Senate conservatives have shown early resistance to fast-tracking legislation to address a roughly $3 billion budget shortfall at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with officials warning that benefits for millions of veterans are at risk in the coming weeks.
Amid growing concerns about budget shortfalls, some senators had hoped they could pass a bipartisan bill this week, but the effort has faced pushback from some conservatives as Republicans have stepped up scrutiny of the issue.
“When you spend billions of dollars, you have to ask yourself, do we have controls in place that are spending it wisely? Where did the money go?,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told The Hill on Tuesday afternoon. “We gave them a record amount of money and it just disappeared?”
“Someone made a bad decision, someone mismanaged it and all of that needs to be discussed and resolved. That’s why I would never let it go through without discussion,” he said.
The VA said Congress provided about $2.9 billion in “mandated benefit funds” for the fiscal year that ends at the end of September, and it needs to fund about $12 billion in health care spending in the next fiscal year. The agency blames the passage of the PACT Act of 2022 as a major factor in the shortfall, and points to an increase in enrollment in VA’s Medical, Appointment and Claims benefits.
Senators discussed potentially speeding up passage of the bill to address the roughly $3 billion shortfall before going on their August recess this week, but the process, also known as “unanimous consent,” means passage could be delayed if a single senator objects to passage.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama) also said he was putting the bill on hold but was calling for a public hearing.
“I just want to know why. Don’t send me a letter saying, ‘We need $3 billion,’ tell me why you need it. Ask both sides. That’s fair,” he said Wednesday afternoon, but added that he generally supports providing funding to make up the shortfall.
These comments come as a growing number of people are sounding the alarm about the issue.
“The problem is that if we don’t get this resolved quickly, benefits could be affected starting in October. That’s very concerning,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, the ranking Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee, which writes the government’s 12 annual funding bills.
“I’m also very frustrated with the VA because they should have known they were underfunding these accounts and I don’t accept the argument that they didn’t know that was going to happen,” she said. “That can’t be the case.”
If Congress does not provide additional funding by the Sept. 20 deadline, veterans’ compensation, pension and resettlement payments could be delayed.
Sen. Collins introduced the bill this week along with Senate Appropriations Chair Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (R-AZ) and Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas).
The bill calls for more than $2.8 billion in additional funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs, allocating about $2.3 billion to the Veterans Benefits Administration for compensation and pensions and about $597 million for job re-employment benefits.
The bill also calls for the Government Accountability Office to review “the circumstances and causes of the shortfall” and “any remedial measures that the Department may take to improve its budget submissions and prevent future shortfalls.”
