House Republicans offered a mild but public reprimand for Veterans Affairs leaders last week after department planners shifted hundreds of millions of dollars into outside health care accounts without seeking permission from congressional appropriators.
Democratic lawmakers went further, charging that the move was a serious violation of executive branch overreach. They accused department officials of flaunting the law in a rush to dismantle federal support programs.
At issue are savings that VA Secretary Doug Collins and department leaders have claimed from the closing of diversity and inclusion offices within VA, as well as hundreds of unspecified contracts cancelled after officials decided they did not provide direct assistance to veterans.
During testimony before the House Appropriations Committee on May 15, Collins said department planners moved $343 million from those accounts to “support VA community care and to ensure veterans have healthcare choice.”
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Senior leaders did not characterize the move as a reprogramming request, which would have required detailed accounting of the funding shifts and approval from House and Senate appropriators. Instead, the department provided a summary of their decisions to lawmakers in late April.
Democratic lawmakers — who have protested both the office closures and the lack of information on programming cuts — accused Collins of hiding critical information on agency operations from the public.
“You’ve made bold claims about cutting staff and programs while redirecting so-called savings to medical care and other benefits for veterans,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., ranking member of the committee’s panel handling VA oversight. “But so far, it’s all been blanket assertion without any evidence or proof to this committee, or to the veterans.”
Collins pushed back on the need for an official congressional request, but senior Republican leaders on the committee disagreed with that stance.
“This should have come in the form of a reprogramming request,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla. “Obviously, we have authority there and the chairman has authority there.”
Contrary to Democratic demands for some type of sanctions over the moves, Cole told Collins that lawmakers would “just point that out for future reference” on this occasion. Collins pledged to improve communications with lawmakers in the future.
Reprogramming requests are a normal part of government agency operations, as budget officials find savings or shortfalls in various accounts approved by Congress.
This budgetary dust-up was likely a moot point, given that nearly all reprogramming requests from the Republican executive branch can be approved by the Republican-controlled House and Senate.
But appropriators said the distinction is important to improve public accounting of the billions of dollars being spent by VA, especially if those decisions conflict with guidelines approved by Congress.
Collins and the White House have eyed hundreds of millions of dollars in savings through staff cuts and program cancellations, moves that lawmakers have vowed will face close scrutiny in coming months.
The White House has also asked for a 4% increase in discretionary program spending for VA next year, even with the projected cuts.
Leo covers Congress, Veterans Affairs and the White House for Military Times. He has covered Washington, D.C. since 2004, focusing on military personnel and veterans policies. His work has earned numerous honors, including a 2009 Polk award, a 2010 National Headliner Award, the IAVA Leadership in Journalism award and the VFW News Media award.
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