Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), ranking Republican on the Senate VA Committee
WASHINGTON, DC — VA vociferously defended its proposed FY2024 budget before Congress in an effort to justify the record-setting $325.1 billion request—a 5.4% increase over last year’s enacted budget.
That $325.1 billion includes $142.8 billion in discretionary funding for healthcare, benefits and national cemeteries, plus $182.3 billion in mandatory funding for benefits programs. Dominating the conversation when the VA went before Congress last month was the impact of the PACT Act on demand for healthcare and benefits, as well as ongoing debt ceiling negotiations and their threatened impact on VA operations.
And, while Congress has increased VA’s budget regularly year-by-year, some legislators expressed concern that the increase was not translating into better care for veterans.
“That’s a big number, and it should lead to big improvements for veterans,” declared Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), ranking Republican on the Senate VA Committee. “We ought not, and I’ve done it myself from time to time, brag about the amount of money we’ve spent, the increases we’re providing for veterans. But if bigger numbers were all that was needed to deliver, we’d have better results.”
He added, “With bigger numbers and better results, we still wouldn’t have higher veterans suicide rates; hundreds of thousands of veterans waiting on their backlogged claims benefits; a troubled electronic health record; a 12-month trend of meaningful decline of access to care according to VA’s own quality [reports]; scores of reports from VA’s inspector general and the Government Accountability Office detailing serious, sometimes fatal, failures; and persistent problems getting VA to provide timely responses to basic requests for information from this committee.”
VA Secretary Denis McDonough argued that, despite the issues Moran listed, VA has consistently improved care for veterans.
Senate committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-MT)
“It’s important to keep in mind that these big numbers do lead to better outcomes,” McDonough said. “We’re not big on just measuring what you give us to put into veterans’ care. We actually measure what it means for veterans and their families.”
McDonough cited a report looking at care provided by VA, including throughout the pandemic, that showed the department “provided care that is as at least as good as, and in an overwhelming number of cases better than, care provided in other settings.”
“These dollars mean real engagements; these engagements mean better outcomes for veterans,” McDonough declared.
Moran also expressed concerned about the growth of the toxic exposure fund—a PACT Act provision that requires a certain amount to be set aside for care and benefits of toxic-exposed veterans. VA is requesting $20 billion for the fund this year.
“When the fund was established … nine months ago, it was not projected to reach $20 billion until FY2030,” Moran noted. “This request needs explaining.”
VA needs that set-aside funding to get the department through the initial surge of veterans submitting PACT Act-related claims, McDonough said.
As of early May, VA had received more than 250,000 claims, granting them at a rate of about 80%. The department also had enrolled 77,000 new veterans into VA healthcare as a result of the legislation.
“Yesterday we had the single biggest day of completing claims in the history of the VA,” he said. “We completed 9,245 claims yesterday, and we’re still getting more claims in any given day than that,”
“Our average—and this is a troubling number—for completing at PACT Act claims is 155 days,” he added. “I think there’s a series of reasons for that. The biggest is that some claims were filed either related to our initial three presumptive claims or filed shortly after the president signed the law, and we did not begin processing the PACT Act claims until January. We should see that average number of days go down.”
There also are early medical challenges that VA is working to solve.
“One of the conditions [included in the PACT Act] is bronchiolitis, the test for which is so invasive as to make them actually not useful and harmful for the veteran,” McDonough explained. “That’s why we’ve stood up a special organization focused just on the science of exposures, as well as new techniques to verify the existence of the condition.”
Regarding the impact of debt ceiling negotiations on VA’s budget, some legislators seemed more concerned than others—the prevailing belief among Republicans on the committee being that VA would be spared from any across-the-board cuts.
Senate committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-MT) suggested the threat was real, however.
“Make no mistake, by tying drastic cuts to the debt ceiling, my House colleagues are putting veterans’ benefits and livelihoods at risk,” he said. “Each month, Treasury makes approximately $25 billion in payments. Of that, nearly half is for benefits payments for nearly seven million veterans and their families. The rest of it pays for VA employees’ salaries, keeps VA medical clinics open, and reimburses private providers for care received in the community.”
Tester added that veterans could still be impacted, even if VA healthcare and benefits were kept intact.
“Even if our House colleagues make good on their promise to not gut VA healthcare, there are plenty of programs outside the VA that are absolutely critical to veterans and their families,” he said. “Job training programs, efforts to combat veteran homelessness are just a couple examples of what will assuredly be next on the chopping block.”
