Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough said Thursday he’s not worried about the fate of a proposed uptick in his department’s budget yet.
“I’m not going to pre-emptively worry about this,” he said during a March 23 press conference. “We’re at the start of this process, and we’re going to continue to answer questions forthrightly and completely.”
Prior to the press conference, McDonough testified for three hours before the House Veterans Affairs Committee about the $325 billion funding proposal – a 5.4% increase over last year – for VA put forth by the Biden administration.
HVAC Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill) said the budget had “too many gimmicks” during the hearing.
“And today’s gimmicks are tomorrow’s headaches,” he said.
Bost said the budget proposal uses gimmicks such as making some discretionary spending mandatory.
“The traditional way we’ve gone about funding our infrastructure and modernization has not succeeded,” admitted McDonough. “It is true that this is a different way to fund our infrastructure requests.”
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McDonough said the best evidence that the traditional funding method does not work is that each time he’s testified Congress has asked why aren’t you asking for more.
“The second way we know the traditional way of funding infrastructure has not worked well is that in the last 10 years at VA even though the average age of hospitals is 62 years old, we’ve built four hospitals.”
McDonough said a data-driven process, the Strategic Capital Investment Program, helps determine where infrastructure dollars are invested. He added the budget underscores the Biden administration’s commitment to veterans.
“It’s obviously the biggest, most innovative budget that’s ever been submitted on behalf of VA,” he said.
Lawmakers have until Sept. 30 to reach an agreement on the budget. McDonough is expected to testify before several more congressional committees in the coming months.
McDonough addressed a Congressional Budget Office periodic review released on Wednesday of potential cost savings if disability payments were eliminated for veterans with higher incomes and if VA healthcare was limited to certain veterans.
"We think it's a bad idea, and we're not going to do it. You have my commitment that we won't do it," he said during the press conference.
McDonough said the first three days of this week set new records for Veterans Benefits Administration claims completion, ranging from 8,204 to 8,504 claims completed each day.
“To date, we’ve completed 12.3 percent more claims than our record-setting numbers last year,” he said.
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McDonough said that even though more claims are being processed, between 26 to 30% more claims have been received in the same period this year than last. Many of the new claims are the result of the PACT Act being signed into law on Aug. 10, 2022. The law expands VA healthcare and benefits to veterans of all eras who were exposed to toxins during their military service.
To handle that influx, McDonough said VA continues to hire aggressively. He added that only five months into the new fiscal year, nearly 23,000 new hires have been onboarded, resulting in a 2.5% growth rate.
McDonough also provided an update on a recently established equity task force that is charged with examining disparities in the rates at which health care and benefits are granted by VA to minority veterans, McDonough explained.
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“Black vets have served and sacrificed for this country and they deserve access to the world-class health care and benefits that they’ve earned,” McDonough said.
McDonough then made a promise to black veterans watching the press conference.
“We’re actively looking at ending disparities that exist in VA and we’re going to eliminate them,” he said.
The equity task force will recommend ways VA can change its organizational structure, training and outreach to end those differences.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.