Bounce Houses, Drones, and Massage Chairs: A Review of VA’s Purchase History in the Veteran Readiness and Employment Program
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House Veterans' Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity U.S. House of Representatives
Follow its sittingsChris Pappas
These documents primarily show that VR&E is doing what it's supposed to do for veterans. Of course, like all government programs, it needs oversight and could be improved. The items purchased for veterans were in support of successful businesses. That means veterans created business plans, had them approved by a counselor, and then launched those small businesses. From the documents from VA, we've learned of additional examples of veterans receiving resources from VA to start a fishery business and a commercial printing business.
And in both cases, VA's support actually exceeded any of the examples raised by the majority in the title, but weren't included in the provocative hearing title itself. Encouraging veterans to believe in themselves, become entrepreneurs, and build a life where their service is complete is exactly what this program is designed to do. And by the way, the businesses the majority has focused on, they're still successful today, providing jobs and contributing to local economies across the country. To point to these purchases through some sort of doge lens is completely out of context and does a disservice to the constructive ways that we should be examining and improving VR&E. I'm interested in helping, in hearing more from VA about their process and controls to ensure the integrity of this program.
But we shouldn't be targeting a successful program because it's doing what it's supposed to do, supporting veterans who develop a successful business model approved by both VA and SBA and need support to build upon their success. The highest spending item, in fact, was contracting out for VR&E services. So that's what we should be discussing if we want to talk about ways that we can reduce spending, improve oversight, and improve VR&E effectiveness for veterans. VA is still feeling the effects of President Trump and Elon Musk's staff cuts and now is being forced to contract out to provide veterans with their earned benefits. That means our veterans are receiving inferior services that are costing Americans more.
And when doctors prescribe a major purchase for a veteran, VR&E counselors are asked to approve or deny whether or not that purchase is appropriate. In the past, that meant a careful review of the recommendation from a doctor, a review of the veteran's situation, and an assessment of the appropriateness of such a purchase. With the caseloads now at about 200 cases per counselor and staffing in the agency reeling from doge cuts, counselors are simply making the best decisions they can given limited time and resources. So we should take a serious look at what can be done to improve this program, how we can better support VR&E staff and its mission. This includes properly staffing the agency so it has the staff necessary to properly conduct oversight and reviews of spending and that we don't have to spend millions of dollars on overpriced contractors.
That is the hearing that I believe we should be having. This committee claims to be looking for answers as to why VR&E is experiencing delays, and I think it's simple. The program isn't staffed appropriately. And with the counselors overworked and aging out of the workforce, we're facing a major staffing cliff at VR&E if we don't act fast. So I look forward to hearing from VA and our witnesses, and our witness from PVA today because oversight of VR&E is important, it's needed, and it's up to this Congress to provide the agency with the resources it needs to do its job.
I yield back.
Derrick Van Orden
The gentleman yields back. I'll now introduce our witness panel. Our first witness is Ms. Margarita Devlin, sorry Margarita, Principal Deputy Under Secretary for Benefits, Veterans Benefits Administration at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Accompanying Ms. Devlin is Ms. Shantel Stovall, Acting Executive Director, Veterans Readiness and Employment Service, Veterans Benefit Administration at the Department of Veterans Affairs. Our third witness is Ms. Julia Howell, Associate Legislative Director at Paralyzed Veterans of America.
Margarita Devlin
Good afternoon, Chairman Van Orden and Ranking Member Pappas. It's good to see you both again and distinguished members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this hearing titled "Bounce Houses, Drones, and Massage Chairs: A Review of VA's Purchase History in the Veteran Readiness and Employment Program." Joining me today from the Veterans Benefits Administration is Ms. Shantel Stowell, Acting Executive Director of VR&E Service. The VR&E program plays a vital role in helping veterans overcome service-connected disabilities so they can achieve meaningful career goals or, when employment is not feasible, attain greater independence in their daily lives.
The purchases that may appear unconventional at first glance represent real veterans who, through tailored rehabilitation plans, have built successful businesses, secured long-term employment, or achieved essential independence in their homes and in their communities. Congress establishes the statutory authorities under which the VR&E program operates, and VA implements those authorities as written. The purchases referenced in the title of this hearing were made within that framework in direct support of approved rehabilitation plans designed to meet the individualized needs of the veterans we serve. Each decision reflects a balance between responsible stewardship of taxpayer dollars and providing veterans the best opportunity for their success. VA remains fully committed to strengthening the VR&E program through rigorous financial oversight, robust internal controls, and modernization efforts that enhance service to veterans and accountability to taxpayers and Congress.
If Congress chooses to amend these authorities or redefine the program's parameters, VA will fully and faithfully implement those changes. We stand ready to provide technical assistance as you consider any potential updates to ensure the program remains strong, accountable, and aligned with your intent. Ms. Stowell and I are prepared to answer your questions. Thank you very much for inviting us.
Julia Howell
Thank you, Ms. Devlin. The written statement of Ms. Devlin will be entered into the hearing record. Ms. Hull, you are now recognized for five minutes to deliver your testimony on behalf of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Chairman Van Orden, Ranking Member Pappas, and members of the subcommittee, PVA appreciates the opportunity to share our views on the Veteran Readiness and Employment program, or VR&E. VR&E assists disabled veterans in finding meaningful and lasting employment despite incurring disabilities or illnesses due to their military service. The services and supports available to veterans with catastrophic disabilities through VR&E are critical to ensuring their successful employment outcomes and or their independence. Although today's hearing is focused on purchase history within VR&E, our written testimony mainly highlights our broader concerns with the program. We chose this focus because PVA believes that strong management and oversight of the VR&E program are essential for the program's fiscal integrity and accuracy.
I'll focus my oral remarks on three topics: a brief reminder of the mission of VR&E, some ongoing concerns that we have, and I'll close with a few suggestions that may help to improve delivery of this critical benefit. First, there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what the VR&E program is supposed to do for veterans. All you have to do is look up VR&E on any social media platform to see that confusion abounds and answers are hard to find. At its core, VR&E is an employment program for disabled veterans. Most veterans believe that VR&E exists to help them return to school or address needs related to starting their own business, but many veterans don't understand the role of a vocational rehabilitation counselor, or a VRC.
A VRC is trained to help veterans find suitable, sustainable, and financially sufficient employment that will sustain them through their lives, not just for a few years after they've completed the program.
However, in this current environment, VRCs are expected to do the administrative work of authorizations, reimbursements, uploads, letters, dashboards and tracking performance metrics. These are important functions, but they are not employment counseling. If these functions are a priority for VA, then VA should hire staff with business, accounting, or similar backgrounds to accomplish that work. Doing so would free up the time allowing a VRC to focus on the work of employment counseling, particularly for veterans with complex disabilities. While PVA is grateful for the opportunities we've been given to provide feedback on this essential program, there seems to be a disconnect between the VA, Congress, and the veteran community about the best ways to guarantee the sustainability of this important program, which brings me to my second point.
For years, PVA and other VSOs have requested additional appropriations from Congress to meet the demands of the program that's facing exponentially increasing enrollment numbers. These requests have mostly gone unheard. Veterans still experience long wait times, struggle to contact their counselors, and VRC is overburdened by administrative tasks. We fear that the VR&E program is experiencing a perfect storm of high case volume, understaffing, and an enormous amount of administrative burden. Morale is low, demand is high, and VRCs are close to burning out.
If something isn't done to address these issues, veterans will likely wait even longer to get into the program, enrolled veterans may experience delayed payments and other negative effects that could impact their long-term well-being. Finally, I'd like to offer a couple suggestions that we think could help in the delivery of benefits for VR&E participants. First, VR&E needs to hire additional staff. Recently on a stakeholder engagement call, VR&E shared that they were undergoing a hiring blitz to help fill vacancies across the country. However, it's unclear from that conversation which positions VA is prioritizing.
The VR&E program again should consider hiring additional support staff to help reduce the administrative burden that is falling heavy on the shoulders of counselors. Next, VR&E should create national specialty teams for complex service tracks such as retroactive inductions, self-employment, and independent living. Additionally, VR&E should end mandatory overtime. VRCs are not a finite resource and PVA has concerns about the sustainability of this cadre in the face of increasing demand. Without sufficient staffing across the country, veterans will continue to face barriers that impact their financial independence as well as their participation in the labor market.
In closing, VR&E is an earned benefit intended to get veterans into suitable employment and the long-standing issues that have been voiced over the years continue. It is essential that we do everything we can to ensure the sustainability of the VR&E program. Thank you again for the invitation to testify and I welcome any questions you have.
Derrick Van Orden
Thank you, Ms. Howell, the written statement of Ms. Howell will be entered into the hearing record. We're now going to proceed to questioning and they're going to call votes here in a little bit, so we're going to do three minutes per member and then if we have time we'll go into a second round of questioning, I just don't want to stop the hearing and restart it again. So with that said, I now recognize Ranking Member Pappas for three minutes.
Chris Pappas
Thanks, Mr. Chairman. So the President's budget was just released and it targets hiring 300 counselors next year to support the growing caseloads within VR&E. And so Ms. Devlin, I wonder if I could ask you a few questions about this, if you could address the current caseload within VR&E.
Margarita Devlin
Yes, thank you for the question. Our current ratio is 1 to 199, which is why we really need to get these counselors hired.
Chris Pappas
And so if the 300 are hired, does that get us closer to the 1 to 125, does it get us all the way there?
Chris Pappas
And and can you address what Ms. Howell brought up in her testimony about the need for more support staff and how that could, you know, help balance the workload of VRCs?
Margarita Devlin
Thank you for the question. I agree that VRCs should be spending more time counseling veterans and less time on administrative tasks. When we look at what lends itself to satisfaction with the program, what veterans will typically tell you is their relationship with their counselor is the most important part of their satisfaction, that connection, the ability to have the counselor fully invest in that veteran's success. The RES system that we're in the process of deploying will take a lot of that administrative burden off of the counselors while also administering more internal controls for fiscal accountability.
Chris Pappas
How confident are you that this 300 target can be hit? Do we have enough qualified applicants that will be out there for us to hire? And do you feel like the pay scale is competitive enough with the private sector?
Margarita Devlin
It's a great question. Yes, we're about halfway there on our goal to hire these individuals. We went out with a very aggressive recruitment strategy. We didn't just put, you know, job announcements on USAJOBS. We recruited through the Commission on Rehabilitation Counselor Certification, through LinkedIn, through the colleges and universities that offer these training programs, and we got more applicants than ever.
And we are in the process of filling all those vacancies.
Chris Pappas
So I'm wondering if you can address some of the expenditures that we were taking a look at. 49,000 for fishing supplies, 46,000 on a UV printer for commercial for a commercial printing company. I understand that you can't get into the specifics of these, you know, veterans' cases, but I'm wondering if you can answer this: are the veterans who received those resources currently running small businesses with these supplies and have they been successful?
Margarita Devlin
Yes, I'll let Ms. Sandoval address those specific cases, but we were we did look into the cases that are the subject of the letter, and I will tell you that it was really heartwarming to hear the stories told as told by these veterans of their self-employment success and the challenges that they had trying to find employment before they got to a VR&E counselor who helped them achieve their dream of having their own business. But I'll let Ms. Sandoval address those specific cases.
Shantel Stovall
Yes, so thank you for the question. And so with regard to the fish hatchery supplies that was purchased, the 49,000 for that purchase, that is for a veteran that is participating in self-employment and they are successfully operating their business. In fact, they reported earnings of 237,000 for 2024. The veteran's still in the program right now. We do have a requirement to follow them for up to a year before we close the case to make sure that the program or the business is still viable and sustainable.
Okay. I'm over my time, so I yield back. Thanks.
Derrick Van Orden
The gentleman yields. The chair now recognizes my friend from the great state of Kentucky, Mr. McGarvey.
Morgan McGarvey
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being here. This program is so important because our veterans are so important. And the Veteran Readiness and Employment program, or VR&E as we're calling it, this is something that veterans turn to when they're trying to rebuild their future. They're looking for a path back to work, back to stability, back to independence.
That's why every delay, every unclear message from VA, it has real-world, real-life consequences for these veterans and their families. Participation in VR&E has grown a lot in recent years because of the PACT Act. I think this is a good thing. This is a positive development. But too many veterans are walking into a system right now that's overwhelmed.
And we've got to make sure that these veterans, sometimes they're waiting months to talk to a counselor for the first time. In the most extreme cases, the wait has stretched past five months. That is not a small inconvenience. That's a veteran sitting at home. That's a veteran who's unable to start school.
That's a veteran who is not back to work, who is not beginning training, who is not moving forward. So what the veterans tell us and the data shows is that the real challenge here is access and communication.
Veterans can't reach their counselors. Appointments are rushed. Some are told to complete forms on their own that are meant to be filled out with the help of a trained professional. And when the process becomes really confusing, then the veterans, they lose time, they lose their benefits. They sometimes just give up all together.
I want to point out that is not the veteran's failure. That is a failure of the system that is supposed to be helping our veterans. So at the end of the day, this program, we know it works when the veterans can actually use it, when they can get an appointment, when they can understand the program, when they can trust that the VA is focused on them and their success. That's what today should be about. Are the veterans getting what they need to build their future, or are we letting political theater get in the way?
Ms. Devlin, I'll start with you. You heard me mention that we've seen VR&E wait times stretch from a couple of weeks to more than five months in some areas. What is VA doing right now, not in 2027, not after another IT rollout, but right now to shorten those wait times for veterans who are stuck in limbo?
Margarita Devlin
Thank you for the question. And you're right, we were well on our way to reducing those wait times before the government shutdown. Unfortunately, during those 43 days, we were unable to process any applications or conduct counseling appointments. But we're working through it. We want our veterans to get into programs as quickly as possible.
We're doing many different things. One of the things we're doing in the process of hiring is while those vacancies exist in certain stations, we're making sure to sort of equalize the work by distributing it more equitably across where we have staffing capacity. Many of our veterans prefer the tele-counseling appointments anyway, so it really doesn't matter if your counselor is in Milwaukee or in San Diego, right, as long as you can get your appointment, get into a rehab plan, and get started on your way. So that's helped us to control time and we're bringing that timeliness back down again.
Speaker 11
Thanks. It has to be brought down. And also, it's not just the timeliness in the few seconds I've got left, it's communicating to the veteran what that is and then holding up your all's end of the bargain.
The gentleman's time has expired.
I yield back.
Derrick Van Orden
The gentleman yields. I now recognize myself for three minutes. What's the educational requirement, Ms. Devlin, for a VA counselor?
Margarita Devlin
Master's level training in rehabilitation counseling, but we've recently expanded it to allow many other master's level degrees to count towards that requirement.
Derrick Van Orden
Okay. So we got something through the House, a bill that lowers that to a bachelor's degree requirement, which I went to VR&E myself personally, and you don't need a master's degree to be a counselor. Right after we got that passed, it was a couple weeks after they announced they're hiring these things in the President's budget, 300 new counselors. So I'd like 3,000 new counselors. But the education requirement is silly, that's an administrative restraint that the VA has put on itself.
What's the average full employment rate from the last cycle for a veteran that goes through VR&E?
Speaker 10
So of the veterans that go through the VR&E program, what's the full employment rate from this last cycle?
Margarita Devlin
Of the veterans that went through, so last year we had 10,527 actually be declared as a successful outcome. 55,301 entered a new rehabilitation plan during that year, and 83,188 continued pursuing a previously developed plan.
Where does the percentage 37 come into this?
Derrick Van Orden
That's if you look at the full employment rate. How many jobs have graduates, and I know this is not the intended purpose of this specifically, how many jobs have graduates of VR&E created? Like for instance, the fish hatchery, which by the way, that is not a lot of money for a fish hatchery. I'll be honest, we've got one in our district. I don't know how small that joint is.
But so how many people does that person employ? Do we know?
I'm not sure of that.
Derrick Van Orden
Okay, so these are the sorts of things that we need to start tracking because if we want to invest, you know, Mr. Pappas brings up this amount of money for this commercial printing thing, if we're going to invest a million dollars into a veteran and they're hiring 50 people, that's a heck of a lot different than investing a million dollars into a veteran who is self-employed and not employing anybody else.
So if we we look at this program more holistically and understand that we want our veterans to be radically successful, I want this to be very available to everybody, but when we're we're looking at these numbers, we need to we need to have more metrics of like what's actually happened like what's the average length of employment for a veteran following their case closing at VR&E?
Margarita Devlin
So if you look at our longitudinal study, which has been following veterans for about 20 years, their percentage of employment rate is 74%.
For how long?
Speaker 10
Well, the oldest category that we're following is from 2010. So 16 years.
Chris Pappas
I'm going to respect my own rule, my time's expired. We are going to go into a second round of questioning. I now recognize the ranking member for five minutes. Now recognize the ranking member for five minutes, I think they're holding votes here.
Ms. Devlin, I understand that requests for VR&E resources are reviewed, they require approval. Could you talk a little bit more about the oversight and controls that are in place for these expenditures? All right, thanks for your generosity, Mr. Chairman. Are there instances in which VA may decline a veteran's initial business model, and even if the business model is approved, are there declines in terms of requests for resources?
Margarita Devlin
Thank you for the question. Yes, we do have an approval process which I can let Ms. Stovall talk about, and we we would potentially deny a program. We collaborate with the Small Business Administration also in helping to evaluate the feasibility of the program, but Ms. Stovall can speak to the internal controls we have.
Shantel Stovall
Yes, thank you. So we do have internal controls which start at the regional office, but there are the plans that cost over $50,000 would come to me for review. During my time that I've been in this seat for the past eight months, I have had the opportunity to review three of those plans, excuse me, five plans, and one has been approved, one has been denied, and there are three others that are going through the process right now. But when we look at those plans, we are looking for viability, we are looking to determine if it is a feasible vocational goal for the veteran or not, and if they've considered all the criteria, like can this veteran complete traditional employment or not before we jump to self-employment. So on those bases are those are kind of what we look at, also if the business is already an existing business, that's not something that we would support under self-employment.
Chris Pappas
Okay, I appreciate that. Regarding the $15,000 that was spent on the massage chair, I wonder if you have some additional context for that one. Does VA stand by the purchase and agree that it was needed?
Shantel Stovall
Yes, so the massage chair was purchased for a 100% service-connected disabled veteran that suffered from some vascular as well as mental health conditions, PTSD, agoraphobia. So we did consult with VHA medical, well, professional occupational therapists who approved the recommendation for that particular chair. And I would just like to say when we're when we're it's an independent living case, and so when we're looking at what is appropriate for the veteran, I think we need to look at the whole person. And so this is one of those psychosocial, you know, areas where we need to consider what is necessary for this veteran to be able to live independently in their community. And by being able to relieve the stress and anxiety, we were able to successfully rehab her where she could start to integrate into her community.
Chris Pappas
Thank you for that. The documents provided on VR and E spending from VA also show incredibly high spending on contracting. In fact, the contracting dollars dwarf the actual spending on supplies for veterans. So I'm wondering if you can just tell us more about why VA is contracting to this degree, spending millions of dollars on contracting within VR and E.
Margarita Devlin
Yeah, thank you for that question. So I've been in the VA for a long time and when I started as a counselor, we had contracting back then. Contracting doesn't replace the need for a counselor. Contractors help support, but they can't make decisions. So they can do the part of the process, for example, of assessing interests, aptitudes, abilities, helping the veteran explore career opportunities, developing some proposed avenues for the veteran to achieve those goals.
And then they turn that work into a counselor who meets with the veteran and makes the final decisions and then approves any purchases that might be required for that. We could also have contractors support case management to help make sure we're getting grades and, you know, supporting the veteran through their training. The contracts used to be done at the regional office level when I started 31 years, almost 31 years ago. But for many years now, they've been centralized in central office. So it's sort of one giant contract vehicle and then the regional offices issue task orders against them.
That creates greater control, greater accountability, and better sort of fiscal responsibility because we can get better pricing that way.
Chris Pappas
Ms. Howell, I'm wondering if you can answer the question about whether you do, whether VA was spending this amount of money on contracting and how you view that.
Julia Howell
Thank you for the question, sir. I believe Ms. Devlin spoke about contracting in her last testimony on VR and E, so we didn't really know what that looked like or what it meant to people in the field. I think if VR and E, if they're so overburdened by people coming into the program or existing cases that they need to spend this kind of money for contracting, it begs the question, like, can we not just spend that money hiring additional staff with the understanding that there's going to be onboarding? Like you have, just because you have that master's in rehabilitative counseling, you still need to learn the VA systems. You still need, everyone knows what it's like to be new at a job.
You've got to learn the way this stuff goes. Sorry. I don't know if I should keep talking or if he's going to... I don't think he noticed, but now he's back.
Morgan McGarvey
I'm going to go back with you. PVA has warned that VR and E is at a dangerous tipping point. And that's a quote. You say this because of their high caseloads, because of the administrative burden that's going on there. From your perspective, what is the single biggest barrier to preventing veterans, especially those with catastrophic disabilities, from getting timely, meaningful VR and E support?
Julia Howell
Thank you for the question, sir. I think the thing that is most in the way for one of my members being able to successfully engage with the program is that thoughtful employment counseling, which is what a VRC's job is. I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding between the education level required for a VRC to do that employment counseling long-term for a veteran with catastrophic disabilities. If we have a case like I was a VR and E participant, the chairman was a VR and E participant. We are able-bodied veterans that do not have the same level of complexities as someone who is a member of my organization.
If VRCs are spending their time doing all these administrative tasks and they're being pulled away from offering true employment counseling, that does a disservice to our members. We've spoken to many VRCs over the years and we're hearing that, you know, we're trying to rate VRCs' performance metrics by the same metrics that they are applying to claims raters. And these are fundamentally different services and their delivery is completely different. If a VRC is spending time being thoughtful about the employment counseling they're delivering to veterans, that's showing up in their metrics and they're getting pressure from their management to improve the metrics for leadership. So I do think it's a fine line between allowing them to do their job, which again is rehabilitative counseling for complex disabilities and complex cases.
A traditional education path, maybe someone without a bachelor's degree, that's fine. They can handle those cases that were the chairman's or mine, that don't have those complexities. But VRCs need to be allowed to offer thoughtful employment counseling for the veterans that need it.
Morgan McGarvey
Thank you, Ms. Hall. I appreciate that and I'd just say for the veterans in the independent living track, the delays don't just slow down a career. They affect the daily life of a veteran. And so what changes would make the biggest difference for those veterans right now? You talked about some of the problems, but what changes would you make right now to make the biggest difference right now?
Julia Howell
Thank you for the question, sir. I don't know that fixing independent living has there's an immediate solution to this, but I do think that experienced VRCs who have been at this game a long time, they can create a sort of tiger team to handle these more complex cases so that as we're onboarding these new VRCs that again are learning systems, the experienced folks, because independent living is from what I've been told a very complex thing to manage as a VRC. So if we allow a tiger team of some sort of experts who are well trained in processing all the paperwork needed for this, understand the tracking mechanisms, the consultations with VHA and occupational therapists, if we can create a team that understands that system and have them work on these cases, I think that would have an impact. Yeah, thank you.
Derrick Van Orden
The gentleman yields. I just listening and we're having great parallel discussions here because we're trying to process what's going through and it's great. So the RES system, let's clear some clear the air a little bit here. So we have two different things here. You're asking for more counselors, which is why we lowered the educational threshold because I fundamentally disagree that you need a master's degree so we can get the pool of potential applicants would be greater.
That's great. And then you're asking for support staff. Well, the contractors are filling the position of the support staff now. And I think it's I want these things to go through quickly, I want them to be efficient, and I want them to be very effective. And the ability to hire all these other people into the VA system, you know, in a timely manner so that backlogs and everything for the VR and E program, we want to we're going to have to deal with the environment.
What did Dick Cheney say? You don't go to war with the army you want, you go to war with the army you have. So this is what we have right now. We're trying to get this right. So when is this RES going to be on, the readiness and employment system?
When's that going to be FOC or fully operational capable?
Margarita Devlin
That's a great question. It is in IOC right now in all 56 regional offices. It'll be fully enabled with all cases by Veterans Day.
Oh, that's a pretty good day.
Derrick Van Orden
And then how many of these contracting positions are going to be eliminated once that's FOC?
Margarita Devlin
Contract support is basically surge support. So it isn't that we have positions, we have contracts that enable us to surge when we need to. So for example, we have a high volume of applicants that hit the San Diego area all at once, we can leverage contractors to help support those counselors. These are people with the same credentials. Those credentials are important to be able to understand the physical and emotional aspects of disability and how that relates to the labor market.
There's a relevance to this education requirement.
Derrick Van Orden
I get it. So Miss Howell, then how does that jive with what you said that we should have more permanent positions if the contractors that we're hiring in surge capacity have the same qualifications as the people that you're saying you want to be employed by the VA? It sounds like you want two pieces of pie or something. Did I hear that right? So how...
So if Miss Devlin is saying that the contractors that are being hired and are working at the VA have the same accreditation and qualifications as a permanent party person in the VA, why are you asking for more VA employees if the... if it's already being met by the contracting entity?
Julia Howell
Well, I'm not... I don't have the numbers, the data wasn't shared with me on the expenditures on what is spent on these contracts. I did not have access to that information. But what I can say is that we're in a surge moment right now. Since I've been doing this work, we have been over the threshold. With or without contracting, the caseload has never been below one to 125 in the four years I've been at PVA.
They still need a full-time staff to ex... like to do these things and it stands to reason that it might be cheaper to offer this stuff in-house rather than contracting. Additionally, when it comes to the contracting, we have been told from veterans that they're joining their intake call that's supposed to be a one-on-one with a counselor and them and 400 of their closest battle buddies are on a Zoom with one person trying to do the in... like the intro sort of orientation course for this.
Derrick Van Orden
I hear you. I'm just one thing that I am going to push back on here. I don't... cheaper's not a word I'm going to use when it comes to veterans. So efficiency, that sort of stuff, but never cheaper. Less expensive maybe, more efficient 100%.
We're not... and I know that we have not discussed this, but I know Chris and I are six and seven, we don't talk about... we're not going to cheap our veterans anywhere. And maybe that's not what you intended to say. Miss Devlin, who certifies these contractors?
Margarita Devlin
The... so the contracting officer puts the requirements in the contract and the... the person who oversees the contract would review the resumes and confirm that they meet the requirements.
Derrick Van Orden
Okay, so a permanent Veterans Affairs Administration employee and this contractor, the same person is making sure they have the proper certification, correct?
Margarita Devlin
So it's not a certification, it's an educational requirement, but yes. Essentially, when a... when an employee is hired, a federal government employee is hired, it's part of the hiring process, right? We verify. For a contractor, we... we review the contract... the resumes that get submitted for the contract as they get submitted. But it's surge capacity, so these are not...
Checky Roger, hold on one second, I only have 15 seconds.
Derrick Van Orden
So Miss Howell, are you... we have a... it's a volume issue, not a quality issue, is that right? Okay. Well, we're working on that. We really are. Good.
Okay, well with that, my time has expired and I would like to thank you all for coming today and I thank you for your work. I really do. As I said, I am a... I attended... it's so funny, I went to VR&E and now I'm a member of Congress, so maybe we should cancel the entire program. Just kidding. We are working diligently and it's going to... it's just going to take time.
Just like it takes time to educate somebody, it takes time to hire somebody, it takes time to get them in a place, takes some time to learn your job. But I think that we can all agree that we want to be in the same place that is... every veteran that has earned this, earned, it's not a gift, has earned this benefit has timely access to the programs that they're suited for. I will throw out these two different anecdotes, interestingly enough. I wanted to go to culinary school and they wouldn't approve it because I've been diagnosed with PTSD and they have to provide you with knives. And so... and the other one was, it was a running joke in the office that I went through my stuff is they actually approved clown school for somebody.
That's real.
So what we want to do is make sure that every one of these dollars is applied most bang for the buck. I'd like to see some more metrics. You said you did a longitudinal study for over 16 years. I'd like to see how many people are still employed and all these things so that we can maximize, Ms. Howell, every single thing that we can do for these veterans because it's critically important. And I think it's great.
To be able to have dignity as a disabled veteran is, is crucial. And that's, that's earned. And it's up to us to fulfill that promise that we've made to our veterans. So with that, I'd like to yield to my ranking member for any closing comments.
Chris Pappas
Well, thank you very much and thanks to our witnesses for their testimony here today. And look, I've gotten to know veterans in New Hampshire that have successfully navigated VR&E and are benefiting in real time from the resources that are provided. And I think to Ms. Howell's point, during your years at PVA, the caseload issue continues to be a problem. We have an overburdened program and we need more people that are working as counselors or supporting counselors to be able to ensure that veterans are ultimately getting what they need and deserve out of the program. So I'm glad we could drill down beyond the headline of this hearing today and actually talk a little bit about the substance of what's going on.
And I think we all need to make sure that we're continuing to work on process improvements, ensuring that there's the right scrutiny and oversight provided. I think you gave us good answers on that front today. But I come back to that core issue. You know, we've got to work on those ratios. We've got to make sure that veterans aren't waiting and that they're getting the good service that VA, I know, intends to put out.
So let's continue to work on that and yield back my time.
Derrick Van Orden
The gentleman yields. Thank you, Ranking Member Pappas. And again, thank you very much for coming today. You guys are becoming frequent flyers over there. I ask unanimous consent that all members may have five legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include any extraneous materials.
Without objection, so ordered. The hearing is now adjourned.
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