U.S. House Votes to Pay For More Veterans’ Claims Processors
Bloomberg News
By Timothy R. Homan
Jun 4, 2013
The U.S. House voted to give the Veterans Affairs Department, which was exempted from this year’s budget cuts and furloughs, the money to hire more staff in fiscal 2014.
The spending bill, which advanced on a vote of 421-4, would allow the department to hire 94 new employees to help handle a backlog of disability claims that has drawn the ire of lawmakers. The department has 56 regional benefits offices serving more than 20 million veterans.
“I will not accept any further excuses; the VA must make progress,” Representative Nita Lowey, the top Democrat on the panel that wrote the appropriations bill, said today.
Average wait times for first-time disability claims range between 316 days and 327 days, according to a May 28 bipartisan letter signed by 165 House lawmakers.
The legislation was the first of its 12 annual spending bills to reach the House floor. It would increase resources for military veterans and reduce funding for Pentagon construction projects.
The bill’s $157.8 billion total is almost $13 billion more than current funding levels.
The Veterans Affairs Department would be given 3.5 percent more in fiscal 2014, in part to help reduce its backlog of disability claims, while funding for Defense Department construction spending would decline by about 7 percent.
“Clearly this is an austere budget year, to put it mildly,” Kentucky Republican Hal Rogers, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said today. “Virtually all areas of the government will face cuts.”
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