(U.S. Senate) — The Senate today passed bipartisan legislation to provide the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) emergency funding for veterans’ disability compensation, pension, and readjustment benefits. Tester introduced this legislation alongside a bipartisan group of his Senate and House colleagues to ensure the delivery of reliable, timely benefits for veterans and their families on October 1^st.

This legislation now heads to the President’s desk to be signed into law.

“Funding veterans benefits is key to living up to the promises we made to the men and women who stepped up to serve,” said Chairman Tester. “This shortfall exists because the PACT Act is working for toxic-exposed veterans and survivors in Montana and across the country, and as a result, more veterans and their loved ones are receiving benefits than ever before. This is what paying the true cost of war looks like, and I’m proud the Senate was able to act quickly today to ensure that seven million veterans and their families receive their benefit checks on time in 12 days.”

Yesterday, Tester led a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee oversight hearing on providing this emergency funding for veterans benefits. During the hearing, he stressed the urgent need for the Senate to immediately pass the supplemental funding bill to deliver veterans benefits on October 1^st, and pressed his colleagues to act quickly.

With more veterans and their families receiving VA health care and benefits than ever before, the Department faced a $3 billion shortfall in benefits funding for fiscal year (FY) 2024. Tester and lawmakers introduced legislation to address this by providing the Department the funds needed to cover the FY 2024 benefits shortfall, in order to provide veterans and their families the timely benefits they have earned and rely on. They also included language requiring more transparency and reporting from the Department on its budget and spending, including a root cause analysis to help prevent future shortfalls.

The Senate needed to pass Tester and his colleagues’ funding bill before Friday, September 20^th in order to prevent a delay in VA compensation and pension benefit payments to as many as seven million veterans and their survivors, and to issue readjustment benefit payments to more than 500,000 veterans and their beneficiaries.

Veterans Service Organizations representing millions of veterans in Montana and across the nation have endorsed the lawmakers’ bipartisan legislation to address the veterans benefits shortfall. This includes the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), Military Officers Association of America (MOAA), Disabled American Veterans (DAV), The American Legion, Wounded Warrior Project (WWP), Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA), and the Jewish War Veterans of the USA.