Congressional Record, Volume 157 Issue 76 (Tuesday, May 31, 2011)

[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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