Letter to The Honorable R. James Nicholson, Secretary, Department of Veterans Affairs
Letter
Letter to The Honorable R. James Nicholson, Secretary, Department of Veterans Affairs
The Honorable R. James Nicholson
Secretary
Department of Veterans Affairs
Washington, DC
Dear Secretary Nicholson:
We are writing to express our serious concerns about the continued delays by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in providing information on disparities in average benefits compensation.
We have corresponded and met on this topic on multiple occasions, both with you and Under Secretary for Benefits Daniel Cooper. Nevertheless, troubling gaps in data and reporting persist. This information is crucial to informing the legislative efforts underway to reform the VA, in particular, the benefits claims process and the health care system. Because of long waiting times and red tape, many veterans are unable to access these services and, as a result, many of their needs go unmet.
According to a story in the New York Times last week, veterans in Illinois - a state that has contributed more servicemembers to the Global War on Terror than 44 others - ranked among the lowest in the average level of benefits compensation. At the same time, Illinois has ranked among the highest in the number of backlogged, pending claims.
We are concerned that the VA is not adequately planning for the large number of new veterans. Last week in testimony before the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, Admiral Cooper confirmed that the VA was planning its FY 2008 staffing and funding levels around an assumption that it will receive fewer claims than in previous years - even as the President has begun to escalate the war in Iraq.
In the face of such dubious estimates, we supported Chairman Daniel Akaka's request for an additional $2.9 billion above the President's budget request for the VA, as well as hundreds of new claims workers and other improvements to the health system. But additional funding is only a stop gap measure.
In order for Congress address some of the systemic problems within the VA, we need additional information that we have thus far been unable to obtain. We ask that you provide the following the data to us:
# The FY 2006 state-by-state figures for average veterans benefits compensation, and how these figures have changed since FY 2005;
# Any interim FY 2007 state-by-state figures for average veterans benefits compensation, and how these figures have changed since FY 2006;
# The number of claims workers broken down by regional office for the past three fiscal years;
# The average waiting time for claims to be processed broken down by regional office for the past three fiscal years;
# The number of veterans in the states that were subject to the special disability benefits outreach - Ohio, Michigan, Connecticut, Indiana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois - whose benefit determinations were reexamined since May 2006; the average waiting time for these reexaminations; the number of veterans whose benefits were subsequently increased; the number of veterans whose benefits were subsequently decreased; and the average amount that benefits were changed as a result of these reexaminations; and
# A detailed explanation of the models that the VA used to estimate that benefits claims will actually decrease even as the President has requested an increase in the number of troops in Iraq.
We ask that you respond to these questions by March 27, 2007. Thank you.
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