VA's Budget Request for Fiscal Year 2011
March 23, 2010
1
STATEMENT OF ERIC A. HILLEMAN, DIRECTOR
NATIONAL LEGISLATIVE SERVICE
VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS
SUBCOMMITTEE ON MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND VETERANS AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WITH RESPECT TO
VA’S BUDGET REQUEST FOR FISCAL YEAR 2011
WASHINGTON, D.C. March 23, 2010
MR. CHAIRMAN AND MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE:
On behalf of the 2.1 million men and women of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. (VFW) and our Auxiliaries, I would like to thank you for the opportunity to testify today. The VFW works alongside the other members of the Independent Budget (IB) – AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans and Paralyzed Veterans of America – to produce a set of policy and budget recommendations that reflect what we believe would meet the needs of America’s veterans. The VFW is responsible for the construction portion of the IB, so I will limit my remarks to that portion of the budget.
VA’s infrastructure—particularly within its health-care system—is at a crossroads. The system is facing many challenges, including the average age of buildings (60 years) and significant funding needs for routine maintenance, upgrades, modernization and construction. VA is beginning a patient-centered reformation and transformation of the way it delivers care and new ways of managing its infrastructure plan based on needs of sick and disabled veterans in the 21st Century. Regardless of what the VA health care system of the future looks like, our focus must remain on a lasting and accessible VA health-care system that is dedicated to their unique needs and one that can provide high quality, timely care when and where they need it. VA manages a wide portfolio of capital assets throughout the nation. According to its latest Capital Asset Plan, VA is responsible for 5,500 buildings and almost 34,000 acres of land. It is a vast network of facilities that requires significant time and attention from VA’s capital asset managers. 2
CARES – VA’s data-drive assessment of their current and future construction needs – gave VA a long-term roadmap and has helped guide its capital planning process over the past few fiscal years. CARES showed a large number of significant construction priorities that would be necessary for VA to fulfill its obligation to this nation’s veterans and over the last several fiscal years, the administration and Congress have made significant inroads in funding these priorities. Since FY 2004, $4.9 billion has been allocated for these projects. Of these CARES-identified projects, VA has completely five and another 27 are currently under construction. It has been a huge, but necessary undertaking and VA has made slow, but steady progress on these critical projects.
The challenge for VA in the post-CARES era is that there are still numerous projects that need to be carried out, and the current backlog of partially funded projects that CARES has identified is large, too. This means that VA is going to continue to require significant appropriations for the major and minor construction accounts to live up to the promise of CARES. VA’s most recent Asset Management Plan provides an update of the state of CARES projects – including those only in the planning of acquisition process. Table 4-5: (page 7.4-49) shows a need of future appropriations to complete these projects of $3.25 billion. Project
|
Future Funding Needed ($ In Thousands)
|
Denver
|
492,700
|
San Juan
|
122,920
|
New Orleans
|
370,000
|
St. Louis
|
364,700
|
Palo Alto
|
478,023
|
Bay Pines
|
80,170
|
Seattle
|
38,700
|
Seattle
|
193,830
|
Dallas
|
80,100
|
*Louisville
|
1,100,000
|
TOTAL
|
3,246,143
|
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