The Senate passed an emergency funding bill for the Department of Veterans Affairs in September due to what was described to lawmakers at the time as an impending multibillion-dollar shortfall. Republicans are now questioning how dire the situation actually was at the time.
Officials from the VA told lawmakers back in July that they were facing a financial shortcoming this year and next and that veterans’ compensation and pension benefit payments, as well as their readjustment benefits, could be delayed if Congress did not move quickly to provide additional funding.
The House passed legislation to provide them with about $3 billion in added funding on Sept. 19.
“This egregious miscalculation by the administration and Department of Veterans Affairs has not only raised serious questions but exposed a grave failure,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said after the House passed the emergency funding legislation. “Preventing any potential lapse in our veterans’ benefits remains top priority for Congress. Our veterans earned these benefits through their unwavering service and sacrifice, and it should never be jeopardized because of this administration’s negligence.”
The problem is that the VA has now said it did not use the more than $2.8 billion in supplemental funding for fiscal 2024. It provided an update to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs last week, and its admission has resulted in frustration from lawmakers who feel they have been misled.
The VA told Congress over the summer that it was facing a spending shortfall due to the increase in the number of veterans seeking medical treatments from the department. The Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, better known as the PACT Act, which Congress passed in 2022 with bipartisan support, expanded VA benefits eligibility for veterans with 23 respiratory illnesses related to burn pits used by the military.
VA officials still want Congress to pass another supplemental funding package for $12 billion for fiscal 2025, which lawmakers were expected to debate once they get back in session following the 2024 elections.
“VA is currently delivering more care and more benefits to more Veterans than ever before in our nation’s history, including delivering an all-time record $187 billion in earned benefits to veterans and their survivors last year alone,” VA spokesman Terrence Hayes told the Washington Examiner.
The admission from the VA about not using the passed supplemental funding upset the chairman of the committee, Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL), who wrote a letter to VA Secretary Denis McDonough along with House Appropriations Committee’s veterans panel Chairman John Carter (R-TX) raising their concerns and announcing they will be “launching a full investigation to get to the bottom of this.”
The VA, however, contends that its pleas to Congress were meant as a warning for a worst-case scenario that simply wasn’t realized.
“Out of an abundance of caution last fiscal year, VA requested additional benefits funding — because if we were even $1 short on funding, critical benefits for 7 million veterans and survivors would have been delayed,” Hayes said. “Those veterans and survivors rely on those monthly payments, and any delay could have been devastating for them and their families — and that was not a risk that we were willing to take.”
The VA carried over 2.5% of compensation and pension benefits funding and 4.6% of education benefits funding this year from the year prior, which a VA spokesperson said is much lower than in previous years. Last year, they carried over 10.1% and 30% from the year before, and the year before, there was a carryover of 11.7% and 43.2%.
But Bost and a handful of other Republicans aren’t buying it. They have accused the VA of misleading them and misrepresenting the financial situation at play.
“The response shows that, in fact, no benefits shortfall ever existed and much of the information your leadership team has provided about a purported health care shortfall was erroneous,” Bost and Carter said in their letter to McDonough. “This revelation severely undermines our confidence in the Biden-Harris administration’s stewardship of the federal budget and your management of VA.”
The chairman accused Undersecretary for Benefits Joshua Jacobs, Undersecretary for Health Shereef Elnahal, and their chief financial officers of having “repeatedly misinformed Congress and our nation’s veterans, even risking inciting a panic among veterans about their benefits being delayed or cut.”
The VA spokesperson pointed the Washington Examiner to Jacobs’s testimony on Capitol Hill in which he told lawmakers, “These funding estimates are conservative to ensure sufficient funding is available to get through the fiscal year and deliver on the promise to provide veterans their earned benefits on time.”
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), the top Republican on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, also expressed outrage at the funding miscalculation and miscommunication.
“VA has a sacred duty to care for veterans and a responsibility to faithfully use the resources entrusted to the department by Congress,” Moran said in a statement. “For a second time this year, VA has miscounted billions of dollars and found that, despite telling Congress that the department was on the verge of running out of funds for veterans’ benefits, it in fact had a surplus of funds for FY2024.”
The Kansas senator is poised to lead the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee in the new Congress following the GOP’s recapturing of the majority in the upper chamber. Moran previously served as the chairman of the committee from 2020 to 2021. The committee’s current chairman, Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), lost his reelection bid to GOP Sen.-elect Tim Sheehy in a key pickup for the Republicans, helping them wrest the majority back from Democrats.
“It is a privilege to serve as the ranking member on the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, and I would be honored to continue that service as chairman next Congress,” Moran said Thursday, according to Stars and Stripes, adding that his priorities will be focused on preventing veteran suicides and homelessness, in addition to the continued implementation of the PACT Act and the agency’s modernization efforts.
“There is no group of people I hold in higher regard than those who serve our nation, and I take seriously the responsibility of providing our veterans with the best our country has to offer,” added Moran, who has been on the committee for more than a decade.
The agency has pointed to the PACT Act as the primary factor behind the budget shortfall, citing increases in enrollment in VA healthcare, appointments, and applications benefits. The legislation expanded healthcare coverage for military veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits that have plagued veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Burn pits were often used to burn waste ranging from mundane trash to munitions to hazardous material and chemical compounds at military sites.
An estimated 3.5 million service members could have been exposed to burn pits in the Middle East, according to Department of Defense.
In the two years since Biden signed it into law, the VA has approved more than a million disability claims related to illnesses covered under the PACT Act totaling more than $6.8 billion in payouts, according to the Military Times. More than 700,000 veterans have enrolled in VA healthcare in that time after the legislation expanded eligibility.
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Comedian Jon Stewart was among the PACT Act’s most vocal advocates as the legislation navigated through Capitol Hill, and he has long supported veterans. Stewart famously excoriated senators for initially stalling the bill, before Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NJ) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY) were able to reach a bipartisan deal.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this situation where people who have already given so much had to fight so hard to get so little,” Stewart said at the time. “I hope we learned a lesson.”