Veterans
Our nation has a fundamental obligation to make good on the promises it has made over the years to the men and women who have served in the Armed Forces and sacrificed so much to protect our freedom. Fulfilling those promises – not only to veterans of past conflicts, but to those now returning from Iraq and Afghanistan – requires that we be willing to allocate the necessary resources. For that reason, I have supported substantial increases in funding, including approximately $41 billion this year alone for veterans’ health care. That is up nearly ten percent over last year, and is 150 percent more than what was spent in 2001.
The number of veterans in Arizona continues to grow. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), there are over 567,000 veterans in Arizona, nearly 10 percent of our civilian adult population. And with Arizona being the second-fastest growing state in the nation, that number will only continue to climb in the years ahead as veterans move to our state from other parts of the country.
For many years, the federal formula for allocating veterans health funding among the states failed to account for such dramatic shifts in the veterans’ population. Recognizing that the formula needed to be changed to ensure that veterans in Arizona receive the care they’ve earned, I worked with Senator McCain to craft a new framework for allocating federal funds: the Veterans' Equitable Resource Allocation (VERA) system. Adopted in 1997, our initiative established a new funding formula to ensure that veterans in rapidly growing states like ours have access to VA medical care, just as veterans in other parts of the country do.
VERA ensures that funding is distributed based on the actual population of eligible veterans in a state and region, rather than on historical funding patterns that fail to reflect the movement of veterans from one part of the country to another. As a result of this new system, the VA administrative unit that serves Arizona has seen its funding increase by 81.7 percent.
Acting on a bipartisan basis, the Senate has, in recent years, approved a range of bills of interest to our nation’s veterans, among them:
- Veterans’ Mental Health and Other Care Improvements Act of 2008. This bill, which I supported and is now law, improves mental health services and other forms of care for veterans. Specifically, the law sets a standard level of care for substance abuse and creates innovative enhancements to treatment; improves treatment for veterans who suffer from multiple health issues, including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD); and creates a research program on PTSD and substance abuse, in cooperation with the National Center for PTSD.
- Veterans' Benefits Improvement Act of 2008. This bill, which passed the Senate with my support, is designed to enhance compensation, housing, labor and education, and insurance benefits for veterans. It also stipulates that veterans claiming disabilities receive meaningful notice of the information and evidence needed for their claims.
- Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act of 2008. This legislation, which I supported and was signed into law on September 24, 2008, adjusted veterans' compensation rates to keep pace with inflation, effective December 1, 2008. According to recent data provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs, this increase will help 2.8 million veterans and over 300,000 surviving spouses receiving dependency and indemnity compensation.
- The FY2008 defense authorization bill. This legislation, which I supported and which is now law, implements new wounded warrior initiatives that make a number of improvements to the care, management, and transition of service members recovering from illness or injury received during war, and enhances health care and benefits for their families. It extends GI Bill educational benefits to reservists; accelerates paid-up status under the Survivor Benefit Plan; requires the VA to develop individualized health plans for veterans with traumatic brain injuries; establishes a new VA research and education program for traumatic brain injury; and expands combat-related special compensation eligibility for retirees.
- The FY2007 emergency supplemental appropriations bill. This legislation, which I supported and which became law, provided an additional $1.8 billion to ensure that veterans returning from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom receive care for traumatic brain injuries and PTSD. The bill also provided an additional $1.3 billion for the Veterans Health Administration.
- Military Reservist and Veteran Small Business Reauthorization and Opportunity Act. This bill, which I supported and the President signed into law on February 14, 2008, will permit the government to spend up to $4.4 million on Veterans Business Outreach Centers and allow the Small Business Administration to offer loans to reservists and veterans. The bill will also lengthen the time available to reservists to apply for disaster loans and raise the maximum small business loan amount.
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