WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, today called on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to focus its upcoming fiscal year 2017 budget on effective programs that will help veterans receive timely care and fix the culture of corruption at the agency.

At a hearing held today to examine the president’s fiscal year 2017 VA budget proposal, Isakson noted the importance of using those resources to deliver timely care to veterans through the Veterans Choice Program. The budget proposal includes $7.2 billion in funding to provide veterans with health care outside of the VA and would be used to merge the VA’s seven non-VA health care programs into the Choice Program.

“I'm very encouraged that [the VA has] embraced a program to merge all non-VA care programs into one streamlined Choice Program to see to it that health care outside of the VA is delivered correctly and appropriately,” said Isakson.

During the hearing, Isakson asked VA Secretary Robert McDonald about McDonald’s plans to address the broken system of accountability at the VA, emphasizing his goal as Senate Committee chairman to pass comprehensive accountability legislation in the Senate later this year.

“My goal is to see to it that by the end March we have an accountability bill for the VA employees that's right for the veterans and right for those employees. We are looking to the future to ensure that if we have problems… we have a defensible accountability system within the department to correct a wrong and make sure it does not happen again,” said Isakson.

Isakson cited the recent cases of two executives who swindled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the VA, received demotions from the VA leadership as a result, and were later reinstated to their leadership roles with no punishment after the Merit Systems Protection Board overturned their demotions. Isakson said those are just two pieces of evidence of the desperate need for reform at the department.

“We want… to build a platform that's good for the employees, good for middle management, good for the VA, but most importantly, good for the veterans themselves so they know they're getting quality services and quality accountability,” continued Isakson. “Accountability is the single most important thing we must accomplish in my judgment within this committee and the VA itself.”

The VA’s budget request also includes legislative proposals and funding to fix the VA’s terribly backlogged appeals process. Isakson expressed concern about the over 440,000 pending appeals at the VA and noted the need for reform to eliminate that backlog.

“I think it's important for our veterans… to make sure [that] if they have an appeal, it is justified and heard, but makes it also so one veteran or two veterans or a handful of veterans’ appeals do not cause other veterans to get a slower response on an appeal,” said Isakson. “There are a handful… of appeals that over and over and over again, over a series of years, have still been active and in process. Every time one of those takes place, it takes time away from a claim that's recently filed by a veteran who deserves meritorious treatment in a hasty way.”

The president’s fiscal year 2017 VA budget proposal provides $182 billion in funding for the VA’s health, benefits, construction and other administrative programs, an 8.9 percent increase over the VA’s fiscal year 2016 funding and almost double VA’s 2009 budget.

Approximately $6.4 billion would go to Georgia for compensation and pension and readjustment benefits, medical and construction programs and insurance and indemnity programs.

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The Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is chaired by U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., in the 114th Congress. Isakson is a veteran himself – having served in the Georgia Air National Guard from 1966-1972 – and has been a member of the Senate VA Committee since he joined the Senate in 2005. Isakson’s home state of Georgia is home to more than a dozen military installations representing each branch of the military as well as more than 750,000 veterans.