AURORA | Colorado veterans, Veteran Affairs employees and a Colorado senator say they are angry and fearful over the way the Trump Administration is handling massive federal government cuts and layoffs.
Painful “is the anxiety of coming into work every morning and wondering if you’re going to get that email saying that you’re fired,” Kevin Eherenman, Veterans Benefits Administration congressional liaison at the Denver VA regional office and a 12-year Navy vet, told participants at an Aurora roundtable discussion Tuesday. “The morale in our office is in the toilet.”
Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper held the group discussion along with Aurora Mental Health and Recovery to talk with veterans and VA employees about the administration’s cuts and firings and how they affect veterans and military-connected families in Colorado.
Hickenlooper said it made him angry, which he says is rare for him, adding that he can count on one hand the times congress has made him angry.
“The talk about waste, fraud and abuse in the Veterans Administration drives me nuts,” Hickenlooper said. “Any time I hear people discrediting and tearing down the Veterans Administration in any way, it gets me in a place that I don’t usually go to.”
When the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, run by billionaire Elon Musk, cut employment for the Department of Veteran Affairs, including the Veteran Benefits Administration, it resulted in 6,000 layoffs and an additional 80,000 estimated layoffs for VA employees, most of whom were veterans.
“This is egregious,” Hickenlooper said.
Hickenlooper said he knows “for a fact” from the years he was Colorado governor that the VA never had enough funding, so the Trump cuts will hurt veterans significantly.
Hickenlooper said he enjoys “good” relationships with 20 to 25 Republican senators right now. He said he hopes to take the veterans’ stories from Aurora to share with those GOP senators and persuade them to make changes.
“The more stories I can give to them about what’s really happening, the better,” Hickenlooper said. “The sooner we’re going to turn this around and begin to recognize and deliver on some of that funding that you guys are all deserving of.”
Details on layoffs
Almost all of the people at the roundtable were veterans or a spouse of a veteran. Three veterans there spoke about how they served and worked for the VA and were recently laid off.
Christopher Jones, a VA attorney, was hired after working as a labor and employment lawyer in the Air Force for nearly 15 years. Jones said that firing and rehiring people without thought is a waste.
“Not only is it a waste of money and time and effort, but it breaks trust with employees and veterans,” Jones said. “When you do that, the best employees are going to leave, and that’s going to directly affect VA healthcare.”
Jones said he was one of the VA employees who was fired on Feb. 11. He was asked to return, but the stress took too large a toll on him and his family.
Brett Taylor is another veteran who worked for the VA and said he was on vacation in Florida shopping at a Lowes when he got the firing email Feb. 24, and he had no idea how to respond. Taylor worked to help homeless veterans into housing after recently leaving social work in the VA to have a job with more focus.
“I relocated here,” Taylor said. “Now I’m without a job.”
Taylor said that VA Secretary Doug Collins — the person Trump officials say is managing the cuts — is trying to take the VA back to 2019 budget numbers.
“I was a social worker with the VA in (Saint Petersburg) Florida, in 2019, so I knew at that time we were understaffed,” Taylor said. “When you’re understaffed, it doesn’t make people want to stay because the caseload gets higher. That was one of the main reasons why I came to Colorado.”
He said Colorado’s program is case-oriented, and he found it appealing because it allows him to focus on a certain group instead of being overloaded constantly. Taylor worked his way up in the VA from a housekeeper to a social worker, and from his experience, he said, “every position in the VA is essential.”
“I don’t think anybody should get fired, not the way they did it anyway,” Taylor said. “I don’t see how any veteran in America will trust the VA right now because wait times are already super long, so now they’re going to get even longer.”
As a disabled combat vet, Taylor said he is concerned about vets who aren’t being cared for. Vets chose this agency because it was supposed to be something stable, and now they’ve been shown it’s not, he said.
Ryan Bevard is a veteran who worked with Taylor as a social work associate. He said he worked for Rocky Mountain Regional VA Medical Center for eight years. He recently switched to becoming a social work associate for the VA and was just a month shy of finishing the beginning probationary period for the new job.
Probationary employment for the VA was the main reason for layoffs for people at the roundtable.
“That day, I was trying to go on apartment showings to get one veteran housed,” he said. “I stopped back and got a quick lunch, got the email forwarded on to the supervisors, and then I had to go to meet another veteran so he could hopefully get into his new apartment. It wasn’t until I came back after that reality sank in, and it has made me furious.”
He said what upset him most was that the social workers and other employees now have to pick up his caseloads.
“It’s affecting the veterans,” Bevard said. “They’re getting affected by not having the staff because they have to wait for people to actually fulfill the needs.”
Marsha Unruh, program director of Home Front Military, said she is already seeing the impact of layoffs. Community resource groups like hers will have to take on the extra responsibility, and she said they can’t handle that kind of capacity. She currently has an 87-year-old man who can’t be seen by the VA for healthcare for six months.
Joshua Medina, veterans service supervisor for Arapahoe Veterans Service Office, said he didn’t understand how it saves money when they need to fill 300,000 positions in the VA and will also need to replace the 80,000 they fired, especially when onboarding costs $200,000.
Family and mental health
Carol Reszka, Aurora Mental Health and Recovery center program manager, said that not knowing what will happen tomorrow and the ups and downs are difficult for veterans with trauma.
“One of the things that is the worst thing for trauma is not being able to have any choice, not being able to have any agency over the decisions that you need to make for yourself and your family,” Reszka said.
The unpredictability can add a lot of stress to the family as well.
“It’s not just the firing; it’s also the hiring freezes, and so the family unit portion of that really comes down to the Child Development Centers,” said Rob Duvall, Regional Military Affairs for Buckley Base.
Duvall said some agencies have had to shutter their Child Development Care facilities, including at Peterson Space Force Base, which will have to shut down childcare programs and reduce the capacity. Buckley Space Force Base is about to do the same, he said. If they can’t hire for those positions, spouses of military members won’t be able to afford to work because of the high cost of daycare.
Grants for businesses and healthcare
Amy Demenge, state veteran service officer, said Colorado has 40,000 women veterans, and the fear is the government will take away their healthcare. She said women veteran’s health training was recently removed because of DEI restrictions imposed by the Trump administration.
Former state lawmaker Debbie Stafford, faith-based coordinator at Aurora Mental Health and Recovery, said that they recently lost grant funding that provided assistance to local refugees and immigrants.
“We work with many veterans who are also a part of that group, and they’ve come here with agreements from other countries, Afghanistan and other places,” Dazey said. “The pain is that somebody takes an ink pen and draws a line and then has no idea of the unintended consequences, especially those that have very restricted funding.”
Places that rely on grant funding rarely have other ways to backfill or find that funding.
“These organizations are making investments with philanthropic dollars, with the anticipation of grant money, filling back those after sustainability, and when that grant funding goes away, these organizations are stuck with that bill, and it makes it harder to provide those resources,” Reagan said.
Joe Reagan, director of the Veterans Business Outreach Center at Mt. Carmel Veterans Service Center, said there are about 48,000 veteran-owned small businesses across the state of Colorado, which generate about $21 billion in revenue. Trump’s cut on the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, which is a tool for our communities to help invest in small businesses, will now affect small businesses, including veteran-owned ones.
“This goes well beyond just the VA aspect of this,” he said. “These are a lot of these pre-revenue businesses that are just getting their startup.”
Local small businesses are also affected by cuts in grants for using diversity, equity, and inclusion language in their programs.
“It’s difficult for us to provide those resources because we’re being constrained by executive orders that have nothing to do with the actual services being offered,” Reagan said.
Thank you for your excellent coverage of this important issue.
I’m 70 and was not a Vietnam veteran because I had a congenital heart murmur and was declared 4-F. I’ve always felt beholden to our veterans for the sacrifice they made, in large part because I couldn’t. I was sad to learn in 2019 that veterans were waiting so long for services. President Biden increased staffing, and in 2024, there were much better results in serving our veterans. Now, the target RIF is 80,000 workers – which reduces response times and increases deaths from illness and suicide. This to me is an unacceptable thing to do to those who sacrificed so much! I’ve heard Mr. Trump denigrate service many times, labeling service members suckers and losers. He notably brushed off John McCain’s heroism after being held in confinement while being tortured by the Viet Cong. This view is despicable, but particularly so for a president. Please join me in imploring the president to reverse this edict!