U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald on Monday laid out a short-term plan to avoid a shutdown of the troubled Aurora medical complex as well as the first substantial cuts to control runaway costs.

In a memo to leaders of the Senate and House veterans’ affairs committees, McDonald said veterans will have to do without a planned community living center and a post-traumatic stress disorder residential clinic. He acknowledged the moves were not “the best decision for Colorado veterans,” but were “the only option available” under a Congressional mandate to cut costs.

McDonald also said his agency would move $150 million from other budget-line items as stop-gap funding so construction wouldn’t stop by Sunday, when the project is expected to hit its $800 million spending cap.

That would only work, McDonald wrote, if Congress were to newly authorize the project to spend up to $1 billion, allowing construction to continue uninterrupted until about August as funding negotiations continued to cover the remainder needed to finish the job.

The project’s cost has risen to $1.73 billion, nearly triple the original budget.

Rep. Ed Perlmutter, D-Lakewood, said Congress should accept the VA’s offer.

The plan “gives Congress time to find a permanent funding solution and, more importantly, prevents a work stoppage which would be catastrophic for the future of the project and the veterans of the Rocky Mountain region,” he said Monday. “Time is running out. We need to finish the damn thing.”

McDonald’s proposed cost savings would require Congress to find as much as $700 million more to ensure the project gets built.

McDonald said “inexcusable delays and cost overruns … have imperiled our ability to complete this project …” according to a copy of the memo, obtained by The Denver Post late Friday.

He also confirmed in the memo that an internal investigation by the VA’s office of inspector general was ongoing.

Despite the OIG investigation, McDonald said he would support an independent investigation into the project — two others are ongoing, including one by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and another by a VA panel of professionals — “to ensure that we fully understand what occurred.”

Several members of the Senate committee have called for VA employees to be held accountable for the project’s explosion from a $630 million budget to nearly three times that amount.

McDonald noted the executive director of the VA’s office overseeing construction, Glenn Haggstrom, retired in March “in the midst of an investigation initiated by VA.”

VA has been scrambling to come up with funding solutions in Aurora after negotiations fell apart last week, raising a strong probability that a work stoppage would cripple the long-awaited facility.

If the additional spending is not authorized, McDonald warned, “we expect (contractor) Kiewit-Turner to cease work … and commence demobilization, adding cost and delay.”

Also, “subcontractors would likely not return to the project in the future, leading to substantial further delays and cost increases,” McDonald wrote.

McDonald did not estimate the cost savings of trimming the two buildings from the Aurora footprint — a move he called a “delay” in their construction rather than an outright scrapping of them. Ground has not been broken on either building.

McDonald also said the agency will agree to contract with the Army Corps not only on all future projects costing more than $250 million to build, but also bring that agency in to oversee seven of 10 projects already underway, including Aurora.

McDonald’s memo did not delineate the seven projects, and noted five others were too far along for the Army Corps’ involvement.

The concession appears in response to a bill introduced last week by Republican Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida. That measure would take the VA out of the business of constructing medical facilities that cost more than $100 million.

David Migoya: 303-954-1506, dmigoya@denverpost.com or twitter.com/davidmigoya