Veterans Benefits Fairness and Transparency Act of 2020

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARR. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to have my bill, H.R. 7795, the Veterans Benefits Fairness and Transparency Act of 2020 before the House of Representatives today.

I would like to thank my good friend, Ranking Member Roe, for his support of this legislation, and would especially like to thank my colleague across the aisle and chair of the Disability and Memorial Affairs Subcommittee, Representative Elaine Luria, for co-leading this bipartisan legislation with me. I appreciate Representative Luria's leadership on this issue.

This bill is vitally important because it will restore access for veterans and their representatives to the disability benefits questionnaires forms previously available on the VA's public website. Our veterans used these forms to submit evidence to the VA for their disability claims until the VA removed them in April of this year in the middle of a pandemic, making it harder for veterans to submit their evidence and get the benefits owed to them.

The idea for this legislation was brought to me by a member of Kentucky's Sixth Congressional District Veterans' Coalition, Chief Warrant Officer Denny Hart. I know Mr. Hart, he is a good patriotic man, and he continues to serve our country by helping other veterans file their disability claims with the VA.

However, after the VA removed these forms from being publicly available, they effectively shut out Mr. Hart and others from assisting our veterans. There were only 11 VA contract examiners in the Sixth District of Kentucky in January of this year. Now, to their credit, the VA has increased the number of those contract examiners, probably because of this legislation. But until we have the assurances that a sufficient number of VA contract examiners are able to assist all of the veterans with their disability claims, we need public-facing DBQs.

My legislation gives the VA additional manpower to process a veteran's DBQ by maintaining the ability of a veteran's own provider to fill out the form. This is something vital to veterans in rural communities who may be far from a VA medical center or contract examiner.

Furthermore, our proposal prevents veterans from having their disability claim delayed or denied because the VA changed their DBQ form during the application process without the veteran knowing. During this pandemic, we must ensure our veterans' disability claims process is not paused or compromised solely due to a change in a bureaucratic form.

We must protect veterans from unnecessary burdens while securing benefits owed to them. No veteran should be denied the disability benefits to which he or she is justly entitled solely because a DBQ is not publicly available or because the VA changed the form in the middle of the process.

This is commonsense legislation supported by multiple veteran service organizations, such as the Disabled American Veterans, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, Minority Veterans of America, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and more.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation and restore this vital resource for our Nation's heroes.

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