By Tom Zampieri
Firestorm on Capitol Hill
Since joining BVA as the Director of Government Relations in
April, this first update summarizes what occurred this past summer
with the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) budget crisis. The
months of June and July were filled with Congressional hearings
on budgetary problems, which occurred as a result of inadequate
VA funding for Fiscal Year 2005.
In late June, VA Secretary James Nicholson announced at a Senate
hearing that there would be a $1 billion shortfall and that Congress
would need to pass a supplemental appropriation. Although veterans
had, for many months, been providing Members of Congress with
reports of growing waiting lists, delayed surgeries, and other
problems due to insufficient funding, the Bush Administration
was slow to come forward and admit the problem, waiting until
June to do so.
What was especially troubling about the entire mess was that
a year ago the Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee,
Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ-4), had requested an increase of
$1.3 billion and was denied. Not only was that request for funding
denied, it later cost him his chairmanship as he had spoken out
against the House leadership’s funding for VA.
On April 5, in a letter to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee,
Secretary Nicholson denied that any additional funding would be
needed for the remainder of FY 2005. Prior to this event, on March
16, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) tried to attach an amendment in
the Senate Budget Committee for a supplemental $2.8 billion. The
additional funds would cover the costs of care for soldiers returning
from Afghanistan and Iraq, increased veteran enrollment, and medical
inflationary expenses that the system has had to absorb. This
amendment was defeated.
On June 28, the Senate approved an additional $1.5 billion in
supplemental funding for the crisis in which VA now found itself.
Two days later, Secretary Nicholson told the House Committee that
all VA really needed was $950 million in supplemental funding
to cover the FY 2005 shortfall. That amount was quickly approved
on the same day. One should ask how such vastly different amounts
could be requested in one week.
After the July 4 holiday recess, Congress returned to try to
reconcile the differences in those two supplemental bills. On
Monday, July 11, to the amazement of everyone watching this process,
VA admitted that $950 million was not enough and that the Department
needed another $350 million. We had come full circle to the nearly
precise $1.3 billion figure that Chairman Smith had predicted
VA would need this year. The $1.3 billion was also the estimate
of the Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) in the Independent
Budget for FY 2005.
The admission by Secretary Nicholson prompted another set of
House appropriations and VA committee hearings. OMB Director Joshua
Bolten appeared at this circus on July 14. He told Congress that
while VA needed the funds now, “the consecutive previous
three years preceding this one saw more money appropriated than
was needed for VA health care!”
The real facts are that, despite a 36 percent increase in funding
for VA during the past three years, enrollment has grown 72 percent
from $4.3 million in 1999 to $7.2 million in 2004. Medical inflationary
costs averaged 12 percent during those years. The VA budget figure
also did not include the more than 88,000 new veterans returning
from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and their enrollment in the
system. Some 1,800 of the 88,000 have required hospitalization.
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