It happened again this year.  Not that it was a surprise.  It's happened the same way 20 times out of the last 23 years.  Congress was unable to pass a budget before the beginning of the fiscal year.  They are 23 days into the current fiscal year and still no budget.   And while this places a strain on a lot of different agencies, perhaps none suffer as badly as the VA does each year.

You see, when Congress delays passing a budget for whatever political or economic reasons it does so...it's a problem.  It leaves an agency like the VA in limbo until they know for sure how much money they will be allotted for that year.   For example, in 2004, while the VA received more money than they did the previous year, it was still 1.1 billion dollars less than the agency expected.  Worse they didn't find out what their final budget would be until 4 months into the fiscal year!  1.1 billion dollars is a rather large shortfall to try to recover with no warning a fourth of the way through your fiscal year.

That means that the VA spends a lot of time each year rationing.   Rationing care, keeping labor costs down by understaffing, delaying the ordering of needed equipment, whatever it takes to make sure that they don't run out of money at the end of the year. The focus is on saving money...just in case they don't get as much money as they think they will.   Once they get the budget for the year, they can adjust their spending....providing they haven't already over spent this year's budget.

But that changed on Thursday when President Obama signed the Veterans Health Care and Budget Reform and Transparency Act.   This is a piece of legislation that has been requested for decades from Veterans groups.  It was the number one legislative priority for the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America this year.  And this year it was passed by Congress in a bi-partisan manner and signed by the President.

What the legislation does is not earth-shattering, merely wise.   Under the new law, the VA budget will be approved a year in advance.   That means that Congress can fight over the budget all they want; but neither Democrats nor Republicans will be able to point to our vets and use them as political pawns to force a budget into passage.  Even more importantly, it also means that the VA will know BEFORE the fiscal year starts just how much they have to spend.   And that's a blessing to our vets.

You may not like having a Democratic controlled Congress and you may hate the current President...but give the devil his due.   After over two decades of trying to change a bad system, Thursday, October 22, 2009 was a good day for the United States and it's veterans!  

Thank you, Mr. President.