Donovan Slack

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — A federal hiring freeze imposed by President Trump on Monday affects thousands of open jobs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, despite the half-million veterans still waiting longer than a month for VA appointments.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer confirmed Tuesday that the VA is covered under the freeze, which exempted the military and other positions deemed necessary for national security and public safety.

He said the administration wanted to make sure Trump’s pick to lead the VA, current Undersecretary for Health at the agency David Shulkin, is confirmed.

“Right now, the system’s broken,” Spicer said, adding that the freeze is meant only to “pause” hiring until further analysis can be done and a plan put in place to fix things.

“When you have a system that’s not working, and then going out and hiring additional people doesn’t seem to be the most efficient way of solving the problem,” he said. “What we need to do, whether it’s the VA or any other agency, is make sure that we’re hiring smartly and effectively and efficiently.

"And I think the VA in particular, if you look at the problems that have plagued people, hiring more people isn’t the answer, it's hiring the right people, putting the procedures in place that ensure that our veterans — whether health care or mortgages or the other services that VA provides to those who have served our nation — get the services that they’ve earned.”

The order Trump signed does not cover hires already in the works before Monday. But the VA is currently advertising to fill more than 2,000 job openings on the federal hiring website, including for hundreds of nurses and doctors. Shulkin has told USA TODAY that one of his top priorities is getting fully staffed up.

After Spicer's remarks, the VA said it planned to take advantage of the hiring freeze's allowances for public safety needs.

"The Department of Veterans Affairs intends to exempt anyone it deems necessary for public safety, including frontline caregivers," Acting VA Secretary Robert Snyder said in a statement.

USA TODAY has reported on the massive bureaucracy between top-line leaders like Shulkin and front-line care providers that has slowed some improvements in the VA since the scandal broke in 2014 with revelations that schedulers in Phoenix had kept secret wait lists masking how long veterans had been waiting for appointments and at least 40 died while waiting.

The VA is one of the largest agencies in the federal government with more than 350,000 employees. The agency provides veterans with death, disability and education benefits, as well as health care at more 1,200 medical facilities that serve nearly 9 million veterans each year.

A liberal veterans group that slammed Trump during the campaign seized on the hiring freeze. In a statement earlier Tuesday, VoteVets senior adviser Peter Kauffmann said that if it applied to the VA, it would be the "ultimate insult to our men and women who serve to deny them the additional doctors, nurses, therapists, and administrators that are sorely needed at the VA.”

“If his (order) leads to preventable deaths, that will be on Donald Trump’s hands, and we will hold him personally accountable,” Kauffmann said.

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