The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday voted 56-0 to approve a fiscal year 2008 bill that would provide $109.2 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs and military construction projects, CQ Today reports. The bill would allocate $4 billion more than the $105.2 billion requested by President Bush and $18.2 billion more than FY 2007 allocations. VA, which would be allocated $87.7 billion under the bill, would receive $3.8 billion more than Bush's request and $9.9 billion more than the FY 2007 funding level (Yoest, CQ Today, 6/6). -Kaiser network
The $87 billion requested for the VA represents a 77 percent increase in veteran spending since this President took office on January 20th, 2001. Medical care spending is up 83 percent.
...In 2008, we expect to treat about 263,000 veterans who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. This is an increase of 54,000 or 26 percent above the number of veterans from these two campaigns that we anticipate will come to the VA for healthcare in this fiscal year. And it is 108,000 or 70 percent more than the number we treated in 2006.
-Congressional Testimony, VA Secretary
[see also: Budget Proposal: 50% of increase in mandatory payments]
So much for small government Conservatives, eh? The Conservatives are growing the size of the Federal government just as surely as hens go to roost at night.
THE COST OF "GWOT"
Together, I think this means that the estimates used for projected medical related costs are on the mark (my sidebar, bottom-left). 263,000 approved claims in the system appears to be less, so far, than what Blimes-Stiglitz (2007) were estimating (although the VA has had lowball estimates before, so ...). On the other hand, there appears to be plenty of more spending on program development, training, staffing, ancillary benefits/services, and new facilities (which carry on-going costs) to make up for it. I'm sticking with where I've placed the estimate so far.
Meanwhile, the VA needs to follow up on the March GAO report, calling on budgeting transparency. AND set the bar high:
We [Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan] also believe that the VA’s current standard for evaluating the speed a veteran gets seen by a medical professional should not be a whopping 45 days or even 30 days. For veterans coming home, especially with mental health issues, a month is like an eternity. The standard should be two weeks or at least broken down into categories.
Soldiers fight for their country, they should not be made to fight against their country. -IAVA
'ON ASSIGNMENT' UNTIL AFTER THE ELECTIONS ...
Dole and Shalala continue their "listening tour", even though I've pointed out here already that the VA has a capital budget process in place - Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld just didn't juice it, that's all. Oh, they are going to South Dakota, next - maybe just to steer clear of where they might do some good, like Iowa and New Hampshire. Wimps...
Btw, if you aren't following the story: "Walter Reed has been scheduled by the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission to be closed and its functions relocated to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., by 2011."
FOOTNOTES
footnote to the information-age-of-anxiety: 2008 IT budget includes almost $70 million for enhanced cyber-security [total IT boost to $1.8 b-b-illion]. $34.1 million for a new state-of-the-art human resource management system...
the big picture: "It is difficult to imagine a trillion dollars. People have difficulty with the scale of it. I explain to my students that one billion seconds = 32 years; one trillion seconds = 300 centuries. We spend $10 billion a month in Iraq – which is the same amount as the total annual United Nations budget (of which the US pays only about one-fifth). We spend about $5 billion per year on cancer research"
