98% of VA medical centers. This means 137 of 139 VA medical centers nationwide had staffing shortages in at least one area, particularly doctors, nurses, psychologists and custodians.
- This audit identified approximately 66,000 job vacancies at the VA in healthcare. The staff shortages cause long wait times for visits and an inability to accept new patients.
- The VA is also losing funds for research. VA research addresses issues including substance abuse, mental health, cancer (lung cancer, head and neck tumors), cardiovascular disease and war-related injuries such as spinal cord and brain trauma.
- The PACT Act (Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxins Act) in 2022 extended healthcare benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.
- The VA enrolled 400,000 veterans for benefits from 3/23 to 4/24, a 30% increase over the prior year.
- The Secretary of Veterans Affairs currently plans to cut an additional 15-17% of the VA workforce. This represents 80,000 to 83,000 current employees. Secretary Collins said the job cuts are “…to save money.”
Author: Michael Siebers, retired MD
William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans’ Hospital, 27 years’ service
Take Action Now! Please contact Elected Officials
- US Senators Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson
- Your Representative to the US House of Representatives |
- Spread the word
~ NO CUTS to Veterans’ Healthcare ~
National Projects of Veterans for Peace
“VFP’s Save Our VA (SOVA) National Campaign seeks justice for veterans and advocates for strengthening the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for all veterans. The SOVA National Campaign consists of more than a thousand individual veteran and non-veteran supporters contacting their Members of Congress on VA health care issues. SOVA works in collaboration with our allies in the VA unions: the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), National Nurses United (NNU), and National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE). “
How Much is Enough? A Look at the US Military (Updated)
How much military does the US government have?
U.S. Defense Spending Compared to Other Countries (pgpf.org)
“The United States spends more on national defense than China, India, Russia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, and South Korea — combined.”
These numbers do not include spending such as:
* Black Budget and secrets
* War Budget and interest on war debt
* Department of Energy (nuclear)
* Other Defense
* Homeland Security
* Military Aid at the State Department
* Intelligence
* Veterans
* Military Retirement
The US spends more than the rest of the world on weapons and war, spying and covert activities.
A $1 trillion defense budget? Trump, Hegseth say it’s happening
“…President Donald Trump made a surprise announcement: The US appears poised for its first $1 trillion defense budget request.
“We also essentially approved a budget, which is in the [vicinity], you’ll like to hear this, of a trillion dollars,” Trump said while meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “$1 trillion, and nobody’s seen anything like it. We have to build our military, and we’re very cost conscious, but the military is something that we have to build, and we have to be strong, because you got a lot of bad forces out there now.
“So we’re going to be approving a budget, and I’m proud to say, actually, the biggest one we’ve ever done for the military.”
Institute for Policy Studies
“In 2024, the average taxpayer paid:
- $3,707 for weapons and war (628 dozen eggs), including $1,430 toward all Pentagon contractors (242 dozen eggs), and $5.82 for the Pentagon contracts with SpaceX, Elon Musk’s company (about a dozen eggs).
- $98 for deportations, immigrant detentions and border control (16 dozen eggs), vs. just $26 for refugee assistance (four dozen eggs), which the current administration has frozen.
- $149 for the National Institutes of Health, home of lifesaving medical and cancer research (25 dozen eggs); $39 for USAID, the international aid program that provides lifesaving food and medical help to millions (6 dozen eggs); and one penny for the Interagency Council on Homelessness that coordinates across agencies to end homelessness (no eggs). Each of these programs face elimination or severe cuts by President Trump and Elon Musk…
In December of 2024, President Biden signed the 2025 NDAA after being passed by the Senate and Congress. The 2025 NDAA amounts to $895.2 billion in funding for the war machine and war profiteers. A large percentage of the money goes to contractors.
https://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20241209/RCP_HR5009_xml%5b89%5d.pdf
Mapping Militarism *New* from World Beyond War
Maps and background to allow you to explore the world, now and back through the years.
“The United States of America, unlike any other nation on Earth, maintains a massive network of foreign military bases around the world, more than 900 bases in more than 90 countries and territories. If the peace movement is serious about ending the United States’ and its allies’ warmaking, then this global constellation of bases must be curtailed.
The Biggest Military Base Empire on Earth – Greta Zarro
Counter-terrorism or terrorism? Interesting maps. Numbers seem very conservative.
“U.S. bases represent 90-95 percent of the world’s foreign bases, constituting the largest collection of extraterritorial bases in world history…”
Military spending has many points of contention: Closing overseas bases isn’t one of them (2019)
BY MEDEA BENJAMIN, JOHN TIERNEY, DAVID VINE, AND COL. (RET.) LAWRENCE WILKERSON
Comparing US military to China: US has 20 times the nuclear warheads. Twice the tonnage of warships at sea. The US has over 800 overseas bases, China has 3. The US military has over 2000 fighter jets compared to China’s 600, and the Lockheed F-35 program is set to deliver 2500 nuclear capable jets.
Washington Post: The Pentagon is using China as an excuse for huge new budgets
https://twitter.com/FareedZakaria/status/1373696826205999107
How often does the US distribute weapons to those who use them against us or against innocent civilians and noncombatants. It is illegal for the US to arm human rights abusers or criminals, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.
The US is Arms Salesman to the World
Home | Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
“…let’s talk military budgets:
The US will spend, if we want to be purists, $716 billion on the military. It’s actually a lot more because the National Security Agency is part of the military, and the CIA to all intents and purposes is military in nature and between them their secret budgets top more than the $50 billion that was leaked in a Congressional hearing eight years ago, and could be double that now since so much more US military activity is now handled by Special Forces acting under the direction of the CIA, but for sake of argument let’s just leave it at $716 billion.
Russia’s military budget is $65 billion, and even if you tripled that to account for how much more expensive everything is in the US from soldiers’ pay to weapons systems would represent less than a third of what the US spends.
China’s military budget is $183 billion, and again, you could double that if you like to account for different costs and it would still be less than half of the US military budget.
That is to say, even if you put the Chinese and Russian militaries together, their budgets would be significantly smaller than the US military budget.”
Let’s Stop Pretending Russia and China are Military Threats BY DAVE LINDORFF
“MEMBERS OF THE U.S. special operations forces deployed to 154 countries, or roughly 80 percent of the world’s nations, last year, but information about exactly where elite forces conduct missions, under what authorities they operate, who they’ve killed, and whether they’re adhering to the laws of armed conflict is closely guarded, buried in obscure legal provisions, shrouded in secrecy, or allegedly unknown even to Special Operations Command…” 
The Intercept, March 20, 2021
WILL THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION SHINE LIGHT ON SHADOWY SPECIAL OPS PROGRAMS? by Nick Turse
“Today, while there are no foreign bases in the United States, there are around 800 U.S. bases in foreign countries…”
The official website for writer and professor David Vine
“It’s hard to say since this country has long been working to create and support global arsenals of autocracy. If the arms industry were truly focused on “defending democracy” on this planet, its firms would have already allowed the above-mentioned reforms to go through without objection, or even, heaven forbid, supported them. The fact that they won’t do so tells you all you need to know about their true intentions in what is for them a genuine gold-rush moment.”
“It’s not a matter of whether the war is not real or if it is. Victory is not possible.
The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.”
~ George Orwell ~
War Crimes Update – US Presidents
Every living US President is a war criminal.
#Biden record on war crimes.
Biden bombed Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia. The US continues its use of drone assassinations ignoring sovereignty and borders around the world.
These are aggressive war crimes. Preemptive war is a war crime. They were not self defense.
You can’t attack and overthrow a nation, install a puppet government and call it self defense like the US and CIA did in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Biden had his CIA attack the NordStream pipeline, blow up the Crimean Bridge and attack the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
These are all continued war crimes, attacks on infrastructure that are not military targets. Biden arms the Ukrainians as they are slaughtered. They do not need to be sacrificed in order to fight a war with Russia, a proxy war. The US oligarchs want access to the resources around and flowing through Ukraine and the related profits.
Biden is a self-proclaimed Zionist who ignores the suffering and crimes committed on Palestinians. Biden armed criminals in Israel and Saudi Arabia. Biden and his CIA arm, fund and work with terror groups like the one that took over Syria in 2024.
Biden continued throughout his presidency to use illegal drone assassinations with no due process. You have to be one brainwashed person to think that the US has the right to go pretty much anywhere on the planet and murder anyone you want at any time and think it is legal.
Joe Biden not only voted for the Iraq War, but he worked to sell the war. As the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden took the lies from the Bush Administration and repeated them over and over. “These weapons must be dislodged from Saddam Hussein, or Saddam Hussein must be dislodged from power.” “President Bush has stated his determination to remove Saddam from power, a view many in Congress share.” – Biden was definitely pro-war-crime even though he had more access to intelligence than many.
See Geneva conventions, and the UN charter and treaties with the power of U.S. law under the constitution. People full of cognitive dissonance have no interest in learning facts though.
Trump is also a war criminal. Trump bombed Syrians and Iranians. Trump continued illegal war crimes and empire across the world.
Trump accelerated the illegal drone assassinations, and he classified the information about them in a way that people could not see. He created more secrets.
You can bet Trump had the mercenaries busy. In Ukraine for instance. That has been going on for years. Trump is close to crazy greedy religious fanatics like Erik Prince
Democratic principles include transparency, accountability and rule of law. Often the propaganda is telling us to violate rule of law and to treat some people as if they are more equal than others. In the end, this is to benefit the corporate machine, ruling 1% richest few and the puppet politicians.
In addition, the US Congress and Senate fund the crimes and the weapons. More crimes.