By Tom Risen
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki achieved a historical first Tuesday by introducing an executive budget for the VA, which offers $1.2 billion more money than requested by the Independent Budget of veterans support organizations.
Speaking before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Shinseki received praise for the Obama Administration’s proposal to increase the VA’s budget from $98 billion this fiscal year to $113 billion for 2010. It is the largest one-year increase ever made by a president for the VA.
“President Obama has charged me with transforming the VA into a 21st century organization – a transformation demanded by new times, new technologies, new demographic realities and new commitments to today’s veterans, wherever they live,” Shinseki said. “This funding pledge ensures we can deliver state-of-the-art health care and benefits; grow and maintain a skilled, motivated and client-oriented workforce; and implement a comprehensive training and leader development program…at the VA.”
Committee members called Shinseki’s appointment refreshing. But in the past few weeks of hearings with veterans service groups, the Committee heard numerous demands to improve efficiency, along with access to benefits and health care. Because of this, Shinseki faced a committee hungry for statistics and status reports on these goals, some of which aren’t complete yet.
One particular issue was the absence of advance appropriations, which would give VA offices notice of funding they would receive months in advance.
Advance appropriations for the VA budget were a campaign promise of Obama’s because of a history of tardy VA budgets, which caused delay for veteran’s benefits. Now Shinseki said he prefers that budgets be delivered “in a timely fashion” instead.
Among those who questioned Shinseki’s view of advance appropriations as a secondary resort to timely bureaucracy was Rep. Jerry Moran (R-KS).
“Thank you for speaking on behalf of Congress in your confidence that our work will be done in a timely fashion,” Moran said. “I hope your optimism is well founded.”
Representatives of eight veterans support groups praised the increased funding and made their own recommendations on how to deal with the expected surge of new veterans.
“My only issue with Shinseki’s testimony was that his testimony estimated the VA can expect to treat 419,000 patients this year, when at the rate veterans are coming back from war, the VA is likely to treat 520,000 patients by September this year,” said Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. “That’s based on VA data reporting that 10,000 new Iraq and Afghanistan war patients return every month.”
Recommendations ranged from extensive screening sessions for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder upon war fighter discharge to building hundreds of new VA offices. The Committee will meet again Thursday to debate its final draft of recommendations for the budget.
Many proposals reiterated the need for computerization solutions to effectively implement the G.I. Bill set to begin in August, along with improving the VA database and making the benefits claim process paperless to avoid mishandling.
“The VA needs to be more accountable,” said Committee Chairman Rep. Bob Filner (D-CA) when the issue of sluggish claims processing came up. “Some of my constituents think VA means ‘Veterans Adversary.’”
Spending for IT programs at the Veterans Benefits Administration steadily decreased during the Bush Presidency, according to research by Disabled American Veterans.
“Funding for the fiscal year 2006 was only 28 percent of fiscal year 2001 funding, without regard for inflation,” said Kerry Baker, assistant national legislative director of DAV.
Under Obama’s proposal, two-thirds of the budget increase would go to mandatory programs and one-third would go to discretionary spending for programs like IT solutions. The total $113 billion budget proposal would be split evenly between mandatory and discretionary spending.
“The President’s 2010 budget is the first step toward increasing VA funding by $25 billion over the baseline over the next five years,” Shinseki said.
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