A representative from the Department of Government Efficiency has begun working at the Department of Veterans Affairs in an effort to identify wasteful contracts.
The new DOGE agency has begun audits of several government institutions as its mandate is to reduce government waste and spending.
“VA has one DOGE employee, who is specifically focused on identifying wasteful contracts, improving VA operations and strengthening management of the department’s IT projects,” a spokesperson for the VA told the Washington Examiner. “The DOGE employee will be solely focused on improving VA performance and efficiency and will not have access to Veterans’ or VA beneficiaries’ data.”
“VA looks forward to working with DOGE to improve services to Veterans, their families, caregivers and survivors,” the spokesperson added.
The spokesperson did not identify who the DOGE employee working at the VA is, what their title is, whether more DOGE representatives will go to the agency, or whether they have a specific target of how much spending they are looking to cut.
In response to the news, the Democrats on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), said U.S. veterans “deserve more than to have unaccountable billionaires playing with the benefits they earned & rely on.”
They called on the recently confirmed Secretary of the VA Doug Collins to “restrict or remove DOGE’s access to VA data systems & vets’ private info.”
The Senate confirmed Collins’ nomination in a 77-23 vote earlier this week.
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Democrats have protested DOGE’s efforts and the access their employees have received at various government agencies, while Republicans have widely supported them.
“We should all be deeply concerned about what it could mean to give Elon Musk and his cronies free rein at VA—I am already hearing that DOGE may have barged into VA today,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in the statement. “Musk and his associates already have the personal financial information of every veteran receiving disability or education benefits because of their illegal data mining at the Department of Treasury.”