EXCLUSIVE — The House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman has asked the Department of Justice to review a VA funding snafu that occurred under the previous administration.
In July 2024, the VA requested an additional $3 billion in funding to ensure no veterans would miss out on any benefits as the department faced a financial shortfall. They also warned that Congress would need to pass another $12 billion funding bill to cover extra costs for the following year.
Congress passed an emergency supplemental funding bill to support the VA for the remainder of the year, only for the VA to acknowledge later that it did not ultimately use the more than $2.8 billion allocated to it.
Chairman Mike Bost (R-IL) wrote a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday, obtained by the Washington Examiner, requesting the DOJ “review a pattern of troubling actions taken” by former Biden administration VA officials.
The chairman asked for a review on whether it “engaged in conduct that violated federal law, including the submission of false statements to Congress, obstruction of oversight, fraud, or misappropriation of federal funds,” adding, “If any criminal or civil violations occurred, those responsible must be held accountable.”
His letter comes weeks after the VA inspector general’s office released the conclusions of its investigation into the spending mistake.
The IG found that the Veterans Benefits Administration did not include realized prior-year recoveries or unspent de-obligated funds available for other purposes in their calculations. Had that money been included in the VBA’s calculations, “the monthly funding status reports would have shown a reduced risk of shortfall by the end of the fiscal year,” the report said.
The unspent, de-obligated funds available from October 2023 through September 2024 totaled about $1.2 billion, which could have been reallocated and mitigated the perceived shortfall.
The IG’s review also found that some of the VBA’s assumptions affected its decision to make the supplemental request “were not supported” in actuality. For example, officials said they expected “a surge in claims” ahead of the end of the fiscal year as a result of expanded eligibility under the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act and regional performance goals, but data from the VA given to the IG “showed no significant end-of-year spikes in obligations in the past five years.”
Republicans must change the way VA healthcare works for veterans
REPUBLICANS MUST CHANGE THE WAY VA HEALTH CARE WORKS FOR VETERANS
A spokesperson for Bost said he’s “raised this failure by the Biden administration with Secretary [Doug] Collins,” and that “Chairman Bost has confidence in the Trump administration to properly manage VA’s budget.”
“The suggestion that senior VA officials submitted materially inaccurate funding requests, failed to disclose critical budget information in testimony before Congress and letters written by the former VA Secretary, and delays in informing Congress of revised funding needs, in my opinion, warrant immediate and independent review by your office,” Bost wrote to Bondi.