The United States Veterans Affairs Department incorrectly gave veterans around $ 5 billion more in disability compensation and pension payments of what it should have done in the last four fiscal years, an error that legislators say it is recurrent and worsen.
In a supervision hearing on Wednesday, the Chamber’s Assistance Assistance Subcommittee pressed the VA officials to explain how the agency planned to rectify a problem that regularly creates financial nightmares for veterans when they are asked to return the money.
“Our veterans live in a payment check,” said Representative Morgan Luttrell, a Texas Republican, who presides over the subcommittee. “Many of them are in a black, dark and black hole.”
Representative Morgan McGarvey, D-K.
The VA issued at least $ 5.1 billion in excessive compensation payments and pensions from fiscal year 2021 to fiscal year 2024, Luttrell said. The VA said that he paid excessively almost $ 1.4 billion in fiscal year 2024 alone.
The VA only raised a “portion” of the four -year debt, which means that the agency wasted approximately $ 677 million in taxpayers, Luttrell said.
Agency officials said many factors lead to excessive payment, including administrative errors, as well as veterans’ failures to inform the dependents they no longer have and other changes in their eligibility or state.
Nina Tann, executive director of the VA Compensation Service, said that the agency, which serves around 9.1 million people, has a “higher risk” of making inappropriate payments due to the large number of beneficiaries and ascending them high dollars that extend.
Tann said that the agency has taken measures to prevent, detect and correct the problem, including being better to notify veterans who need to inform changes.
Tann also said that he was fixed an administrative error in January that he had been causing duplicate payments for about 15,000 veterans with dependents in fiscal year 2024. The agency did not force those veterans to pay the money, he said.
Excessive payments sometimes cover many years. In 2023, the VA temporarily suspended the collection of pension debts for thousands of low -income veterans and their survivors after the agency identified a problem with the verification of income that led to excess payments between 2011 and 2022.
Excessive payments are also derived from a little -known federal law that prohibits veterans from receiving both disability compensation and the payment of special separation, or the global sum incentives offered when the US. UU. They had to reduce their active duty force or release the members of the slightly injured service.
Since fiscal year 2013, the earliest year for which the VAMA shared data, the VA has recovered more than $ 2.5 billion of approximately 122,000 disabled veterans who had involuntarily received both benefits, News previously reported.
Lutrell said veterans should not be responsible for correcting errors made by the government.
“That’s our fault,” he said. “We have to solve that problem.”
A clear path was not established during the audience of approximately one hour, and Luttrell asked Tann to continue talking with him later.
“Our anguish is the fact that it is in a trend in the wrong direction,” Luttlll told agency officials. “We are losing ground.”
