Congress failed to pass legislation before leaving town to address a roughly $3 billion budget shortfall for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), while officials warn that millions of veterans’ benefits will be at risk in the coming weeks. .
Some senators had hoped to speed up legislation to fix the deficit before leaving this week for a month-long recess as the Sept. 20 deadline approaches. But that effort fell short of growing scrutiny over what some Republicans alleged was mismanagement at the agency.
“We’ve been told for a long time that we have enough funds… We’re just learning that now,” Sen. Jerry Moran (Kan.), a top Republican on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said this week, adding that the discovery of the shortfall occurred. after both chambers had already begun advancing annual funding legislation for military construction and the VA.
“I am not convinced that the Department of Veterans Affairs was incapable of knowing about a problem at that time, and the [Office of Management and Budget] I never said anything,” he said.
The agency 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 VA health care enrollment, appointments and application benefits.
The White House said in the spring that veterans and survivors have filed more than 4 million claims since August 2022, including more than 1.6 million “PACT Act specific claim requests.”
“These important outcomes for veterans and survivors exceeded even the most aggressive projections and expectations,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement. As a result, the VA said it is calling on Congress to provide about $3 billion in “mandated benefit funds” for fiscal year 2024, as well as about $12 billion in fiscal year 2025.” for medical care.”
“What happened to the PACT Act [is] has been much more popular and people knew it would be,” Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said Wednesday. He joined Moran and other senators in introducing legislation this week to address the deficit.
“We all knew,” Brown said. “It’s really taken off and it’s expensive because it takes care of complicated medical situations.”
The bill seeks to address the more immediate threat of shortages. Calls for more than $2.8 billion in additional funding for the VA, appropriating about $2.3 billion to the Veterans Benefits Administration for compensation and pensions, as well as about $597 million for benefits readjustment.
The bill also calls on the Government Accountability Office to analyze “the circumstances and causes of the deficit” and “possible solutions that the Department could take in the future to improve annual budget presentations and avoid deficits”, among other measures .
Payments of compensation and pension benefits to veterans, as well as their adjustment benefits, could be delayed if Congress does not provide additional funding by September 20.
But some senators are also demanding more information from the VA before passing legislation.
“When we spend billions of dollars, we should ask if there are controls in place to know if they are being spent wisely. Where was it spent? Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told The Hill earlier this week while pushing against an effort to fast-track a bipartisan bill to fix the smaller deficit. “We gave them record amounts of dollars. Why did it disappear?
“So someone made a bad decision or bad management,” he said, before adding that “all of this needs to be discussed and worked through, which is why I would never let this go without a discussion.”
A group of republicans wrote a letter to Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, earlier this week, asking for an immediate hearing on the matter. Republicans said VA Secretary Denis McDonough “must testify immediately and in person before the Committee to answer the nearly $15 billion question before a supplemental question is considered.”
“The answers and accountability owed to our veterans cannot wait until the Senate returns on September 9th, just days before the VA says benefit payments will stop,” the letter said. “As such, we ask that you immediately schedule a hearing so that we can conduct appropriate oversight and get to the bottom of this troubling report.”
Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.), who heads the House Veterans Affairs Committee, also wrote a letter to the secretary last month, describing the general The $15 billion deficit is considered “the largest budget deficit the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has suffered under any administration,” while also taking the opportunity to blame the Biden-Harris administration.
The letter also asked the secretary to respond to a list of questions pressing the VA on the issue, which the agency confirmed to The Hill on Friday that it has addressed.
The Hill reached out to the agency and Bost’s office for a copy of the response.
“We responded directly to Chairman Bost’s letter, informed his staff and answered their questions, and we look forward to continuing to work together to meet this need,” a VA spokesperson said in a statement.
“VA is working closely with Congress and the Office of Management and Budget to meet these needs in a way that avoids any adverse impacts on veterans – and allows us to continue providing care and benefits to veterans at record rates,” added the statement on Friday.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
