Vet groups urge House to reject plan to remedy VA’s budget gap

WASHINGTON — Eight major veterans organizations on Saturday urged Congress to provide emergency money to the Department of Veterans Affairs without cutting other VA programs as the House moved quickly to address a budget shortfall that threatened medical care for thousands of patients.

Their joint statement comes after the House Veterans Affairs Committee unveiled a plan Friday that would shift $2 billion from other VA programs to continue funding the department’s Choice program. Put in place after a 2014 wait-time scandal at the Phoenix VA hospital, Choice provides veterans federally paid medical care outside the VA and is a priority of President Donald Trump. To offset spending, the VA would trim pensions for some veterans and collect fees for housing loans.

The veterans groups criticized the plan as unacceptable privatization. They urged the House to embrace a bill that “ensures veterans’ health care is not interrupted in the short term, nor threatened in the long term.”

A House vote was scheduled for Monday. VA Secretary David Shulkin has warned that without congressional action, the Choice program would run out of money by mid-August.

“Veterans’ health care benefits have already been ‘paid for’ through the service and sacrifice of the men and women who wore our nation’s uniform, millions of whom suffered injuries, illnesses and lifelong disabilities,” the groups said. “If new funding is directed only or primarily to private-sector ‘Choice’ care without any adequate investment to modernize VA, the viability of the entire system will soon be in danger.”

It was signed by Veterans of Foreign Wars, AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Vietnam Veterans of America, Military Officers Association of America, Military Order of the Purple Heart and Wounded Warrior Project.

They called on House members to reject the bill and work with the Senate next week to reach a compromise.

In the Senate, the Republican chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, has not said whether he is willing to adopt the House proposal. The panel’s top Democrat, Jon Tester of Montana, introduced a bill earlier this month that would provide equal levels of extra funding for Choice and VA programs.

The House plan emerged following days of closed-door negotiations in which veterans groups opposed taking money from VA programs.