This bill provides funding levels that members on both sides agree are appropriate, while avoiding contentious legislative riders that complicate passage.
Thank you for yielding Mr. Chairman. As you all know, this bill has a strong reputation for common ground and bipartisanship as members traditionally work together to fund construction of military facilities and strive to improve the quality of life and care afforded to our veterans and military families. Thankfully, Chairman Culberson continues this tradition as this bill provides funding levels that members on both sides agree are appropriate, while avoiding contentious legislative riders that complicate passage.
Military Construction is $9.9 billion, a decrease of $670 million below 2013 and $1.056 billion below the budget request. Half of the reductions come from recessions of prior year unobligated balances and adjustments to current year projects. The Department of Veterans Affairs is funded at $63.1 billion and overall, the subcommittee recommendation meets the discretionary budget request in all areas of administrative expenses, research, information technology and facilities. In addition, the bill includes $55.6 billion in advances same as the budget request.
Now I know a lot of members of this Committee are concerned about the claims backlog and electronic health record. Trust me, the members of our committee especially Chairman Culberson and I have spoken with Secretary Shinseki about these issues numerous times and I believe our bill provides the resources and accountability needed to address these two problems. First, the bill fully funds the General Operating Expenses for the VBA which will support 20,851 claims processors, which is 94 more than fiscal year 2013 and all 94 new claims processors will work disability claims. Second the bill fully funds the Veterans Benefit Management System (VBMS) at $155 million and the Veterans Claims Intake Program (VCIP) at $136.4 million. These two efforts should speed up the VA's efforts to take old claims filed on paper and convert them into digital files that are easily searchable by claims processors thus speeding up the claims process. Second, we include a monthly reporting requirement for the VA to provide Congress with several statistics such as average wait time at each regional office, the rating inventory that has been pending for 125 days, rating claims accuracy, and month to month updates in changes to these statistics. Third, we require a report on the VA's expedited claims initiative that was announced a few weeks ago. This report should give the Committee insight into whether or not the Secretary's new initiatives are having positive results. Finally, the bill directs the VA and DOD toward one, integrated system in bill language and restricts the availability of funds for the development of an electronic health record unless the system meets the requirements of being single, joint, common, and integrated, with an open architecture, and is the sole system used by both DOD and VA. This initiative would ensure veterans get their records to the VA electronically thus reducing the number of claims filed on paper and speeding up the claims process. Now the Committee's action does not mandate the adoption of a particular system, only that it be a single system used by both Departments. I don't think we should get into the business of picking software. But I do believe that by mandating a single system between both DOD and the VA that veteran claims in the future will not continue to fall victim to the slow, bureaucratic inefficiencies that we're dealing with today.
As I said earlier Chairman Culberson crafted a good bill that does not contain any contentious riders and sufficiently funds military construction accounts, the VA, cemetery expenses and the battle monuments commission. I would hope that at the end of this mark up I can still say that this is a clean bill.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Source: U.S. Department of HCA
