Oh, there are ways to kill programs, I saw it myself first-hand.
Back in the early 1990's, President Bush got a new VA program approved that would give job training for veterans who got out with little to no useable job skills. It was only to be used for the first 2 years after discharge, and only for a Vocational type program. This was not to give veterans education, but employment. And you had to be in a handful of MOS where it was determined that the civilian use of your skills was not available (generally it was all combat arms skills like Infantry, Artillery, Ordinance, and the like). That was great for me, since after spending a decade in the Infantry, I found that the job market for "Mercenary" or "Contract Killer" was amazingly small.
Well, after just 3 years, President Clinton came into office, and wanted the program killed so the money could be spent on his constituents. Well, that can't be done because of procedures, so instead this Veterans Only program was opened up to any "Aerospace Worker" who had been laid off within the previous 5 years.
I applied for this program as soon as I got out, and was sitting in the local VA Office (Palmdale, California) next to aeronautical engineers and avionics specialists. HVAC specialists, electrical experts, and they were all trying for the same program.
Well, needless to say I did not get anything. By the time I was able to apply, almost all of the money was gone. One guy I met I still remember, he had a doctorate in engineering, but was taking advantage of this program to get a free Novell Engineer training program. Lots of people took advantage of it, but very few of them in the last year were veterans.
When they went through their end of year audit, the program had so badly blown the budget it was cancelled. So now the VA has no program to retrain newly discharged Veterans so they can actually have useful job skills when they come from an MOS that has no real civilian position. If I remember right, the budget was later redirected to the PELL Grant system. Just like a couple of years ago when our Post 9-11 program was raided and raped, and the money shoved into PELL.
Once again, Veterans get the shaft, and money is shoved at Civilians.