[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 76 (Tuesday, May 31, 2011)]
[House]
[Pages H3775-H3776]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                VETERANS APPEALS IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2011

  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and 
pass the bill (H.R. 1484) to amend title 38, United States Code, to 
improve the appeals process of the Department of Veterans Affairs and 
to establish a commission to study judicial review of the determination 
of veterans' benefits, as amended.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The text of the bill is as follows:

                               H.R. 1484

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Veterans Appeals Improvement 
     Act of 2011''.

     SEC. 2. WAIVER OF REGIONAL OFFICE JURISDICTION OVER 
                   INCORPORATION OF SUPPLEMENTAL EVIDENCE INTO 
                   PREVIOUSLY SUBMITTED CLAIMS.

       (a) Waiver.--Section 7104 of title 38, United States Code, 
     is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
       ``(f) If a claimant or the claimant's representative 
     submits new evidence in support of a case for which a 
     substantive appeal has been filed, such evidence shall be 
     submitted to the Board directly and not to the agency of 
     jurisdiction, unless the claimant or the claimant's 
     representative requests that the evidence be reviewed by the 
     agency of jurisdiction before being submitted to the 
     Board.''.
       (b) Effective Date.--Subsection (f) of section 7104 of 
     title 38, United States Code, as added by subsection (a) of 
     this section, shall apply with respect to evidence submitted 
     on or after the date that is 90 days after the date of the 
     enactment of this Act.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from 
Florida (Mr. Miller) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Filner) 
each will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Florida.
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may 
consume.
  I rise today in strong support of the manager's amendment to H.R. 
1484, the Veterans Appeals Improvement Act of 2011.
  This legislation is a product of the committee's continued oversight 
of the disability claims process. We continue to look for ways to 
improve this laborious process and ensure that veterans receive their 
disability claims, and the decisions, in a timely and accurate fashion. 
Now, under current law, veterans who disagree with their initial claims 
decisions by the VA can appeal to the VA's Board of Veterans' Appeals. 
But if a veteran submits additional evidence before the board in 
support of his claims, it automatically goes back to the very beginning 
of the process.
  The legislation before us would stop the shuffling of veterans back 
to the end of the line. It would direct that evidence submitted by a 
veteran in support of an appeal before the Board of Veterans' Appeals 
be considered by the board unless the veteran, himself or herself, 
elects to send it back to the very beginning of the process. This 
provision has garnered wide support from veterans' service 
organizations and the Department of Veterans Affairs. I believe it will 
reduce the frustration that many of our veterans face when appealing a 
ratings decision and that it will also reduce processing times.

                              {time}  1750

  I want to thank the ranking member, Mr. Filner, for introducing this 
legislation, and I do urge all Members to vote in support of the 
manager's amendment to H.R. 1484.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. FILNER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  I want to say first that I appreciate the chairman's cooperation in 
bringing these bills to the floor. We're a day after Memorial Day, but 
these are important to honor our veterans. I thank him and also urge 
that his manager's amendment, which took care of a funding issue, be 
approved.
  So I am in strong support of this bill, and I thank the members of 
the Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs who have 
worked

[[Page H3776]]

very hard in moving this bill forward. It's been quite a long time 
coming to fruition, and I know that many of our stakeholders look 
forward to its passage today.
  In the last Congress and this one, the Committee on Veterans' Affairs 
held a multitude of hearings on the language that is in the bill today. 
It was developed as a result of vigorous oversight hearings and 
meetings conducted in the past two Congresses. We received expert input 
from many of our stakeholders on the myriad systemic and vexing issues 
surrounding the whole process of claims appeals.
  As such, section 2 of the bill would allow the Board of Veterans 
Appeals to review evidence submitted directly to it by the veteran or a 
survivor without issuing often unnecessary supplemental statements of 
the case that serve only to delay and to deny. I know that many 
stakeholders are anxious to see this provision enacted, including the 
VA itself.
  Section 3 of the bill would have established a judicial review 
commission that would have been made up of 11 expert members to tackle 
other longstanding appellate review issues facing our veterans and 
survivors.
  These issues have included whether to continue Federal Circuit Court 
review of the decisions of the Court of Appeals of Veterans Claims, 
whether to grant class action and associational standing to the 
Veterans Court, and whether to require decision on all issues raised on 
appeal, just to name a few.
  The commission would have been required at that time to report on its 
findings and recommendations to Congress, and it would not sunset until 
2 years after that time. However, we were not able to move this section 
forward because of certain de minimus costs associated with operating 
the commission, and I know that we all have a bit of ``commission 
fatigue'' anyway. But at some point, this is an unexamined area with 
divergent and broad concepts that are in dire need of concentrated and 
expert attention.
  So I hope, Mr. Speaker, that we find a way to fund this commission in 
the near future, and I look forward to working with Mr. Miller in a 
bipartisan manner to make this a reality. I ask all my colleagues to 
support the bill in its amended form.
  I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield as much time 
as he may consume to the chairman of the Subcommittee on Disability 
Assistance and Memorial Affairs, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Runyan).
  Mr. RUNYAN. I thank the chairman for the time.
  I rise today in support of the manager's amendment to H.R. 1484, as 
amended, and the Veterans Appeals Improvement Act of 2011.
  The veterans disability claims policy is very complex, and all of us 
on the Veterans' Affairs Committee are constantly seeking ways to 
improve the process for both our veterans and the VA. This bill is a 
good first step in accomplishing the goal by improving upon the current 
process. Specifically, section 2 will work to simplify the process for 
submitting evidence to the Board of Veterans Appeals by allowing 
veterans to keep their place in line at the Board of Appeals for 
Veterans Claims when they submit new evidence in support of their 
claim.
  Under current law, if a veteran submitted new evidence to their case 
with the intention of expediting their adjudication, they may have 
actually made the adjudication take longer due to the VA's archaic 
rules that require the agency to resubmit the claim back to the 
regional offices. This bill corrects that problem.
  While I'm hopeful that the VA's new electronic processing system, 
which is currently being developed, will alleviate the backlog, we must 
do right by our veterans by continually improving the claims process 
and continuing to make changes, no matter how small, to help our 
veterans who are currently stuck in a failed paper-based system.
  This bill is one of many steps my subcommittee will take in this 
Congress to address the backlog of veteran disability claims. On 
Thursday, the subcommittee will be holding a hearing on underperforming 
regional offices, and my staff is currently working on ways to improve 
training and accountability at all VA regional offices. Every veteran 
has the right to have their claim adjudicated in a prompt and accurate 
fashion.
  I am proud that many veteran service organizations, as well as the 
VA, have expressed support for H.R. 1484, as amended; and I urge all 
Members to support H.R. 1484, as amended.
  Mr. FILNER. I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, I just want to point out to the chair of the 
subcommittee--and I guess the chair of the committee also--we're taking 
an important step today, but it is a small step. And the chair, the 
gentleman from New Jersey, mentioned other small steps. We aren't going 
to clean up this backlog, which approaches 1 million cases, without a 
major step, a major blowing up of the whole way we do this stuff. We 
just hired 10,000 new people, and the number of claims doubled. So 
we're not getting anywhere with this brute force kind of thing.
  I have suggested many times to just cut out the red tape completely, 
at least in the short term, to clean up the backlog, to say to those 
who have submitted claims that are backed up both by the medical 
evidence and with help from veteran service officers--of which we have 
thousands certified across the Nation--that we ought to accept those 
claims and honor the service of our veterans. Until we get to a mindset 
that says blow up the bureaucracy in this thing, we're not going to 
solve the problem.
  So all these small steps will be taking forever. Let's pass this 
small step today, but let us take on a much bigger honoring of our 
veterans as we just talked about on Memorial Day by saying, you know, 
some of you have died while waiting for this process to continue, some 
of you have lost your homes because you didn't get a disability check. 
Let's really honor our veterans this Memorial Day and say let's change 
the whole system that we have and stop trying to fool around with these 
small steps.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the bill, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. I associate myself with the remarks of my 
colleague, the ranking member. This issue of the disability claims 
backlog has haunted this Congress and this committee for many, many 
years; but nobody is more haunted by it than the veterans who have to 
go through that process. We, together, in a bipartisan way are looking 
for a way to try to solve this issue, and it's obvious that money and 
bodies are not the way to do it.
  So together, Mr. Filner and I and the members of our committees will 
work together and try to bring a reasonable solution to this Congress 
that will help resolve the million veterans that are out there right 
now in backlog waiting for their disability claims.


                             General Leave

  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their 
remarks and submit extraneous material on the manager's amendment to 
H.R. 1484, as amended.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from Florida?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Once again, I encourage all Members to support 
the manager's amendment to H.R. 1484, as amended, and I yield back the 
balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Miller) that the House suspend the rules 
and pass the bill, H.R. 1484, as amended.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mr. MILLER of Florida. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and 
nays.
  The yeas and nays were ordered.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX and the 
Chair's prior announcement, further proceedings on this motion will be 
postponed.

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