VA Requests $94 Billion for Veterans in FY ’09 Budget

Peake: VA Will Provide Timely, Accessible and High-Quality Care

WASHINGTON – Honoring the nation’s commitment to care for the newest generation of combat veterans and service members from other conflicts and eras, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Dr. James B. Peake announced today President Bush is seeking a budget of $93.7 billion in fiscal year 2009 for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), with health care and disability compensation receiving most of the funding.  

If Congress accepts the White House’s budget request, VA’s budget would be $3.4 billion more than the current spending level and nearly double the budget in effect when President Bush took office seven years ago.

“This budget builds on VA’s past successes in providing veterans with timely, accessible delivery of high-quality benefits and services earned through their sacrifice and service in defense of freedom,” Peake said.

The FY ‘09 budget proposal calls for $47.2 billion in discretionary funding, mostly for health care.  It also would provide $46.4 billion in mandatory funding for compensation, pension, educational assistance, home loan guaranties and other benefit programs.  

Peake said the budget proposal will provide funding to ensure high-quality care to VA’s highest priority patients — veterans of the Global War on Terror, those with service-connected disabilities, lower-income veterans, and veterans with special health care needs.

Under the new budget, VA will strengthen its collaboration with the Department of Defense (DoD) for world-class health care and benefits to veterans, service members and their families, including progress toward the development of secure electronic patient health care records that can be used by both departments.

This proposed budget will also allow VA to continue implementing the recommendations of the President’s Commission on Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors (Dole-Shalala Commission).  Peake said the commission’s report provides “a powerful blueprint to move forward with ensuring that service men and women injured during the Global War on Terror receive the health care and benefits necessary to allow them to return to full and productive lives as quickly as possible.”

The budget request includes:

• $1.3 billion to meet the health care needs of an estimated 330,000 veterans returned from service in Iraq and Afghanistan;
  
• $3.9 billion for mental health services;
  
• $762 million for non-institutional long-term care; and
  
• $1.5 billion for prosthetics and sensory aids.

The President’s budget request contains $252 million devoted to research projects focused specifically on veterans returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan.  This includes research in traumatic brain injury, polytrauma, spinal cord injury, prosthetics, burn injury, pain, and post-deployment mental health.

A major challenge in improving the delivery of compensation and pension benefits is the steady and sizeable increase in workload.  The volume of claims is projected to reach 872,000 in 2009 — a 51 percent increase since 2000.  VA will address its ever-growing workload challenges by acquiring greater access to DoD’s online medical information, by working to reduce the Department’s reliance upon paper-based claims folders and by aggressively hiring new staff.  By the beginning of 2009, VA expects to complete a two-year effort to hire 3,100 new staff.

The President’s budget request includes $181 million in operations and maintenance for the National Cemetery Administration, a 71 percent increase from the resources available to the Department’s memorial program when the President took office.  The budget request includes an additional $5 million to begin interment operations at six new national cemeteries — Bakersfield, Calif.; Birmingham, Ala.; Columbia-Greenville, S.C.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Sarasota, Fla.; and southeastern Pennsylvania.

The President’s 2009 budget would provide more than $2.4 billion for the Department’s information technology (IT) program.  This is $389 million, or 19 percent above VA’s 2008 budget, and reflects the realignment of all IT operations and functions under the control of the chief information officer.  The proposal contains $93 million to uphold VA’s cyber-security program to support the commitment to make the Department the gold standard in data security within the federal government.  VA continues to take aggressive steps to ensure the safety of veterans’ personal information, including training and educating employees on the critical responsibility they have to protect personal and health information.

Highlights of the VA budget are available on the Internet at: http://www.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=1448

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