welcome everyone to another edition of cck live I'm Mike lestritto and today I'm joined by
attorneys Moore black and Elise Phillips in this episode we're going to spend some time breaking
down va's budget and legislative proposal for fiscal year 2024. so as way of background each
year VA proposes a budget that outlines where it would like funding to go and what its priorities
are for the upcoming year the proposed 2024 VA budget is the largest budget proposal in
VA history in U.S history and it is intended to support veterans veterans families caregivers
and survivors so until in in terms of the total requested budget for 2024 VA has asked for 325.1
billion dollars which represents a 16.6 billion dollar increase or a five almost five and a half
percent increase above the fiscal year 2023 budget and active level so it's a a large sum of money
obviously importantly this budget has only been proposed and so it still needs to be approved by
Congress it's likely that there will be changes and tweaks to the proposed budget as it makes
its way through the legislative proposal so we'll have more details likely in the coming weeks as
the proposal makes its way through the legislative process but this is what we know as of this moment
so what's included in the budget the 2024 VA budget proposed budget allocates funds
for several different programs and initiatives I'm going to turn it over to Maura and Elise
and they will go through in more detail some of the major goals of the budget
yes Mike I can get us started with the first item that we wanted to discuss and it's the
expansion of Health Care and benefits for toxic exposed Veterans as many of our viewers probably
know by now The Pact act which was Landmark legislation that President Biden signed into
law last year in approximately August of 2022 this act expanded VA health care and
benefits and provided a pathway to benefits for millions of veterans that have been exposed to
burn pits agent orange herbicides and other toxins during their military service so the
proposed budget requests 20.3 billion dollars in 2024 for the cost of War toxic exposures fund
um this is 15.3 billion dollars above what was requested in 2023 and the funds are meant to
be allocated for Health Care research benefits delivery all of which will be associated with
veterans disabilities associated with exposure to environmental hazards these benefits are also
earmarked for survivors of veterans who have experienced disabilities as related to their
military service and the toxic exposures that they experienced during that service Elise do
you want to move on to the next one yeah so the next thing we're going to talk about is
the investment in preventing veteran suicide so both VA and the Biden Harris Administration
have noted Suicide Prevention as a top priority this year this budget provides 16.6 billion in
2024 for mental health efforts including Suicide Prevention that's up from 15 billion in 2023 part
of the budget includes 559 million for veteran Suicide Prevention Outreach programs and an
estimated 2.5 billion in suicide specific Medical Treatments so among other efforts These funds will
support VA initiatives to provide free emergency Health Care to veterans in suicidal crisis at the
VA and at non-va facilities this will help local organizations provide or coordinate
Suicide Prevention Services for veterans and other eligible individuals and their families
Maura why don't you take the next one another item that we commonly see when reviewing legislative
proposals is that VA would like funds to perpetuate their efforts to end veteran
homelessness so veteran homelessness has decreased by 11 since 2020 and VA permanently housed more
than 40 000 homeless veterans in 2022 but there is still a lot of work to be done in this area so
the budget proposal would invest 3.1 billion in providing homeless veterans and Veterans at risk
of homelessness with permanent housing access to health care and other Supportive Services
next we're going to talk about supporting women veterans Health Care according to VA more than
women are choosing VA Health Care than ever before with the number of women veterans using VA
Services tripling over the last 20 years growing from 160 000 in 2002 to more than 627 000 today
the budget invests 257 million for Women Health Care and child care programs to increase access to
infertility counseling and assistive reproductive technology eliminate co-payments for contraceptive
coverage and support full-time women veterans programs at all 172 VA medical centers investment
support comprehensive specialty medical and surgical services for women veterans including 1
billion for women's gender specific care and along similar lines more generally the budget would
propose to invest additional funds in veteran medical facilities generally our veterans deserve
world-class health care facilities and a fund statistic it's not actually fun but a statistic
that I learned when we were preparing for today's discussion is that the median va's hospital was
built nearly 60 years ago compared to the average 13 year old facility in the private sector as sort
of a means of reference so the budget for next year would make a historic investment
of 4.1 billion discretionary and mandatory for construction to begin to restore va's
aging infrastructure and provide veterans with state-of-the-art Health Care Facilities the budget
would also set aside 5 billion investment funds in medical care funding for non-recurring maintenance
to improve medical facility infrastructure Elise do you want to talk about the funds that have been
allocated or that are proposed to be allocated for the k caregiver support program absolutely VA
expanded its program of comprehensive assistance for family caregivers to eligible family members
and Veterans of all eras on October 1st 2022 currently there are 45 500 veterans participating
in the pcafc across the country including territories the budget recognizes the important
roles of these family givers in supporting the health and wellness of veterans and requests 2.4
billion for the caregiver support program to fund Staffing stipend payments and many other
services to help Empower family givers of eligible veterans funding allows for further Investments
and improvements allowing VA to re to reach and support more caregivers than before thanks Maura
and Elise um so as you can tell they're you know there are a number of proposals and initiatives
um within the proposed budget these are just a few of you know what we think might be some of
the more important and interesting um ideas that are being proposed um with all of this stuff the
devil is in the in the details so to speak um the proposed budget is highly detailed we would
recommend anyone that is interested to take a look at the proposed budget for themselves
um in addition to some of the initiatives that Moore and Elise discussed there are some other
um you know notable allocations or proposed allocations in the budget some of those
include 480 million dollars for the operations and maintenance of the National Cemetery Association
funding to hire and train additional employees across VA departments so I think healthcare
workers claims processors other other employees the expansion of cancer research and treatment
projects and the investment in overdose prevention and treatment programs among many more um so we
hope that you found this information helpful like I said it's it's highly detailed and we would
encourage anyone that's really interested in this area to take a look at the fine details and review
the proposed budget um themselves uh but again we hope that you've found this information useful
and helpful and we hope that you can subscribe to our Channel and look at our video and blogs
for more better veteran related content to learn more about this topic and other topics mentioned
in the video please take a look at our entire YouTube library and as always thanks for watching
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