Legislative Hearing on: H.R. 530, ACES Act; H.R. 647, Ensuring Veterans’ Final Resting Place Act of 2025; H.R. 1039, Clear Communication for Veterans Claims Act; H.R. 1228, Prioritizing Veterans’ Survivors Act; H.R. 1286, Simplifying Forms for Veterans Claims Act; H.R. 1344, Dennis and Lois Krisfalusy Act; H.R. 2138, Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2025; H.R. 2137, Review Every Veterans Claim Act of 2025; Discussion Draft, Veteran Appeals Transparency Act of 2025; Discussion Draft, Improving VA Training for Military Sexual Trauma Claims Act; Discussion Draft, Veterans Claims Education Act; Discussion Draft, Survivors Benefits Delivery Improvement Act of 2025; and Discussion Draft, Board of Veterans Appeals’ Attorney Retention and Backlog Reduction Act.
House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs
2025-03-26
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Source: Congress.gov
Participants
Transcript
So committee will come to order. Thank you all for joining us today. We're here to discuss 13 bills that would help veterans and their survivors navigate the VA claims and appeals process, as well as improve access to VA benefits. The bills we will discuss today would and will ensure that service members of veterans can be buried together with their family members, improve the VA appeals process, including by increasing accountability and transparency for the VA Board of Veterans' Appeals, ensure there is medical research available to pave the way to compensate military pilots and air crew for conditions due to service-related radiation and other exposures, Make the VA claims process more transparent and understandable by providing veterans and their families with clear updates and instructions. Ensure that VA issues accurate decisions on claims based on military sexual trauma and that MST survivors are not re-traumatized during the claims process. And require the VA to give equal attention to the needs of our nation's veterans as well as their survivors, including educating survivors who may not be aware of VA survivor benefits. I'm proud to introduce two bills on today's agenda. H.R. 2137, the Review Every Veteran's Claim Act, would prevent VA from denying a veteran's VA benefit claim solely because they missed their disability claims exams. Under current law, when a veteran misses their exams without providing a good cause or rescheduling, VA automatically denies their VA disability compensation claim. Many of these veterans have pursued their VA claims for years. and appeared for multiple exams. Veterans should not be forced to start their claims over because they missed one exam. This bill would stop VA's unfair practice of automatically denying those claims by ensuring that VA makes a comprehensive decision on every veteran's claims after reviewing all the evidence, including every exam each veteran has already been through. H.R. 2138, the Veterans Compensation Cost of Living Adjustment Act of 2025 would give a cost of living adjustment to veterans and survivors receiving certain VA benefits.
They would receive the same increase as what Social Security recipients receive. This bill would adjust to certain VA benefits with inflation rates to help veterans and their families pay their bills and put food on the table. I would like to thank Ranking Member McGarvey for co-leading these bills with me. I look forward to working with Chairman Bosch, Ranking Member McGarvey, and other members of the subcommittee to advance these important proposals today. I thank the witnesses who are here and have joined us and look forward to discussing how these bills would improve the lives of veterans and their families. I now yield to the Ranking Member for his remarks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for your leadership in today's committee hearing. I'm honored to be sponsoring a lot of those bills with you that are going to make a difference in our veterans lives. I think in this committee, we are fortunate. We're fortunate that our guiding light is not partisan or party. It is a veteran centered committee, a veteran centered approach where veteran centered policy is not right or left, we deal more with right and wrong. It's a deep thing that we held in this. It's a belief that we are here based on a commitment to those who stand for something greater than themselves. For the men and women who are willing to put on a uniform and quite literally sacrifice everything to keep us safe and free, we must do what we can to honor their service and give them the benefits they have earned. I want to highlight a few bills, starting with the Veterans Claims Education Act by my colleague, Mr. Peters. This bill is a worthy measure to stop claim sharks from taking advantage of our service members and their families. It's a topic that we know is important as we repeatedly hear calls of don't feed the sharks. Our veterans aren't chum and they can't be treated like they are. And this committee will not be complicit in the exploitation of veterans. So I support all the efforts to provide them with the information they need to make the best decision for their claims preparation. Ranking member Takano's Survivor Benefits Delivery Improvement Act seeks to capture important information regarding veterans, surviving spouses, children, and parents to ensure we are serving all who earned their benefits, not just some.
Currently, as a direct result of the VA not dedicating sufficient staff and attention to the task, These benefits go underutilized. Recent doge cuts have decreased the four person team working on this down to three. Luckily, the employee was reinstated, but you can do the math pretty quickly and understand that three employees is insufficient to manage a nationwide program of survivors. Finally, I want to highlight my bipartisan bill, the Board of Veterans Appeals Attorney Retention and Backlog Act. I honestly wish we'd come up with a better title for that because it does really important work. This will help cut down the egregious amount of time veterans have to wait for their appeals to be reviewed. The bill is going to broaden the Board of Veterans Appeals workforce by attracting highly skilled, educated, and effective attorneys to dig through the backlog and get our veterans these claims decisions in a timely manner. To attract and retain the best talent, the bill creates a GS-15 position for the best VVA attorneys. It doesn't matter how many attorneys we hire if they burn out and leave before a claim has been adjudicated.
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