OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Pay as You Rate Act

Floor Speech

Date: May 22, 2013
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Entitlements and the Safety Net Veterans

Ms. TITUS. Madam Speaker, I rise today to encourage my colleagues to join me as original cosponsors of the Pay As You Rate Act.

The Veterans Administration currently has more than 1 million backlog cases, and 70 percent of these have been under review for more than 125 days. For some veterans like those in southern Nevada, the average time to process a claim is close to 500 days. This is just unacceptable.

The Pay As You Rate Act will ensure that veterans receive at least some of their benefits in a more timely fashion.

Currently, the VA withholds benefit payments to veterans until their entire claim has been reviewed and processed. This is a serious problem, especially for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans whose average claim contains 8.5 separate components.

The Pay As You Rate Act will require the VA to pay veterans benefits as each element of the claim is reviewed rather than waiting until the entire package has been processed. This is a commonsense change which will put money in veterans' pockets sooner and also address the backlog.


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