Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins announced Tuesday that his department saved nearly $2 billion by ending contracts he deemed no longer necessary. The announcement came as roughly 1,000 employees were laid off from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

I interviewed the VA Secretary Doug Collins last night and it was pretty clear he had a message for the roughly 18 million living veterans in this country. “We're not cutting critical health care. We're not cutting health care benefits,

The pause affects hundreds of VA contracts, which Secretary Collins described a day earlier as nonessential consulting agreements.

Veterans Affairs leaders this week touted $2 billion in savings for department efforts from canceled government contracts they insist were not providing real benefits to veterans, but critics are warning the efforts could seriously jeopardize some health and benefits services.

By Wednesday afternoon, however, VA leaders had paused those actions, saying they were going through the contracts “line-by-line” to ensure that veterans would not be harmed b