1 , the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which supplemented some military construction and veterans affairs appropriations accounts. 46). The Senate received the bill on January 29. The amounts recommended and enacted for these accounts are presented in Table 3 . These will be discussed in detail in the sections that follow. 1 . The provision in S.Amdt. The remainder of this section discusses the regular FY2009 appropriations enacted on September 30, 2008, as Division E of the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act, 2009 ( H.R. Regular Fiscal Year 2009 Appropriations

The President submitted his FY2009 appropriations request to Congress on February 4, 2008. The House Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies, chaired by Representative Chet Edwards (17 th Congressional District of Texas), began its series of hearings on February 14 by addressing requested appropriations for the Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA). Appropriations for Fiscal Year 2008

			Regular Appropriations

The Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act ( H.R. 2642 , the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, was reintroduced to the House in mid-May 2008 and reconstituted as a second supplemental appropriation for FY2008. On January 29, 2008, President George W. Bush issued Executive Order (E.O.) 2. For each appropriation account for which specific construction projects are identified in the committee report, the proposed legislation states, "That the amount appropriated in this paragraph shall be for the projects and activities, and in the amounts, specified under the headings ... in the table entitled ... in the report of the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives to accompany this bill." The Continuing Appropriations bill ( H.R. One of the key issues for VA non-medical benefits has been the size of the disability claims workload and the average time (183 days in FY2007) to process claims. Additional funds were also provided to the Board of Veterans Appeals ($3.7 million) and the Office of General Council ($3.2 million) for additional personnel to handle the increase in the number of appeals. 6559 provides $93.7 billion in FY2009 funding for the VA, an increase of $5.6 billion, or 6.3%, above the FY2008 appropriation (including the contingent emergency and supplemental funding). S. 3301 provides $94.8 billion in FY2009 funding for the VA, an increase of $6.7 billion, or 7.6%. The total amount requested by the Administration for VHA for FY2009 was $39.2 billion, a $2.0 billion increase in funding compared to the FY2008 enacted amount. The President's budget also requested $4.6 billion for medical facilities, and $442 million for medical and prosthetic research. As in FY2003, FY2004, FY2005, FY2006, FY2007, and FY2008 the Administration included several cost sharing proposals. Lastly, the Administration proposed to bill veterans directly for treatment associated with nonservice-connected conditions. The House Appropriations Committee-passed version of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill for FY2009 provided $40.7 billion for the VHA for FY2009. The Committee-passed measure also included $4.4 billion for medical support and compliance (previously known as medical administration), $883 million (25%) above the FY2008 enacted amount of $3.5 billion; $5.0 billion for medical facilities, a 7.8% increase over the President's request of $4.7 billion; and $500 million for medical and prosthetic research, a 13.1% increase over the President's request of $442 million. The House-passed version of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations bill for FY2009 did not include any bill language authorizing fee increases as requested by the Administration's budget proposal for VHA for FY2009. This was a 19.2% increase over the FY2009 request, and 9.8% above the FY2008 enacted amount. CRS Report RL33993, Veterans ' Health Care Issues , by [author name scrubbed].
Soon after it convened, the 111th Congress initiated H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), otherwise known as the "economic stimulus." Passed by both chambers and enacted by President Barak Obama on February 17, 2009, the Act adds approximately $4.3 billion to the $119.6 billion regular FY2009 appropriations for military construction and veterans affairs accounts contained in Division E of the Consolidated Security, Disaster Assistance, and Continuing Appropriations Act for FY2009. The President's request for those funds and Congress' disposition of the request are discussed in this report on pp. 2 through 9, below. The balance of the report discusses those parts of the President's regular FY2009 budget request covered by the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies appropriations bill.
President George W. Bush submitted his regular FY2009 appropriations request to Congress on February 4, 2008, including $115.3 billion for programs covered in the regular Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies appropriations bill: $24.4 billion for Title I (military construction and family housing); $90.8 billion for Title II (veterans affairs); and $183 million for Title III (related agencies). Compared with funding appropriated for FY2008 (emergency supplemental appropriations are pending), this represented increases for Title I of $3.8 billion (18.3%), for Title II of $3.2 billion (3.6%), and for Title III of $16.7 million (10.1%). The overall increase in appropriations between that requested for FY2009 and enacted for FY2008 is $7.0 billion (6.4%).
The House and Senate Committees on Appropriations reported their versions of the FY2009 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies appropriations bill on June 24 (H.R. 6559) and July 22 (S. 3301), 2008, respectively. The bill's legislative path is laid out in detail in the Regular Fiscal Year 2009 Appropriations section of this report. The House committee recommended appropriating $118.7 billion in new budget authority, $3.4 billion above the President's request. This included $24.8 billion for Title I, $400 million above the request and $4.2 billion above the FY2008 enactment. The Senate committee recommended $119.8 billion, including $24.7 billion for Title I. The Continuing Appropriations Act appropriated $119.6 billion, including $25.0 billion for Title I. In the area of veterans' non-medical benefits, mandatory spending is increasing as claims for disability compensation, pension, and readjustment benefits increase due to a combination of several factors including the aging of the veterans population and the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result of the increase in the number of claims, the average processing time for a disability claim in FY2007 was 183 days. To reduce the pending claims workload and improve processing time, funds were provided in the FY2008 appropriation for hiring and training additional claims processing staff. In FY2008 mandatory spending was $44.5 billion, increasing to $46.0 billion in FY2009.
In terms of medical care afforded to veterans, similar to the past six years, the Administration has included several cost sharing proposals including increase in pharmacy copayments and enrollment fees for lower priority veterans. An additional proposal would bill veterans directly for treatment of nonservice-connected conditions. The House Appropriations Committee draft bill provides $40.8 billion for Veterans Health Administration for FY2009, a 9.6% increase over the FY2008 enacted amount of $37.2 billion, and 4.1% above the President's request of $39.2 billion. The bill did not include any provisions that would give the Department of Veterans Affairs the authority to implement fee increases.