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Today, Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Mich.), the Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared at the start of the Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity’s legislative hearing to discuss potential legislation to expand the American Dream for veterans through education, job training, and home ownership programs, including proposed legislation to improve adaptive vehicle accessibility for disabled veterans, as well as proposed legislation to strengthen the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) for active-duty servicemembers and their families. A full list of bills on today’s agenda can be found here.

Good morning,

The Subcommittee will come to order.

I welcome the witnesses and Subcommittee Members to today’s hearing.

I am standing in for Chairman Van Orden this morning as he is dealing with a family health issue.

As he has said many times, on this subcommittee we operate in a nonpartisan way with the ultimate goal of improving opportunities for those who have served our country.

This legislative hearing continues in that spirit. We hold legislative hearings to learn from VA and other groups about their views on the bill and ensure members are making informed decisions when we do, or do not, mark them up.

We value the insight provided by these stakeholders and agencies as an essential part of this process.

Unfortunately, the Committee did not receive VA or DOL testimony until less than 24 hours before this hearing.

This is unacceptable. We value these agencies views and input when crafting legislation to make sure they can be implemented as Congress had intended.

I hope this is the last time that we receive late testimony in order to ensure we are providing the best economic opportunities and support to our veterans.

We have twelve important legislative proposals to consider here today. It is important to note that not all of the proposals we will discuss today will move forward in the legislative process.

A number of these bills seek to improve education programs, accessibility to VA benefits, and VA’s home loan program.

I specifically want to highlight my bill that is on the agenda. My bill, H.R. 7083, the “CRUISE Act” would require VA to develop a plan and centralize all payments for the Adaptive Automobile Equipment (AAE) program.

This would help eliminate the bureaucratic barriers of each individual hospital making payments directly to the AAE dealers from VA Central Office.

By doing so, this bill would streamline the process of paying AAE providers, with the intent of ensuring AAE providers get paid sooner and more efficiently.

There have been continued payments delays from VA to providers.

In certain parts of the country there are 22 Adaptive automobile invoices that are over 1,000 days late for their payments.

This is unacceptable. My bill would get to work at addressing these delays, cutting out the red tape, and ensuring providers get paid for their valuable work – all the while getting disabled veterans the service they deserve.

My bill would also hold VA accountable for making these payments to AAE providers in a timely manner by requiring

VA to publish the number of days each AAE payment takes to process that exceeds the 30-day mark.

If we don’t fix this issue, we risk losing good providers who help our veterans get the adapted vehicles they need – we can’t let the bureaucracy get in the way of providing these benefits.

If this continues, veterans will have less provider options available to them.

Additional bills that we will consider would address modernizations and improvements to workforce, the TAP program, the VA home loan program and the GI bill.

I have reservations about some of the proposals on the agenda today. The witness testimony and questions from Members will hopefully address some of these issues so we can make informed decisions about whether to move these bills forward in the legislative process.

Just because we have bills on this legislative hearing does not necessarily mean we can advance them through the markup process due to policy or cost concerns.

We look forward to hearing from the Members who have introduced these proposals, as well as our witnesses, on how we can continue to improve these bills and better the lives of our veterans.

I now yield to the Ranking Member for five minutes for his opening remarks.