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Today, Rep. Morgan Luttrell, (R-Texas), the Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs, delivered the following remarks, as prepared, at the start of the Subcommittee’s Oversight Hearing to take a close look at VA’s fiduciary program to prevent the misuse of veterans’ benefits:

The subcommittee will come to order.

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you to all our witnesses for being here.

Today we will be taking a closer look at V.A.’s Fiduciary Program.

The fiduciary program at V.A. is responsible for appointing and overseeing the men and women who assist veterans and other beneficiaries that are unable to manage their V.A. benefits on their own.

Over 67,000 veterans use fiduciaries.

But the last time this subcommittee looked at this program was in 2015 and a lot has changed in 8 years.

I believe it is time that we take another look at this program to ensure it’s meeting the needs of today’s veteran community.

In fiscal year 2022, the program oversaw over $2.6 billion dollars in benefits.

A program this size requires effective oversight to ensure that beneficiaries are being taken care of, especially because these beneficiaries are typically our nation’s most vulnerable veterans.

This subcommittee has also heard directly from V.A. regional office employees, who are directly responsible for the oversight of the fiduciaries and beneficiaries, about potential instances of fraud and misuse in the program.

A fiduciary should be using a beneficiary’s V.A. funds for the beneficiary’s care or the care of their dependents, and V.A. should be doing a better job of preventing, investigating, and remedying these instances of fraud and misuse to protect veterans first and foremost. 

That being said, some of these instances are not the result of maliciousness on the part of fiduciaries but simply because V.A. has not provided family members acting as fiduciaries proper access to the support resources they need to properly manage the beneficiary’s benefits.

Frankly, this program seems disorganized, and we need to hear from V.A. about how they’re going to fix it.

 To that end, we will be hearing from O.I.G. on their recommendations for how V.A. can better oversee the fiduciary program, as well as updates from V.A. on what steps they are taking to do so.

I want to thank everyone again for being here today, and I am looking forward to our conversation about what we can do to prevent the misuse of veterans’ hard-earned benefits, enhance the V.A. fiduciary program, and ensure that misused funds are returned to the veterans that earned them in a timely way.

With that, I yield to Ranking Member Pappas for his opening statement.