Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment which seeks to provide additional resources for the mental health services for our Nation's veterans.

By way of background, the VA's budget justification for FY16 requests an increase of $3,231,000 over the enacted fiscal year '15 levels for its Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs, but on the very next page of that document, the VA only mentions that it needs ``$1.2 million to address increased congressional and legislative workload.''

My amendment simply transfers the remaining $2,031,000 unaccounted for from this request and prioritizes it to address the ongoing problems our veterans face from returning from combat.

Traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder have been consistently contributing to behavioral issues with our veterans, and, all too often, these ongoing mental health issues result in suicide. With an average of 18 to 20 veteran suicides per day, more resources are desperately needed. The Congressional Budget Office says the amendment would have no impact on the budget authority or outlays.

The VA does not need more money to hire more paper pushers to send letters to Capitol Hill to attempt to explain its inappropriate actions. Instead, let's appropriate the money to those whom the VA was created to serve, and let's help improve the mental health of our Nation's heroes.

I ask my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment. I thank Chairman Dent and Ranking Member Bishop for their time.

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Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment that would transfer $8 million within this bill to hire and train personnel for the purposes of reducing the veterans' disability claims backlog.

By way of background, the VA's budget justification for the fiscal year 2016 requests an increase of $12 million for its Office of General Counsel, but on the very next page of that document, it says it needs $4 million to ``address increases in the legal workload.''

The VA budget justification also says that the VA's goal is to have an additional 45 full-time equivalent lawyers for its Office of General Counsel, which would take the total number of attorneys up to 757. According to the committee report for the last 5 years, the committee has fully funded the President's budget request for additional full-time equivalents, and yet the claim backlogs remain.

My amendment seeks to reprogram money within the Veterans Benefits Administration from the Office of General Counsel and put it towards the hiring and training of personnel who will work to reduce the VA claims backlog. The Congressional Budget Office says this amendment has no score.

I think most of us can agree that the appropriations would be better spent on the VA claims backlog reduction rather than hiring more lawyers. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

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Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer a straightforward amendment that would strengthen the ability of the Board of Veterans Appeals to reduce its backlog.

I applaud the committee for taking on the difficult task of prioritizing limited resources for our veterans. The committee rightfully recommends the budget request level for the Board of Veterans Appeals, but I will note that one of the primary concerns I hear from my casework staff and directly from the veterans is the need for increased resources to the Board of Veterans Appeals.

According to the committee report accompanying this bill, ``appeals received by BVA are projected to increase from 49,611 in 2012 to 81,640 cases in 2016.'' That is a 65 percent increase in just 4 short years.

With our troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, it is no wonder why there is such a significant spike in the claims and appeals. I simply want to heed the call of the veterans in my district and across this country and ensure that the Board of Veterans Appeals has the resources necessary to address the seemingly endless backlog.

CBO says this amendment would have no impact on budget authority or outlays.

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Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer an amendment to provide additional resources for the information technology systems at the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Updates and upgrades to IT systems at the VA are paramount to meeting the goals of veterans claims backlog reduction.

I applaud the committee for recommending resources above and beyond last year's enacted levels, but the recommended levels are significantly beneath the President's budget request levels.

Last year, I offered an amendment to this same appropriation bill, House amendment 635, which transferred just over $3.2 million from the general administration account at the VA to the IT systems account. That amendment was agreed to by a voice vote. Today, I offer essentially the same amendment.

I just want to note, as I have before, that many of our veterans are simply giving up. They are either giving up on trying to obtain the benefits they deserve or, worse, some of them are giving up on life altogether. It is a travesty, and this is an appalling trend that must be reversed.

I appreciate the committee's hard work and its acknowledgment of the importance of reducing the backlog in this bill. Having said that, I think we can do more and should focus on prioritizing funding for efforts that will lead to timelier care for our Nation's heroes, as opposed to administrative expenses.

My commonsense amendment proposes redirecting a fraction of the funds in the general administration account away from things like funding for conference expenses and bureaucrats and shifting those funds toward reducing the VA claims backlog.

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Mr. Chairman, last year, in the midst of the explosive allegations about the Phoenix VA's keeping secondary unofficial records of claims and appointment requests, I offered a similar amendment that passed this body which prohibited funds from being used to create or to maintain unofficial recordkeeping systems at the Department of Veterans Affairs. This year, I am proud, once again, to offer this commonsense policy with the support of my friend and colleague from Georgia.

As many of you know, several whistleblowers came forward with allegations that the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Healthcare System had been using secondary unofficial records of veterans claims and appointment requests to misrepresent the actual wait times that veterans faced as they sought health care. Some employees within the VA even received bonuses as a result of these manipulations. It is unfortunate that, over the past year, many of these once unthinkable allegations have become substantiated.

Recently, an inspector general's investigation uncovered actual memos from VA leadership that encouraged this type of behavior. This is outrageous. The memo I speak of is known as the ``Fast Letter 13-10,'' and it was handed down directly from the Office of the Director of Veterans Benefits Administration to the Philadelphia VA Regional Office.

I am appalled but not totally surprised to learn of this memo. I have said this before, but it is sad that we have to pass amendments to prevent this type of behavior. When government bureaucrats don't use good judgment or common sense, Congress must address these issues. No matter what the investigation shows and no matter who was involved, this practice must be prevented in the future.

This amendment would prohibit the practice of altering or falsifying veterans wait-time data pursuant to the Fast Letter or any other purpose. We should have only one, uniform patient recordkeeping system within the VA in order to provide accountability as well as uniformity and to prevent employee manipulation.

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