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Lawmakers: Pass VA budget a year in advance

In response to years of complaints about late and unpredictable veterans’ health care funding, the House and Senate veterans’ affairs committee chairmen have introduced a proposal to provide funding one year in advance.

This is exactly what the Partnership for Veterans Health Care Budget Reform, a group of nine veterans groups, had been calling for.

The idea is a radical change from current law, and would treat the Veterans Affairs Department budget differently than budgets for other federal agencies.

It is unlikely the legislation would come to a vote this year, but its introduction — slightly more than a month before the general elections — gives veterans the chance to try to press more lawmakers to get on board. The proposal would need substantial support just to get serious consideration, according to congressional aides involved in federal budgeting issues.

VA runs the largest health care system in the nation, “but its funding is untimely and unpredictable,” said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, the Senate veterans committee chairman. “Advance funding for veterans’ health care is better for veterans, taxpayers, and VA.”

“For almost two decades, veterans health care funding has either been insufficient or late, and usually it is both,” said Randy Pleva, president of Paralyzed Veterans of America, one of the groups in the partnership that has sought the change. “While funding bills have increased in recent years, especially the last two years, they are still consistently late. We must reform the funding system if we are to assure comprehensive and timely health care services for current and future generations of veterans.”

Rep. Phil Hare, D-Ill., one of the 126 cosponsors of the House version of the bill, called the current budgeting process — in which Congress rarely completes its work by the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1 — “simply unacceptable.”

The budget has been late 17 of the last 19 years, he said.

The Senate version of the bill has nine cosponsors.

The House veterans committee chairman, Rep. Bob Filner, D-Calif., called the bill a “historic new approach to guarantee that our veterans have access to comprehensive, quality health care that they deserve and have earned.”

“For too many years, VA has had to make do with insufficient budgets resulting in restricted access for many veterans,” Filner said. “When funding is short, it is our veterans who pay the price.”