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Summary

The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) operates the Nations largest health care delivery system, with about 222,000 employees supporting its mission. It is also the largest provider of health care education and training for medical residents and other health care trainees in the United States. In FY2008, VHA provided medical care to approximately 5.6 million unique patients and spent approximately $43.5 billion for medical care and research. A coalition of veterans service organizations (VSOs) has been calling on Congress to provide VHA with a budget which is sufficient, timely, and predictable. These organizations have asserted that VHA has underestimated its budget in the past. Moreover, VSOs contend that Congress has not enacted the VA budget by the beginning of the fiscal year. According to these organizations the delays in the enactment of the budget have exacerbated operational challengessuch as, differing capital expenditures, delaying recruitment, restricting acquisitions, limiting maintenancefaced by VHA network directors. To mitigate these issues VSOs have proposed that Congress change the funding process for VHA to an advance appropriation. In general, an appropriations act makes budget authority available beginning on October 1 of the fiscal year (FY) for which the appropriations act is passed (budget year). However, there are some types of appropriations that dont follow this pattern; among them are advance appropriations. An advance appropriation means appropriation of new budget authority that becomes available one or more fiscal years beyond the fiscal year for which the appropriations act was passed (that is, beyond the budget year). Under the current scoring guidelines (estimating the budgetary effects of pending legislation and comparing them to the budget resolution or to any limits that may be set in law), new budget authority for an advance appropriation is scored in the fiscal year in which the funds become available for obligation. In the 111th Congress, the Veterans Health Care Budget Reform and Transparency Act of 2009 (H.R. 1016 and a companion version S. 423) has been introduced. Under H.R. 1016 and S. 423, the following accounts that fund VHAmedical services, medical support and compliance, and medical facilitieswould be funded as an advance appropriation beginning with FY2011. The funding would be under a discretionary budget authority, and the legislation calls for a study by the Comptroller General (of the Government Accountability Office) on the adequacy and accuracy of the budget projections based on VHAs Enrollee Health Care Projection Model (EHCPM). There are two broad sets of issues related to advance funding for some accounts of VHA: budget enforcement issues and implementation issues. Among budget enforcement issues a key issue is that an advance appropriation mechanism may not be able to insulate a program from budget enforcement and competition with other programs. Among implementation issues a key issue is that funding VHA under an advance appropriation, based on the EHCPM, could create budget shortfalls if there are unanticipated developments affecting the EHCPM. This report will be updated as events warrant.

Related Legislation:
• H.R.1016
• S.423

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