SOUTH BEND -- A bill that U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly, D-Granger, introduced this week would steer immediate payments to veterans claiming service-related disabilities.

At the moment, it takes the Veterans Administration an average of six months to approve disability claims, Donnelly told reporters Friday at a news conference publicizing his first piece of legislation.

The bipartisan bill's co-sponsor, U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, joined Donnelly for Friday's announcement.

"Certainly no group deserves to be assisted more than our veterans," said Donnelly, who serves on the House Veterans Affairs Committee. "We have the freedoms that we have because of the time and the service they put in, and so it's only fair in this bill that the veterans be able to receive assistance from Day 1."

Under the bill, veterans seeking disability benefits would qualify instantly for mid-level payments until VA officials determine the actual compensation they should get.

As it stands, Donnelly and Upton said, the lengthy process that makes veterans prove that their physical or psychological ailments are connected to their military service has resulted in a backlog of 400,000 cases.

The number is on the verge of spiking, as an estimated 600,000 troops who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq are expected to qualify for disability assistance.

The VA has approved nearly 90 percent of claims from Afghanistan and Iraq veterans, Upton said. He cited the figure as proof of the small number of dismissed claims, making the case that the broad majority of applicants waiting months for benefits are those with true disabilities.

"We allow for fraud and abuse," Upton said of the bill. "We allow the Veterans Administration -- and rightly so -- to reach back to audit" whatever the VA deems necessary.

Upton said VA officials have acknowledged the agency's significant lag time in processing claims.

"One of the alternatives that they have before them is to literally hire thousands of more people to look at the claims," he said, "but again if you're only doing that to still keep things at 177 days (turnaround time), that's not where we want to go, let alone the additional cost of doing that."

Provisions of the Donnelly-Upton bill would not be retroactive, so only veterans who applied for disability benefits after it became law would qualify for immediate payments.

In all, Donnelly's and Upton's districts in northern Indiana and southwestern Michigan, respectively, are home to a combined 118,000 veterans.

About 13,000 live in Elkhart County.