Independent Budget releases VA funding recommendations for FY 2018
The new administration has not yet delivered its budget proposal to Congress which generally comes out the first week in February. While this is typical for new incoming administrations, it could impact the ability of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to deliver needed benefits and services to veterans, their dependents and survivors.
Significant VA reform efforts are underway for which Congress will need to ensure VA’s budget for fiscal year 2018 and fiscal 2019 advance appropriations will be sufficient to meet any new requirements it imposes on VA, make needed system upgrades and meet existing demand for care and the specialized needs of ill and injured veterans.
For the 30th year, the Independent Budget — co-authored by DAV, Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA)—released its budget report in February. The recommendations included funding proposals for all VA discretionary programs for fiscal 2018 as well as advance appropriations recommendations for medical care accounts for fiscal 2019. For veterans’ health care for fiscal year 2018, Independent Budget partners recommend an increase of $5.9 billion over the current fiscal year funding level. The total medical care funding of $76.9 billion includes funding for the newly created Medical Community Care account. For fiscal 2019 advance appropriations, the partners recommend about $82.8 billion for medical care.
The recommended $5.9 billion increase for VA medical care for fiscal 2018 is intended to bridge the funding shortfall the former Secretary of Veterans Affairs openly admitted last year. The funding gap is due in part to the adjustment in discretionary appropriations that Congress provided for VA medical care this fiscal year, which assumed the agency would spend $5.7 billion in mandatory funds through the Choice program. The fiscal 2018 and 2019 Independent Budget recommendation uses more recent estimates from VA indicating they will only spend about $2.9 billion in the Choice program for this fiscal year.
For medical and prosthetic research, the partners propose $775 million, which includes an additional $65 million of dedicated funding for the Million Veteran Program—a DNA repository research program focused on veterans’ health.
In order to maintain VA’s health care system, budget partners also recommended $2.2 billion for major and minor construction for fiscal 2018, an increase of over $1.3 billion from the previous year. The hope is these resources will fund the completion of VA’s top five major construction projects, update aging research infrastructure and put VA on track to close all identified minor construction gaps within 10 years.
For the Veterans Benefits Administration, partners recommend $3.1 billion to keep pace with incoming, existing and projected workload, which is estimated to require VBA to hire 1,700 additional employees: 1,000 for processing the backlog of appeals; 350 for non-rating related work such as dependency claims; 300 to work the claims inventory and backlog; and 100 for the fiduciary program. Last year, Congress passed Public Law 114-223, recognizing the need for a more balanced counselor-to-client ratio of 1:125 in the Vocational Rehabilitation and Education program. To reach this goal, Independent Budget partners recommend 266 new vocational rehabilitation staff, for a total workforce of 1,550.
“Our budget recommendations come from intense research and collaboration among DAV, VFW and PVA,” said DAV Washington Headquarters Executive Director Garry Augustine. “The report reflects our best estimates of the actual cost to provide veterans with the benefits and health care they have earned through their military service. What we’ve done here is outline what it will take to ensure that there is sufficient capacity and resources for enrolled veterans and to meet the specialized needs of all injured and ill veterans.”