Birmingham VA worker caught in the crosshairs of federal funding cuts

Brandy Lee was in the middle of her work day with the Birmingham VA Medical Center in February when she got a memo from the federal Office of Personnel Management. After four months in her dream job, she was fired along with thousands of other federal employees across the country. 

Lee was still in her probationary period. So when her work in grassroots outreach for the VA came to an abrupt stop, there was nothing her supervisors could do. 

“My heart definitely dropped,” Lee said. 

The memo said that her work was unsatisfactory, but Lee said her 90-day review had been positive. 

“What’s going through your head is the projects that you’re working on,” Lee said.” Now I have to suddenly drop everything that I was working on for these veterans and now it has to be picked up or just left there.” 

She is one of tens of thousands of VA employees whose jobs will be cut as the agency is restructured by the Department of Government Efficiency initiative or DOGE. The reorganization aims to cut more than 80,000 VA jobs to get staffing levels back to pre-Covid counts at just under 400,000 employees.

DOGE, currently headed up by billionaire Elon Musk, has a goal of cutting $1 trillion in federal spending by September. So far, the department has targeted contracts, leases and agency workforces. 

Lee said that she loved her job, but she is not the only one who will be affected. 

“Because so many of us in the federal workforce, specifically in the VA, are being terminated, these veterans who could be in your family, could be in your friends, could be a coworker, someone you know, their health care is being affected because they are not going to be many people to help take care of them,” Lee said.

Lee said if she had not been fired, she would have stayed with the VA for as long as she could have. For now, she will continue to advocate for veterans in whatever way she can. 

“If anyone else who is in my position sees this, they should not give up,” Lee said. “They should not give up on these veterans because they most definitely didn’t give up on us in serving this country.”