Van Hollen: Sequestration can affect veterans programs
Rep. Chris Van Hollen Jr., D-Md., addresses the national convention. (Photo by Clay Lomneth)

Van Hollen: Sequestration can affect veterans programs

U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen Jr., D-Md., has seen improvements made by the Department of Veterans Affairs and areas where the department still needs to improve. Addressing The American Legion National Convention in Baltimore, Van Hollen discussed another area that can impact VA: the threat of sequestration.

“We need a VA that’s built not just for today, but for the demands of tomorrow,” said Van Hollen, who represents Maryland’s 8th District and serves as ranking member of the House Budget Committee. “However, it’s also important to recognize that no amount of reform at the VA will address another very real potential threat to veterans benefits. That is the threat from these across-the-board cuts that go by the name sequestration. Translated very simply, sequestration cuts mean dramatic, across-the-board reductions in resources for federal agencies, including (VA) and other veterans programs.”

Van Hollen said sequestration was never intended to take effect. “People recognized that it would be a really bad idea to make those additional deep cuts in our national defense budget and those additional deep cuts in things like (National Institutes of Health) research and Department of Veterans Affairs.”

The past two years, an agreement was reached in Congress that prevented the worst of those deep cuts to defense and discretionary spending, Van Hollen said. “But that two-year agreement has expired,” he said. “As of today, Congress has not reached that agreement, and the new budget year begins Oct. 1. I’m just here to call upon all of you, regardless of your political party persuasion, to urge the Congress to work this out in a way that does not allow those deep cuts to trigger in defense and those deep cuts to that non-defense part of the budget that includes veterans programs.”

Van Hollen said that advance funding for VA will protect all but 15 percent of the department’s programs. However, the Veterans Benefits Administration is one of the programs that is not protected from sequestration cuts.

“I’m very much hoping that between now and the end of this month, Congress will get its act together and avoid a government shutdown,” Van Hollen said. “It was a scandal the first time. It was a pretty shameful episode … in terms of the functioning of government.”

On the subject of veterans, Van Hollen said actions, not words, are needed for caring for those who have worn the nation’s uniform. “It’s very important that we not just speak the words of providing support, but we deliver on those words,” he said. “That is true when it comes to (VA’s) disability backlog, it’s true when it comes to health-care benefits, and for goodness sakes we should make sure there is no veteran in the United States who is homeless after serving their country.”

Van Hollen thanked Legionnaires for their previous service to their country “and for the service you continue to perform in terms of making sure our country is focused on providing for the needs of today’s soldiers, as well as making sure that we make good on the promises that we made to the good men and women who served our country so well.”