Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz Statement at Fiscal Year 2024 Budget Request for the Department of Veterans Affairs Hearing

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), Ranking Member of the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, delivered the following remarks at the Subcommittee's hearing on the fiscal year 2024 budget request for the Department of Veterans Affairs:

**As prepared for delivery**

Thank you, Chairman Carter, for yielding.

I am pleased to welcome back the Honorable Denis McDonough, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, to today’s hearing.

VA’s budget request for fiscal year 2024 totals $318 billion.

Within this amount, the budget requests almost $138 billion for the discretionary programs of VA and $180 billion in mandatory funding for veterans’ benefits and for the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund. I am pleased to see the Administration using the full authority of the Toxic Exposures Fund in its budget request – this is exactly how we intended VA to use it.

$20.3 billion in mandatory funding through the Toxic Exposures Fund ensures our commitment to the PACT Act and to our veterans. This funding will support claims processors, appeals, IT investments, critical research, and of course the healthcare costs for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic substances.

Once again, your budget breaks out VA Medical Care as a third budget category. The intensity and reliance on the VA healthcare system coupled with medical inflation is consistently driving the ever-growing funding requirements of VA Medical Care.

The unique nature of these programs requires VA Medical Care to be considered separately from other nondefense discretionary funding. The third budget category will ensure that funding for veterans’ healthcare will always be taken care of – so veteran healthcare is not pitted against other nondefense discretionary programs.

I fully support the Administration’s request for a third budget category, and I urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to thoughtfully consider this concept as well – it is the best way to take care of our veterans.

Diving into the details a bit, this budget request continues to invest in veterans and will support high quality care in high quality facilities.

Women veterans are the fastest growing population accounting for 30 percent of the increase in veterans served at VA over the past five years. 627,000 women are using VA services, and that number has tripled since 2001.

This budget continues to support healthcare and programs unique to women and expand their access to care.

Additionally, VA continues to prioritize access to mental health, including suicide prevention initiatives, as well as strong investments in homelessness prevention, opioid abuse prevention, and focusing on taking care of the whole veteran through the whole health model of care.

I am proud of the targeted investments we have made over the last four years to increase access to VA for all veterans, and this budget request continues to build on that progress.

However, what concerns me is Republican Leadership’s public promises to limit discretionary spending levels to 2022 levels. If they go through with these reckless and draconian cuts, the impact on our veterans will be devastating.

VA would only be able to support 126 million outpatient visits at those levels, which is 13 million visits or 9 percent less than VA’s projections for 2024.

Wait times will increase and veterans will not be able to access all the care that they need.

Telehealth services will be restricted – which will particularly negatively impact rural veterans.

The claims backlog will continue to grow and veterans would have to wait even longer to receive the benefits they have earned.

Critical research will be curtailed.

I could go on, but suffice it to say there are real world impacts on veterans’ lives when we are looking at underfunding VA by almost $30 billion.

Even if there’s a world where funding for veterans health care is held harmless, that would only further devastate the rest of the nondefense discretionary programs that veterans rely on outside of VA – like homelessness programs, job training and employment resources, and transportation resources.

This is not a game where we go through a cuts exercise, trying to get to some arbitrary number. This proposal to cut VA programs back to FY22 levels plays politics with veterans’ lives.

I urge my Republican colleagues to take a step back and look at the real world, human impact of cutting back to fiscal year 2022 levels.

We have a lot of ground to cover today, and I look forward to your testimony, Mr. Secretary.

Thank you, and I yield back.