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Today, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), the Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity, delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared at the start of the subcommittee’s oversight hearing to ensure the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Veteran Readiness and Employment program (VR&E) is effectively administered and supporting disabled veterans who want to find employment and accomplish their American dream.  

Good afternoon.

The Subcommittee will come to order.

I want to thank everyone for being here today to discuss the Veteran Readiness & Employment program, or VR&E.

The purpose of this program is to assist veterans and servicemembers who have service-connected disabilities with the on-the-job training and skills they need in order to obtain meaningful employment or live full independent lives.

When this program is appropriately administered, VR&E is more than just a benefits program; it is also a vital first step for disabled veterans to become more financially independent, give back to their community, and achieve their own American dream.

I am a proud VR&E graduate and I personally know the good and purpose that this program can bring to veterans’ lives.

However, VR&E has been at a crossroads for the last several years, and I am deeply concerned that we may allow it to head down the wrong path.

Over the last year, my team has been investigating VR&E for potential fraud waste and abuse. This includes site visits to Detroit, Muskogee, Buffalo, Baltimore, and just last week, San Diego. What they have found is disturbing.

VR&E is now seeing an unprecedented increase in wait times and an increased burden on counselors with higher caseloads.

There must be a better balance of priorities in the program to make sure a veteran gets what they need, while also ensuring that VA is a responsible steward of the taxpayers’ investment. I have found that this is a responsibility that VA has a profound and constant inability to perform.

Finally, my staff has also seen data that veterans have been in the program for over 20 years, and that many veterans are using more than $250,000 in benefit payments.

One veteran in Boston spent over $350,000 in 18 months.

Another veteran in Los Angeles has spent $895,000 in six years and is still in the rehab to employment phase of the program.

If anyone is concerned about funding for veterans, they need to be concerned about what is going on in this program too.

Cases like this are the direct result of VA granting entitlement extensions past the 48-months limit mandated by law for VR&E recipients well over 99% of the time or not doing their due diligence on the program.

In fact, VA told the Committee last month that since Fiscal Year 2024, 62,355 extensions were approved. Just 59 requests for extensions were denied. That’s absurd.

I am looking forward to hearing from VA about the real-life examples that constitute granting a waiver. On paper, bureaucrats may just be completing a check-the-box exercise, instead of completing a thoughtful review of cases.

Additionally, we have heard numerous concerns about long wait times. The current wait time for a veteran to be seen by a counselor in San Diego, Oakland, and Albuquerque is over 100 days

Forty percent of Regional Offices take over 60- days for a veteran to meet with a counselor for an initial evaluation, above VA’s goal of a 60-day maximum wait.

A month is too long; but making a veteran put their life on hold for nearly half a year before even being seen by a counselor is ridiculous and has a negative impact on not only their lives, but their entire families.

Finally, we have found that 45% of participants within the VR&E program have successfully completed the program and subsequently reentered in.

That means that nearly half of all VR&E participants complete the program successfully only to reenter.

I understand the need for the veteran whose disability worsens to reenter the program with the goal of becoming gainfully employed again.

However, 45% of individuals using a jobs program more than once is a failure, and it will not stand on my watch.

We have also heard from the VR&E Executive Director himself that many veterans are retiring from their jobs and applying for VR&E to receive a subsistence allowance to supplement their income until they are able to receive retirement benefits and social security.

VA knows that there is abuse in this program, yet until I hear otherwise, VA is not working to fix the holes in the system.

We cannot ignore the existing problems within the VR&E program, as they will become a crisis in the future.

VA projects that the VR&E population will double from 2018 to 2028. We must reform the program to better assist veterans in need while continuing to remove any fraud, waste, and abuse in the program.

Finally, I recognize that VR&E’s latest IT project, the Readiness Employment System or RES, was launched as a pilot in October 2024, and early reports show the program has been received well.

I know that VA states they are finally on the right path with the new case management system. However, I am skeptical as this undertaking will now span the terms of four Administrations, and we all know how good VA is at wasting taxpayer dollars on failed IT projects.

Ms. Devlin, I know that you have a big job ahead of you in fixing VR&E, especially after the last administration put the program on the backburner.

Veterans across the country and this Subcommittee deserve to know what went wrong, and how the Trump administration will fix the problems this Committee has identified.

If VA doesn’t work to fix these problems, I know my friend Ranking Member Pappas and I will.

With that, I now yield to the Ranking Member for his opening remarks.