What’s in Veterans Affairs’ $164 Billion Budget?
The secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Eric K. Shinseki, last week, outlined President Obama’s 2015 budget for the department before hearings of the House and Senate veterans affairs committees, calling for total spending of $163.9 billion, a 6.5 percent increase from last year. The plan asks Congress to allocate $68.4 billion for discretionary spending, a 3 percent increase from last year, which is largely used for health care, and $95.6 billion for mandatory programs such as disability compensation and pensions for veterans.
Mr. Shinseki said he wants the spending to address three major goals: the continued expansion of health care access and other benefits for both new and aging veterans, ending homelessness among veterans and clearing the extensive backlog of disability claims.
Clearing the backlog – defined as disability claims that have taken 125 days or longer to process – remains a benchmark that the department struggles to reach. Though the backlog has decreased in the last year, to just under 370,000 claims, veterans groups continue to criticize the department for its inability to eliminate the delays. And the work continues to grow. According Mr. Shinseki, 1.5 million new compensation and pension claims are expected to be filed in 2015, an increase of 20 percent over 2014.
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