Establishing Veterans Economic Opportunity and Transition Administration

Floor Speech

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Mr. TAKANO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, when our servicemembers conclude their military service, they are taxed with returning to civilian life after putting their lives on hold for years. This is the sacrifice they make for our security.

In exchange, we owe them more than a thank you and well wishes. We owe them a commitment that their transition to civilian life will go smoothly, and a VA that responds to their needs.

That is why we passed the first GI Bill nearly 75 years ago, and why we continue today to make improvements to provide veterans with the benefits they have earned.

Unfortunately, VA has struggled to track the effectiveness of education and employment programs and, consequently, Congress has struggled to determine the Department's resource needs. We have identified a contributing factor through hearings and discussions with our Veterans Service Organizations that the Veterans Benefits Administration is simply asked to do too much.

With the focus on managing countless compensation claims, the responsibility of managing transition education, and housing benefits often takes a back seat.

To put it in perspective, the Veterans Benefit Administration's structure has not significantly changed since the creation of the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1930.

During the last 89 years, the services needed by veterans have drastically changed, and that is why our committee has an Economic Opportunity Subcommittee. It is time for the VA to understand this as well.

The VET OPP Act, as amended, would create a new administration within the department to manage educational assistance, vocational rehabilitation and employment, education and career counseling programs, and broadly defined transition assistance programs that are shared across agencies.

Now, that means veterans' education, housing, and economic programs will have a dedicated Under Secretary for Veterans Economic Opportunity and Transition. The Veterans Economic Opportunity and Transition Administration will solely focus on fulfilling these promises to veterans, so that they get the education that that they want, the housing they need, and the careers they deserve.

During our April 9 Economic Opportunity legislative hearing, this proposal received support from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, American Enterprise Institute, and the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors.

Now these organizations know firsthand how hard it is to navigate the process of using benefits, so I want to thank the hard work of our Economic Opportunity Subcommittee for holding hearings on H.R. 2045, as amended, where this legislation received universal acclaim from our VSO community.

I also want to thank our VSO community, and the American Federation of Government Employees, who worked with us to make this legislation work for all veterans and all employees currently employed at the VA.

This is a bipartisan bill because we are not trying to make a political point or attack the VA. Instead, we simply want to make the VA run more effectively for the veterans it serves.

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Mr. TAKANO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I might consume.

Madam Speaker, if anyone thinks that business as usual is working at the VA, I would only ask you to look at the implementation of the Forever GI Bill. My good friend the ranking member knows that there were definite issues with the implementation. It did not go well. We are still months away from implementation, which should have happened last year.

When the IG and others evaluated what went wrong, one thing was very clear: There was no accountable leader.

That is what happens when programs are buried in layers of bureaucracy, and that is why I urge my colleagues to join me in passing H.R. 2045, as amended, the VET OPP Act, which will establish an accountable leader at VA for all of those programs that we have under the purview of our Economic Opportunity Subcommittee.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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