For military construction and the department of Veterans Affairs. During the last congress 3 trillion was spent outside of the normal appropriations process. As spending soared, so did inflation. There was danger, damage done to the economy and the work of the Appropriations Committee changed significantly over those two years. Thats why islanderrier this year i asked subcommittee chairs to evaluate all of the funding in the pipeline. When the president s budget finally arrived, i directed them to review each Agency Budget line by line. I want to thank the subcommittee chairs for their work to identify ways to save hardearned tax dollars. These savings have allowed us to reduce overall spending without shortchanging, most Important National defense and Homeland Security and veterans. The bill before us demonstrates our commitment to reduce overall spending and still honor our commitment to our veterans. This bill makes good on that promise by fully funding Veterans Health care while en
45 minutes. Chairman tester i am going i want to thank secretary mcdonough and her friends and partners for joining us today. For those of you joining us on television, you will hear a great opening and questioning of the secretary of the v. A. We have three people who were going to do a combined statement , which will be particularly entertaining. So we have something to look forward to. Chairman tester we do. We are here to take a closer look to the president s 2024 budget request for the department of Veterans Affairs. We have to ensure the department is wellequipped to care for our veterans. The v. A. Completed more than 1. 7 million disability claims. They served over 6. 3 million veteran patients, more than 150 million employments. Demand is only increasing. This law created a fund to cover the new cost of delivering. I have serious concerns to got the fund. Gut the fund. It is all bad news. We send people off to war, we put it on the credit card. They come back and we make excus
And now Veterans Affairs secretary Denis Mcdonough testifies before the senate Veterans Affairs committee on president bidens 2024 budget request for the agency. He weighed in on the camp lejeune water contamination suits, the agencys claims process and womens healthcare. There was also testimony from the heads of various veterans groups. This is just over an hour and 45 minutes. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] i am going to call this hearing to order. We are little bit ahead. I want to thank Denis Mcdonough and our friends and partners for joining us today. For those of you joining us on television, you will hear a great opening and questioning of the secretary of the va and what is interesting is we have three folks who are going to do a combined statement which will be particularly entertaining, i think. Something to look forward to. We are here to take a closer look at the president s fiscal year 24 budget request from the department of
Officials from the Veterans Affairs Department Office of information and technology spoke about workforce recruitment and retention, Cyber Security concerns and modernization efforts while testifying on the president 2025 budget request. This is about 1. 5 hours. I would like to call this hearing to order. Once again, testimony was delivered late, only three hours before the hearing. I have mentioned this before. I am starting to feel like i have walked into a brick wall. Congress always elicits testimony from the executive Branch Agencies and gives it great respect, even when we fiercely disagree. This exchange of views between the legislative branch and the executive branch is fundamental under the constitution. Ee. This exchange of views between the legislative branch and the executive branch is fundamental under the constitution. When the vas testimony is so late that we may not be able to read it in advance, that is disrespectful and it undermines this process. I urge witnesses wi
Can go. We are going to leave this here for live coverage of the house hearing on president bidens request for the 2025 budget. Officials are testifying. Live coverage on cspan for you. As mentioned in this hearing before, i am starting to feel like i have walked into a brick wall. Congress always elicits testimony from the executive Branch Agencies and gives it great respect, even when we fiercely disagree. This exchange of views between the legislative branch and the executive branch is fundamental under the constitution. When the vas testimony is so late that we may not be able to read it in advance, that is disrespectful and it undermines this process. I urge witnesses with all the people in all the layers of the va and the white house bureaucracy who wrote the testimony to do better, not just for this committees sake but for the benefit of all the veterans who ultimately will be impacted by this. Good afternoon. Today we will examine the biden administrations budget requests for t