National Commander Barton urges VA budget overhaul.

Calling the way veterans health care is funded a failure, National Commander Bradley S. Barton called on Congress to "join the DAV and the entire veterans' community in an open and frank discussion of the current VA appropriations process and how that process might be improved to better serve our nation's sick and disabled veterans."

In his first appearance before the House Veterans' Affairs Committee since being elected National Commander, Barton said "the DAV has been fighting to make sure that veterans health care is adequately funded, and that those funds are available on the first day of the new fiscal year."

"As the current fiscal year draws to a close," he told the committee, "we hear from VA officials around the country that health care funding shortfalls continue to hamper their ability to care for sick and disabled veterans. They are unable, or unwilling, to hire needed medical staff, in large part because of problems with the current budget process. With just days before the new fiscal year, the VA still does not have an appropriations bill."

"It is impossible for the VA to plan for the coming fiscal year when it does not know what its budget will be or when it will get its allocation. And that is no way to run the second largest federal agency with the country's largest integrated health care system. The VA simply cannot function properly under those conditions," he said.

"The current budget process is a failure: it fails to serve veterans; it fails to serve the VA; and it fails the American taxpayer," Commander Barton told the committee. The solution, he said, is changing VA's health care funding stream from a discretionary to a mandatory program.

Commander Barton's Sept. 20 testimony took on added importance as the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report critical of the administration's budgeting for veterans health care. The report found that VA budget projections were based on unrealistic assumptions and insufficient and outdated information that led to serious funding shortfalls in veterans health care for the last two years.

Congress was forced to pass emergency supplemental appropriations to cover a $3 billion shortfall, something VA officials knew was coming but did not report to lawmakers. The GAO report includes recommendations to improve the VA's budgeting for health care and ways to facilitate congressional oversight.

House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), who last year decided to cancel joint hearings of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees, said the September hearings were to "review the fiscal year just ending and look forward into the next year."

Commander Barton urged Chairman Buyer to reconsider his decision to discontinue those joint hearings. "Personally, I would be honored and privileged to appear before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees and my peers, my fellow members of the DAV, to present DAV's legislative agenda in February 2007," he said.

Commander Barton told the committee that although the proposed VA budget for fiscal year 2007 comes close to the levels recommended by the DAV and other coauthors of The Independent Budget, an additional $2 billion in discretionary funding is needed. He also said the DAV is "very concerned about another tightfisted budget in fiscal year 2008 and its impact on the needs of our nation's veterans."

According to some reports, the VA medical services budget faces a 3 percent cut in 2008 and would hover below $27 billion for the next four years.

Commander Barton also discussed another issue of great importance to the DAV and those veterans seeking benefits from the VA--pending legislation that would permit attorneys to charge veterans for assisting with their VA claims.

"The DAV firmly believes that allowing attorneys to charge a fee to represent veterans would not be in the best interests of veterans, and would be detrimental to the VA as well," he said.

"As an attorney and a veteran who has considerable experience with the VA claims process, it is difficult to see how allowing attorneys to charge for their services will improve the situation. What ails the VA claims system has nothing to do with who veterans choose to represent them," the Commander said.

The real issues, he stressed, are the timeliness and accuracy of the decisions banded down by VA claims workers.

"I can understand why some attorneys advocate changing the system. And some veterans honestly believe they would receive better representation by attorneys. But empirical data from the Board of Veterans' Appeals shows that attorneys have a lower average allowance rate than veterans service organizations," Commander Barton said.

"Veterans who fought for our country should never have to fight our government to get the benefits a grateful nation has provided for their sacrifices and service. Congress itself intended that these benefits be provided with a minimum of difficulty," he stressed.

"The DAV does not stand alone in its opposition to these bills. This legislation is also opposed by the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, AMVETS and several other military and veterans organizations. And I remind you that the VA itself is opposed to this ill-advised change in law," the Commander said.

Commander Barton said the VA needs to hire more claims workers and provide intensive training to improve the quality as well as the timeliness of decisions. The VA also must enforce uniform quality standards through more effective management and exercise real accountability at all levels. More timely medical examinations and better information-sharing between the Veterans Benefits Administration and VA health care facilities are also needed.

"Only when the VA has taken these steps and Congress provides the necessary resources, will veterans receive the level of service they deserve. The VA's objective--and its duty--is to provide timely and accurate decisions on veterans' claims," Commander Barton said.

In addition, Commander Barton urged the committee to consider improvements to several VA programs designed to benefit our nation's disabled veterans. Those recommendations were drawn from long-standing resolutions adopted at the DAV National Convention in Chicago and include the following:

* Support additional increases in grants for automobiles or other conveyances available to certain disabled veterans and provide for automatic annual adjustments based on the increase in the cost of living. When this program was originally created in 1946, the law set the allowance at an amount sufficient to pay the full cost of a lower-priced new automobile. With subsequent cost-of-living increases, Congress sought to provide 85 percent of the average cost of a new automobile, and later 80 percent. Because of a lack of regular adjustments to keep pace with increased costs, the value of the automobile allowance has substantially eroded through the years. Currently, the $11,000 automobile allowance represents only about a third of the average cost of automobiles in the year 2005.

* Increase the face value of Service Disabled Veterans' Insurance (SDVI). The current $10,000 maximum for life insurance for veterans was first established in 1917, when most annual salaries were considerably less than $10,000. The maximum protection available under SDVI should be increased to at least $50,000 to provide adequately for the needs of our survivors.

* Authorize VA to revise its premium schedule for SDVI to reflect current mortality tables. Premium rates are still based on mortality tables from 1941, thereby costing disabled veterans more for government life insurance than is available on the commercial market.

* Provide an additional increase in the specially adapted housing grant and automatic annual adjustments based on increases in the cost of living.