Bishop statement at subcommittee markup of 2016 Military Construction-VA Appropriations bill

Thank you Mr. Chairman

I want to congratulate Chairman Dent on making it through his first hearing cycle as Chairman and on his first subcommittee markup. I would like to thank you for the cooperative tone you set from day one. I believe the Chairman has worked very hard to get us to this point. I pleased several aspects of the bill. For example, the bill maintains the tough but fair reporting requirements for Electronic Health Records endeavor.  The bill continues to prioritize the elimination of the claims backlog, and it includes steps to keep the Board of Veterans Appeals ahead of the curve.  I think these are all positive steps to making the VA function better.  Furthermore, this bill does not contain any policy riders.

However, Mr. Chairman, we sat through hearing after hearing and listened to witnesses testify on the FY 2016 budget and how its goal was to end sequestration and fully reverse the cuts to domestic priorities in 2016. 

Unfortunately, the Majority’s budget resolution chose to lock in these lower levels and use gimmicks to boost defense funding. Because of the budget resolutions failure to provide relief from these budget caps, which were established in 2011 and later adjusted in 2013; Chairman Dent was forced to make some tough choices due to the allocation he was given.   

Even though we are seeing moderate increases above the enacted level I believe this is still an inadequate allocation.  For example for the request for VA Major Construction is basically cut in half, I am concerned that this reduction will further contribute to the gaps in access, utilization and safety that were already identified in the VA’s annual SCIP process.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to point out that the FY 2017 advance funding is going to eat up $4.6 billion of the non-defense discretionary cap. So next fiscal year the problem only gets worse if we continue to ignore the problem with having budget caps. Mr. Chairman, I believe that it’s well past time to be more strategic about how we handle our federal budget.  And now we need to take the next step and stop lurching from crisis to crisis. 

Mr. Chairman, this is the first step in a long process and I am concerned about impact these reductions could have and I believe they will have to be addressed as we move through the process.

Thank you Mr. Chairman and I yield back.