Project 2025 - 180 day playbook - Department of Veterans Affairs, Brooks D. Tucker,  p. 640 - 656
Retired Marine who worked for Deutsch Bank and Merrill Lynch, then worked as a senior policy advisor for national security and veteran affairs for Senator Burr (R-NC), served on Trump’s Transition Team working on Veterans’ Policy Development, and then as senior adviser to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs,  Assistant Secretary for VA’s Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs (OCLA), and finally Acting Chief of Staff of the Department of Veterans of Affairs in the Trump Administration.
Veterans Affairs has a budget of $218 billion, 400,000 employee, 172 inpatient facilities, 1,113 outpatient facilities, and a Community Care Network that contracts through Optum and TriWest 3rd party providers that provide care for 9M enrolled veterans of which 6.4M are actively treated out of 18M veterans. The remaining veterans (9M) use TriCare, Medicare, Medicaid.
Tucker’s overview is completely stated in political terms of disliking everything in the Obama and Biden administrations, but liking everything under the Trump Administration that he was involved in. 
Agent Orange Act (1991) expanded the scope of disability benefits but over loaded the appeal process trying to differentiate between toxic exposure versus chronic conditions and aging so suffers from lags in hiring, training,  claims processing and could benefit from automation especially with shifting demographics of aging population and relocation. Existing benefits won’t be eliminated but will be downscoped.
Recommendations
(1) eliminate abortion and gender reassignment
(2) focus on shifting veterans demographics of the shift from Vietnam Vets to post 9/11 which may experience a temporary drop in services temporarily by using Community Care 3rd party care to adjust patient expansion, contraction and expansion again for capacity.
(3) Implement VA Mission Act including veterans bill of rights, access standards, quality standards, self care education for patients, overhaul family caregiver program, academic and private sector participation, transparency
(4) Budget - deficiency audit like 2018 DOD efficiency audit, address misalignment of outdated facilities and capacity, make more use of community outpatient care, pilot facility sharing between VA and local healthcare systems
(5) Personnel - extend Undersecretary of Health term to 5 years to be politically independent, create a CIO position, workflow processes to insure wait times comply with VA Mission Act, EHRs
(6) Benefits - performance targets to measure actual performance, process 1st claim in 30 days, private companies to do medical assessment, automate claims process, reduce $500M/year fraud. Cost savings from revising disability rating awards (disallowing more for lower rating and lower benefit), use more contractors for benefit processing, contract with top companies, knowledge exchange with private sector care systems 
(7) Personnel Structure - rescind reporting relationships, transfer all career positions out day 1, re-evaluate hybrid and remote work, new HR system, increase pay for critical skill sets, student loan foregiveness for new hires
(8) Personnel culture - mission driven, increase satisfaction, hire veterans and their spouses, train leaders, creative ways to instill teamwork
(9) Support WH Personnel Office to staff all key positions day 1 from the vetted roster of candidates, limit senior appointments to 3 years to refresh talent and provide flexibility, senior leaders need buy/in from career employees, prepare for legal challenges, manage contract end dates
“The proposal by Project 2025 to drastically reduce the federal workforce is alarming, not just for its potential effects on the efficiency and efficacy of government operations but for the impact it would have on one of the nation’s most revered groups: our veterans.”
“Project 2025, a comprehensive policy blueprint backed by influential conservative think tanks, aims to reshape the federal government radically. It proposes cutting one million federal jobs, with a significant focus on eliminating managerial bureaucracy and shutting down what it terms “toxic government agencies.” This initiative aligns closely with the policies of former President Trump, reflecting a broader agenda to reduce government size and influence drastically.”
“Veterans make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce, with approximately 300,000 veterans currently employed by the federal government.”
“Project 2025 aims to have most VA positions filled by political appointees”
“Project 2025 calls for speeding up the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) review process for disability ratings and considering limits on what claims will make future recipients eligible for disability benefits. The VA assigns disability ratings based on the severity of a veteran’s medical condition and uses those ratings to determine how much money a person receives in benefits each month. “
“People who are currently receiving benefits could see a reduction but not a complete cut under Project 2025’s proposed changes. “
“Tucker writes that the “VA’s Schedule for Rating Disabilities (VASRD) has assigned disability ratings to a growing number of health conditions over time,” some of which are “tenuously or wholly unrelated to military service.” In other words, more medical conditions that have weak ties to a person’s military service or aren’t related at all make a person eligible for disability benefits, he says.”
“A spokesperson for Project 2025 told VERIFY that “under no circumstances does Project 2025 recommend current benefits be cut.” But “it is possible some non-permanent medical conditions would warrant a different rating for future veterans and some conditions would retain their current rating level,” the spokesperson said.”
“It will also revise the PACT Act of 2022 and the Agent Orange Act of 1991 to limit the number of health conditions that qualify an applicant for a VA pension. According to the project, the increase in applications caused by these two initiatives has overwhelmed the VA's capacity to process pension requests, reported "Task &amp; Purpose."
<a href="https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/project-2025-verify/what-project-2025-says-veterans-benefits/536-b3f19a24-2def-418a-b0ca-2e6ff0146269" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">https://www.verifythis.com/article/news/verify/project-2025-verify/what-project-2025-says-veterans-benefits/536-b3f19a24-2def-418a-b0ca-2e6ff0146269</a>
<a href="https://amp.marca.com/en/lifestyle/us-news/personal-finance/2024/07/20/669c03e5268e3e36748b45eb.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">https://amp.marca.com/en/lifestyle/us-news/personal-finance/2024/07/20/669c03e5268e3e36748b45eb.html</a>
<a href="https://www.va.gov/opa/bios/docs/tucker.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">https://www.va.gov/opa/bios/docs/tucker.pdf</a>
<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Tucker" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Tucker</a>
<a href="https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/07/project-2025-worst-case-scenario-veterans/397874/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2024/07/project-2025-worst-case-scenario-veterans/397874/</a>
<a href="https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf</a>