If the 114th Congress was about dissecting the Veterans Affairs Department's challenges, then the 115th Congress will act quickly to solve them, leadership on the House Veterans Affairs Committee said.
Some advocates of the House Veterans Affairs Committee's new employee accountability bill say it's different enough from previous attempts to tackle this issue and should assuage past concerns. But others fear the legislation revives familiar worries.
An extension and then redesign of the Veterans Choice Program, along with new employee accountability legislation, are top priorities for new Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin. He said he's working with Congress on new legislation to support those initiatives.
The Veterans Benefits Administration sees progress with the National Work Queue, the automatic workload system that assigns a veteran's claim to the regional office that has the most capacity to immediately begin work. But Congress is concerned the NW Queue creates unnecessary confusion and can't address the growing backlog of veterans claims.
A recent Government Accountability Office report on the Veterans Affairs Department and its employees' use of official time is renewing a debate among lawmakers: Does official time have a place within agency operations, and how much time is too much?
The Government Accountability Office had some hard truths for the Veterans Affairs Department, which has failed to produce more modern, interoperable IT systems after years of failed pilots and heated congressional hearings. GAO says VA should drop its plans to modernize VistA and find a commercial option instead.
Veterans service organizations and the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents roughly 230,000 employees at the Veterans Affairs Department, say the President-elect's nominee to lead the agency is a pleasant surprise. Dr. David Shulkin, the current VA undersecretary for health, should give the agency some continuity during the transition, they said.
Veterans Affairs Deputy Secretary Sloan Gibson wrote to Congress this week, asking that it begin work immediately to repeal cuts to the agency's award and incentive spending. Congress cut VA's performance bonus budget by about 20 percent next year to cover opioid-addiction treatment programs for veterans.
Leadership is changing in six congressional committees with jurisdictions that could affect the way feds do business governmentwide.
A new omnibus veterans package cleared the House Tuesday afternoon, but it doesn't address three controversial issues that both veterans affairs committees and the VA Secretary himself have spent the past year debating. That leaves a fix for the outdated veterans appeals process, an alternative or solution to the Veterans Choice Program and new accountability procedures to the 115th Congress and next administration.
The House Veterans Affairs Committee wrote to the Justice Department, asking that DOJ investigate whether VA officials lied before Congress when they testified about ongoing schedule and cost overruns for new medical center in Denver. A new report from VA's inspector general slammed the department's leadership for making poor decisions about the hospital's construction that weren't in the best interest of the veterans they hope to serve.
Several good government and oversight organizations, along with eight individual whistleblowers, wrote to House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) in support of the whistleblower protections included in the VA Accountability First and Appeals Modernization Act. But they had some tough criticism for the changes the bill would make to due process rights for VA executives.
The Veterans Affairs Department paid roughly $5 million to some employees to settle disciplinary actions, according to House VA Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.). VA made 208 settlement agreements with employees between July 2014 and the present. The department used monetary payouts to settle 72 percent of those cases.
The House is moving forward on a bill that would shorten the time in which Veterans Affairs employees and senior executives could appeal disciplinary actions and removals. The VA Accountability First and Appeals Modernization Act of 2016 also includes provisions that would change the veterans' appeals process, but the bill is drawing ire from the Obama administration, House Democrats and federal employee groups.
In today's Top Federal Headlines, the White House releases this year's Federal Agency Strategic Sustainability Plans, providing a snapshot of the progress agencies have made becoming more environmentally friendly.