A $12 billion deficit facing the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) could further complicate an already heated partisan debate over how to fund the government for 2025.
There is already a gap between spending levels in funding bills crafted by House Republicans and where Democrats say spending should be, taking into account a side deal reached between GOP leadership and the White House earlier this year. past.
And lawmakers signal that the VA’s budget deficit only adds to the headaches.
“The way this all gets resolved is very complicated,” said Zach Moller, a former Democratic Senate budget aide and now director of the economic program at the centrist think tank Third Way. “Does that $12 billion come from other things in VA?”
The VA asked Congress last month to provide about $3 billion in funding for mandatory benefits for the fiscal year ending in September, as well as about $12 billion in additional funding for fiscal year 2025 to medical care.
There is some bipartisan momentum in Congress to address the more immediate issue as officials warn that millions of veterans’ benefits will be at risk in the coming weeks. If the VA does not receive that funding by September 20, it says veterans’ compensation and pension benefit payments, as well as their adjustment benefits, could be delayed into October.
“Literally, the checks won’t be going out unless we fix this in September,” Sen. John Boozman (R-Ark.), the top Republican on the subcommittee that crafts the VA’s annual funding bill, told The Hill, adding that members on both sides see the problem as “something that will be done, that needs to be done”.
An effort to speed up a $3 billion deficit solution was blocked before Congress left town last week as some Republicans increased scrutiny over the management of funds at the VA.
And both sides are already betting on discretionary funding for fiscal year 2025.
The Fiscal Responsibility Law (FRA), the law which resulted from the agreement reached between President Biden and then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) last year, establishes a funding limit of on $711 billion for nondefense programs for fiscal year 2025.
House Republicans have written their spending bills at that level, but Democrats say it undermines a bipartisan agreement to allocate about $60 billion in additional funding for non-defense programs.
“There is a budgetary cap on non-defense discretionary activities as a whole, and therefore VA Medical has to live within that,” said Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress. “So, all else equal, whatever happens next year, that means there’s $12 billion less room for everything else.”
The VA cited the PACT Act, a landmark law passed with bipartisan support in 2022, as the main driver of the budget deficit, pointing to increases in health care enrollment, appointments and benefits from VA applications.
Last year alone, an agency spokesperson said more than 410,000 veterans “enrolled in VA care in the last 365 days, a 27 percent increase year over year – and the highest since 2017.”
“In total, since the PACT Act was passed, more than 710,000 veterans have enrolled in VA health care, which represents a more than 34 percent increase in the number of veterans enrolled compared to an equivalent period before signing of legislation”, added the representative.
The Biden administration has requested about $154 billion for the VA for next year, including a proposal for $130 billion in discretionary budget authority. The VA did not say what adjustments would need to be made if Congress did not provide additional funding for the next fiscal year.
Discussing the VA’s nearly $12 billion request, Boozman said last week that “the discretionary component is gone.”
“That’s the discussion that’s being had because it’s a lot of money and it eats up discretionary dollars,” Boozman said.
His comment also comes after the Senate’s top negotiators announced earlier this summer that they would increase funding for defense and non-defense programs with emergency funds in their fiscal 2025 bills — meaning a wider gulf between the two chambers when the time comes to reach an agreement on bicameral spending bills in the coming months.
“We remain in a situation where the internationalization of 25 was unsustainable. It was unsustainable under the numbers that were established in the law. It was unsustainable, including the handshake agreement,” Moller said, adding that the Senate Appropriations Committee made it “very clear that it is unsustainable” given the recent bipartisan agreement.
“We’re stacking dishes on top of each other and trying to get them to the dishwasher,” he said. “I’m really worried that someone will fall over and we’ll be in trouble.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
