Dear Friend,
One of the best parts of my job is supporting our military men and women all the way through their careers, from nominating outstanding high school students to our military academies to making sure that our veterans have proper care. It is a privilege to chair the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs (MilCon-VA) Appropriations Subcommittee to ensure that our active duty military and our veterans have the support that they need.
Today, Secretary Eric Shinseki testified before the MilCon-VA Subcommittee on the Department of Veterans' Affairs priorities and discussed the ongoing claims backlog.
Unfortunately, when our veterans seek medical care, they are too often confronted with a disorganized VA. For many veterans, the wait time for processing claims--the time from the submission of the claim until the benefits are granted--is over a year. Many medical and claims files are stored as paper documents in warehouses around the country, and there are more than 600,000 claims waiting to be processed. Our veterans should not have to wait weeks and months to have their claims processed by the VA. The federal government is treating 21st century veterans with 19th century technology. This is unacceptable.
I'm committed to solving this problem. The MilCon-VA subcommittee has a longstanding bipartisan tradition of support for our veterans, and we are working with the VA to fix this backlog quickly and correctly. Secretary Shinseki reported on the VA's progress in decreasing the claims backlog and how they plan to digitize veterans' compensation claims to avoid lengthy claims backlog in the future. The MilCon-VA committee will continue our rigorous oversight to make sure that this backlog is fixed correctly and quickly.
These are tough budgetary times, but providing for the military and our veterans is a duty that we simply cannot neglect. Today's hearing reaffirmed my commitment to fight for those who defend our freedom--we should never stop fighting for those who fought for us.
Sincerely,
John Culberson