Addressing Our Veterans' Needs & Ending Abuse in the VA

With Veterans Day approaching, we held a hearing in the Oversight and Government Reform Committee with senior officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to examine why the Department wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on conferences, while wounded warriors have waited months or even years to receive the help they deserve and were promised for their service to our nation. For example, the VA held two week-long conferences in Orlando, Florida that cost taxpayers $6.1 MILLION. They paid overtime for conference planners to check out possible conference sites. These site visits included helicopter rides and spa treatments.This is especially disturbing given the fact that the VA is experiencing a backlog of 717,000 unprocessed claims. Wouldn’t this overtime have better been used processing claims?

I demanded this answer, among others, from the VA officials at our hearing (watch here). The Secretary of the VA says he’s confident the backlog issue will be resolved by 2015. Frankly, that’s not good enough. We should be doing everything possible to guarantee our Veterans the support and benefits they deserve. Those who have served this country did not wait months or years to answer the call to protect our freedom and we must not ask them to wait for the benefits they earned and need.

In my fight to reduce the size of government and end wasteful Washington spending, I have never forgotten our Veterans and the sacrifices they have made. The VA has been almost completely exempt from sequestration cuts. In fact, they were given an additional $300 million in funding by Congress to help our Veterans. This claims backlog is unacceptable.