HUGE VETERANS LEGISLATION PASSED BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FOR 2027 VA BUDGET & MILITARY PROJECTS

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Hey, thanks for making it to Veterans Info Tap. I'm glad you made it. A huge law is being passed just past the house.

[00:00:08]So, this piece of legislation is moving through the process just past the house.

[00:00:12]This has a tremendous impact on veterans and the VA. Now, let's go ahead and jump into it. Hit the thumbs up for me, subscribe, share with a friend, all that good stuff. I truly appreciate it. Every thumbs up, every minute watched really does help and I do appreciate that support very much. Uh thank you. I I really do appreciate it. We are um an amazing group.

[00:00:34]Every single one of you are part of something that is just amazing and I appreciate every single one of you.

[00:00:40]Thank you for all of your support. All right. So, house, the House of Representatives passes the 2027 VA budget and funding for military construction projects. Um I am actually just reading this one from uh Stars and Stripes, which I do enjoy.

[00:00:57]Um and they do a pretty good job. I like to go ahead and read through this. Uh this one was put together by Linda Hershey. Thank you so much. We appreciate all of your support over at Stars and Stripes continuing to push out great information. Uh what I'll do is I'll read through it. I'm going to give you my two cents along the way, share uh some thoughts, and um we'll move on from there. So, the house passed this 480 billion-dollar 480 billion-dollar It's nearly a half a trillion.

[00:01:27]Uh spending package for fiscal 2027 that will fund the Department of Veterans Affairs uh plus major infrastructure projects supporting military families. The legislation fully funds veterans health care coverage and benefits, invest $2 billion to renovate hospitals and cemeteries, and bans the VA from removing a veteran's gun rights uh without first obtaining a court order. If you remember, prior administration, uh we had uh Secretary McDonough in and there was some conflicts on and some eyebrows raised regarding the VA essentially overstepping its role and essentially reporting veterans that were on fiduciary status to the FBI's list for essentially no second rights available to you. So, that's got unwound and undid. There was a partial play on that and now this looks like it's solidifying it, which is a good thing in my opinion.

[00:02:36]Everybody's res Everybody deserves due process when it comes to your rights. You start You start just taking away people's rights, well, all of a sudden we're not in America anymore. So, um So, now it's got to go through the due process and and have a judge actually go through that. So, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Act, known as MilCon VA, is the first appropriations package that that the House adopted for fiscal 2027 and is the VA's primary primary spending bill. The House adopted the MilCon VA bill late Friday.

[00:03:18]I don't remember what day that was.

[00:03:19]Probably like the 16th or 15th, six, somewhere around there. Um middle of May. There you go. Uh on a vote 400 to 15, all the no no votes were from Democratic lawmakers. As the first appropriations measure to pass the House, the legislation reaffirms a funding process grounded in responsibility, readiness, and results, said Representative Tom Cole, who is the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. The bill now moves to the Senate for consideration.

[00:03:55]The spending package also advances funding for the Toxic Exposures Fund under the PACT Act, which provides healthcare coverage for veterans who became ill after exposure to hazardous materials during military service including from burn pits, radiation, and industrial solvents, which we're all very well aware of. The bill provides more than $157 billion in discretionary allocations, which is nearly $4 billion higher than the fiscal year 2026. It authorizes $323.9 billion for mandatory programs according to written statement from the House Appropriations Committee.

[00:04:37]Other veteran-related operations funded by MilCon VA span the American Battle Monuments Commission, Arlington National Cemetery, the US Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, and the Armed Forces Retirement Home.

[00:04:55]Now, for those that don't know, the US Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, there's two distinct appeal kind of courts, if you will. The first is the BVA, the Board of Veterans Appeals, and this is the the first real you got a judge looking over it and really focused on 38 CFR.

[00:05:16]If that does not come to fruition, in the way in which you would like, you can push to the US Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. It's kind of like almost like an upper or lower court situation.

[00:05:29]For those that don't know, I was an accredited veteran service officer for many years, was in the veterans benefits world for more than a decade prior to doing anything here on YouTube. And I went and sat at Board of Veterans Appeals cases, claims that we've uh pushed to the board, and sat there with law judges uh video conference and um it is an interesting process uh nonetheless. I do really honestly appreciate the judges' viewpoints because they are looking at the 38 CFR and they're not bound at all by the M21-1 which which is the VA's manual, right? So you look at the law, you work the law not the manual. Now, the manual will help you hopefully at the VA's side of the house get things done, but if you're if you're not focused on the law it could bite you in the end. So, it's very important to understand the law and and incorporate that into into everything that you submit from an evidence standpoint. So, uh Representative Wasserman Schultz said the final spending plan avoided the painful broad cuts uh that Democrats opposed. Overall, the bill reflects an increasingly rare across-the-aisle delivery of critical health care services and housing for veterans and service members uh that they deserve said Wasserman Wasserman Schultz, who is the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies. House Democrats also said they successfully amended an earlier draft version of the bill to withhold 25% of VA Secretary Doug Collins' office budget until he testifies before the House and Senate Appropriations Committee.

[00:07:22]It It's always shenanigans. I mean and on either side. I'm just saying it's it's just it's political. It's the way that it always is. It's always It's always this weird you know dog and pony show thing going on.

[00:07:36]Anyway, following the passage of this amendment, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins agreed to testify before the House Appropriations Committee.

[00:07:44]House Democrats said in a written statement. The MilCon VA package includes language that ends a a VA practice to contact the Federal Bureau. This is the Second Amendment stuff.

[00:07:56]Um includes language that ends a VA practice to contact the Federal Bureau of Investigations to remove the gun rights of veterans who have had fiduciaries appointed to manage their benefits. An amendment requires the VA to first obtain a court order before contacting the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System to stop a veteran from buying or owning firearms. The spending bill also prohibits the closure of Naval Station with Tom with Tanamo Bay in Cuba.

[00:08:29]Prohibits the closure of Gitmo and the use of military construction funds to build facilities for detainees on US soil.

[00:08:39]The 15 Democrats who opposed the bill argued in part that it continues to support privatizing veterans health care by co- covering billions of dollars in coverage at private clinics and hospitals outside the VA system. Many of the Democrats also objected to the VA's recent rollback of abortion services for veterans. The following Democratic Democratic lawmakers voted against the MilCon VA package. Uh Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ritchie Torres Uh Ilhan Ilhan Ilhan however you say it Omar and Rashida Tlaib Um Ayanna Pressley and James McGovern Mark Takano Uh Doris Matsui and Jimmy Gomez Uh Yasmin and Story, Maxine Dexter, Maxwell Frost, Hank Johnson, Summer Lee, and Delia Ramirez.

[00:09:47]I'm I'm sure I butchered half of those.

[00:09:50]Anyway, so with that, thanks so much for watching. I appreciate you very much.

[00:09:54]You have a great one and remember, if we don't take care of each other, something went wrong.