Thursday, February 4, 2016

VA funding for FY 2016

VA funding for FY 2016


The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) received $162.7 billion for the current fiscal year. Of that total, $71.4 billion goes to discretion-ary programs, an increase of $6.4 billion over the previous year. These areas include:
  • $50 billion for VA medical services. Individual accounts which interest The American Legion include $7.5 billion in mental health-care services; $6.7 billion in homeless veterans treatment, services, housing and job training; $1.5 billion for Hepatitis C treatment; $605 mil-lion for family caregivers of seriously injured veterans; $232 million for traumatic brain injury treatments; $270 million in rural health initiatives; and $144 million in suicide prevention activities.
  • $165.8 billion in advance appropriations for all veterans programs for FY 2017. Discretionary medical programs will be funded in 2017 at $63.3 billion. In addition, mandatory programs for next fiscal year will be funded at $102.5 billion. This was done to eliminate the possi-bility that veterans programs would not receive funding in case of a government shutdown.
  • $2.7 billion to address the disability claims processing backlog. This funding will support 770 additional staff to tackle claims and appeals work.
  • $1.2 billion for major construction. Funds will be used for correcting critical seismic deficiencies, new hospital and clinic construction, and repairing crumbling infrastructure in some of VA’s oldest structures. Minor construction received $406 million for various smaller pro-jects.
Funding for other programs include $271 million for the National Cemetery Administration; $120 million for state veterans homes con-struction grants; $46 million for state veterans cemeteries construction grants; and $32 million for the U.S. Court of Appeals for veterans claims.
The Department of Defense (DoD) received $514.1 billion for its discretionary programs, with an additional $58.6 billion in Global War on Terror/Overseas Contingency Operations funding. Its various funding amounts include:
  • $129.2 billion to provide pay for active-duty troops and reserves. It also funds a 1.3 percent pay raise.
  • $32.3 billion for the Defense Health Program to provide care for troops, military families and retirees. It includes an additional $1.1 bil-lion to address research on traumatic brain injury and psychological health, cancer and suicide prevention outreach programs, among others.
  • $167.5 billion for operations and maintenance, such as essential readiness programs, training, depot maintenance and base operations. Also included is $263 million for sexual assault prevention and response programs, and an additional $25 million to continue the expan-sion of the Sexual Assault Victims’ Counsel program.
  • $69.8 billion for research, development, testing and evaluation of new defense technologies.
  • $111 billion for new military equipment and upgrades.