Facing painful cuts, the VA reported dubious savings to DOGE
WASHINGTON — Starting in 1983, the Rev. Roland Freeman gave Holy Communion to the sick and last rites to the dying at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals around Denver.
In January, the chaplain died at age 85. Four months later, the VA turned his death into a budget cut.
After the agency reported the termination of his contract, the Department of Government Efficiency, President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting group, posted it on its online “Wall of Receipts,” used to celebrate reductions in wasteful or fraudulent spending. DOGE said the VA saved taxpayers $98,700 — the remaining 4 1/2 years of Freeman’s contract.
The savings might be short-lived. The VA would not say whether it would replace him.
In recent weeks, as DOGE’s founder, Elon Musk, formally left Washington and the group’s power waned, the VA still sent in dozens of similarly dubious claims.
The veterans agency claimed credit for canceling contracts that had not been canceled, including those that provided veterans with prosthetic legs and wheelchairs. It also reported ending contracts for reasons unrelated to DOGE. They expired on schedule, or were cut off after a vendor shut down, or, in Freeman’s case, died.
DOGE still posted those claims on its website, adding $6 million to the VA’s savings.
Over the past six months, The New York Times has documented how that group’s Wall of Receipts, the only public accounting of DOGE’s work, has been plagued by errors.
To understand why, the Times looked closely at claims submitted by the VA, which has accounted for one of the highest totals of canceled contracts on the wall, but also some of its bigger mistakes.
That analysis revealed two levels of failure, which only seemed to accelerate in recent weeks. The VA submitted a raft of flawed claims that inflated its progress. Then, a White House official said, DOGE was supposed to fact-check these claims. Instead, the Times found, it amplified them.
Just after Trump took office again in January, Musk’s group was given unprecedented power at federal agencies to slash spending, fire workers and terminate contracts, leading to significant disruptions in some programs. The billionaire’s team, drawn heavily from Silicon Valley, often operated on a “Break it first, fix it later” model, which eventually proved unpopular with many Americans.
Early on, VA Secretary Doug Collins openly embraced DOGE’s mission, approving hundreds of aggressive cuts to his own agency. But that proved to be a misstep. Under pressure, his agency reversed hundreds of cuts the morning after it made them.
As the weeks went on, some of the claims that the VA reported ran up the score but often entailed little — or no — actual sacrifice.
That approach pleased some veterans advocates.
“They can stick whatever they want on the blackboard, just as long as they don’t hurt anyone’s service, and don’t hurt anyone’s benefits,” said Randy Reese, the Washington executive director of Disabled American Veterans, a nonprofit advocacy group.
Reese said he was satisfied with the VA’s ability to avoid damaging changes so far, and did not mind if the agency’s information led DOGE to think it had done more than it had.
But the misleading claims by the VA and any other agencies make it difficult to assess where DOGE achieved its ambitious goals and where it fell down, much less whether its efforts were worth the pain it caused workers and people who depend on the government. They also mean that the sole public source of information about one of the Trump administration’s most controversial and disruptive efforts remains unreliable six months into its work.
A senior administration official, speaking on DOGE’s behalf, said the group did not feel misled by the questionable claims identified by the Times. The official, who asked for anonymity because he could not speak publicly, said that DOGE does not expect to get all the information right every time and that the VA was seeking to fulfill DOGE’s mission.
Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, said in a statement that the VA “is doing incredible work to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse to improve services for our nation’s heroes.”
The Times identified dozens of questionable claims by interviewing vendors and comparing the Wall of Receipts to contracting data. Peter Kasperowicz, a VA spokesperson, declined to provide the agency’s reasoning for why those contracts belonged on the Wall of Receipts.
The agency said it provides its information to the General Services Administration, one of DOGE’s nerve centers in the federal government, and that it has already identified 31,000 contracts that could be ended or reduced in scope, avoiding more than $27 billion in costs over time. He did not provide a list.
‘Please Reconsider’
Collins is a Baptist minister, Air Force Reserve chaplain, lawyer and former Republican member of Congress from Georgia who served on Trump’s defense team during his first impeachment.
He had loyalty and a live-wire energy, but no experience running hospitals. Now Collins is in charge of one of the largest health care systems in the country, with 170 hospitals and roughly 9 million patients enrolled.
From the start, DOGE gave him a difficult task: Cut 10% of its $67 billion in contracts, the amount DOGE estimated would be waste. Collins would have to do it quickly and deftly, without angering veterans — a vital constituency for Trump and Republicans in Congress.
To lead the search for those cuts, DOGE sent the VA a 34-year-old tech entrepreneur named Cary Volpert. Versions of his resume posted online show that he had founded a tech startup aimed at the elderly but that he had no hospital management experience.
At the VA, DOGE staff identified more than 870 contracts that appeared to be unnecessary, focusing particularly on those categorized as “consulting” or “research,” according to an account from a former DOGE staff member and records provided to the Times by Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.
In many cases, the records show, VA staffers objected, saying the contracts paid for vital operations.
VA leaders cut them anyway.
“We found nearly $2 billion in @DeptVetAffairs contracts that we’ll be canceling so we can redirect the funds back to Veterans health care and benefits,” Collins posted on the social platform X at 11:38 a.m. on Feb. 25. “No more paying consultants to do things like make Power Point slides and write meeting minutes!”
It did not last.
Within two hours, Steven L. Lieberman, the VA’s acting undersecretary for health, emailed senior officials to identify more than 100 cuts that could devastate clinical trials and affect cancer care and suicide-prevention programs.
“Please reconsider,” he wrote, according to a copy of his email reviewed by the Times.
This time, VA leaders listened.
“ALL — PLEASE HALT ALL CONTRACT TERMINATIONS THAT ARE IN PROGRESS,” a top VA contracting official, Phillip W. Christy, wrote in email at 7:17 a.m. the next day. “VA leadership is reconsidering previous guidance.”
Collins still endorsed a plan to cut more than 80,000 of his 480,000 employees.
Soon, veterans were confronting members of Congress. Some Republican officials publicly urged Musk and Collins to be more cautious at the VA, in an exceedingly rare break from Trump’s cost-cutting agenda at the time.
“They started crossing red lines,” said Reese.
Those watching the VA began to detect changes in approach. The agency seemed to treat DOGE’s list of targets less as an order and more as a menu.
In all, VA leaders canceled more than 350 of the contracts that had been on DOGE’s original list, eventually ranking fourth among agencies in total contracts canceled. But they often chose ones with smaller budgets: training classes, inspections and, ironically, cost-cutting studies.
And starting in March, the VA revived at least 35 of those canceled contracts, even as DOGE’s Wall of Receipts continued to list them as dead.
Sahil Lavingia, a software engineer working for DOGE, was sent to the VA on March 17 to help Volpert. He said he soon realized that his group had already squandered its credibility at the VA. When he identified more than 4,000 potential new cuts, nobody seemed to listen.
“They gave us too much leeway in the beginning, is the sense that I got,” Lavingia said. “By the time that I got there, the power had shifted back.”
“We cut our own cord, and fell out of the sky and died,” Lavingia said.
Volpert did not respond to requests for comment.
Last week, the agency said the plan to cut 80,000 employees was no longer necessary, with about 30,000 employees expected to take early retirement or leave for other reasons.
Difficult to Track
After all of the cancellations and un-cancellations, it became difficult even for Congress to track exactly what the VA had cut.
Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs committee, said the agency sent the committee lists of contracts that it was terminating, but they varied in strange ways: More than one-third of the contracts that the VA claimed credit for ending in May were removed from the list by this month.
Furthermore, in the most recent version of the VA’s list to Congress, more than 75% of the contracts were listed as having $0 in “value remaining” to be saved.
“They’re either incompetent or disingenuous. And maybe some combination of the two,” Blumenthal said of VA officials. “But what staggers me is they think we’re going to somehow accept it.” He said he has blocked all nominations for VA officials, to demand that the agency provide him better data.
As the weeks went by, the Wall of Receipts began to show that the VA was behind on its goals.
The number of new VA claims appearing on the wall fell sharply. But according to the Times’ analysis, the claims also became more accurate, reflecting real terminations. As of mid-May, the wall showed that the agency had saved $736 million, a fraction of its $6.7 billion goal and not even half of what Collins said he had cut in late February.
On DOGE’s “leaderboard” of agencies that had done the most to further its budget-cutting mission, the VA fell from the middle of the pack to last place. The Penn Wharton federal budget model, which tracks federal spending, shows that the VA’s total spending has actually increased more than 25% since last year.
By May, even as DOGE’s power began to fade, the VA boosted its Wall of Receipts numbers by sending in 103 new canceled contracts.
This time, at least 45 of them appeared to be misleading, according to the Times’ analysis.
In 34 cases, the contracts that the VA listed as “terminated” did not appear to have been terminated at all, according to federal contracting data. Some had simply expired on schedule. Others still appeared active, including several that provided veterans — in New York, California, Michigan and Colorado — with wheelchairs or prosthetic legs.
DOGE has said that public contracting databases may take a month before cancellations are entered and posted publicly. But in all of these cases, more than a month has passed since the VA claimed to have terminated these contracts. The Times also spoke to several vendors whose contracts were listed as canceled, who had not been told of any changes.
In one such case, the VA said it had canceled a $8,200-per-year contract to put a fence up around the New Orleans VA hospital when a major parade passes by. But federal contracting data shows that contract is still active.
The contractor, Ben Cockrell of Task Force Contractors, installed the fence this year and expects to do so again next year. Somebody has to, he said.
“It’s literally just to prevent the drunks from getting into the VA during Mardi Gras,” Cockrell said.
In five other cases, the VA claimed credit for contracts that it had terminated when they were already near — or past — their expiration date.
Precept Environmental had one of those contracts. The company was hired to clean air-conditioning equipment at the VA hospital in Long Beach, California, to prevent the spread of airborne illnesses.
“The contract was canceled when there was no more work to be done on it, and no more funds to be earned,” said Johanna Astaire, vice president of Precept Environmental. “I was like, ‘Oh, shoot, why am I getting fired?’ Then I was like, ‘Oh, wait, we don’t have any more work to do. No problem.”
That work still must be done: VA policy requires the equipment to be cleaned twice a year. The VA declined to say if it had hired another contractor to do the same job this year.
In at least six other cases, the VA also appeared to dress up routine, unrelated transactions as DOGE-driven reforms.
The VA reported that it had canceled three contracts with Barrier Free Lifts of Ocala, Florida, to maintain devices that transfer patients from wheelchairs to beds. DOGE said those cancellations had saved taxpayers more than $250,000.
In reality, the vendor itself appears defunct. Its landlord said its employees had vanished around February, abandoning a warehouse full of medical supplies.
“They just basically walked,” said the landlord, Matt Mauro of EMR Distributors, which subleased the space to Barrier Free Lifts.
Mauro said he did not know any details about Barrier Free Lifts’ contracts with the VA. The leaders of Barrier Free Lifts did not respond to requests for comment.
As for Freeman, reporting his contract as terminated saved only a pittance. Federal records show the VA paid him about $20,000 annually.
Sister Mary Catherine Widger, a friend of Freeman’s, said he was there to provide comfort to bedridden patients. “He also had a great gift of being able to offer consolation and remove guilt” about veterans’ wartime actions, she said.
Another friend of Freeman’s said the VA hospital was hoping to hire another chaplain. The VA declined to say if it would, although Collins has said he wants chaplains to play a larger role in agency care.
Regardless, friends were incredulous that DOGE had put his name on a wall meant for wasteful spending.
“He definitely didn’t do it for the money,” Widger said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.