Las Vegas – Today Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada’s First Congressional District celebrated the passage of H.R. 2288, The Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017, legislation to reform the framework for processing appeals on disability claims for service-related injuries.

The legislation now heads to the White House, where the President is expected to sign the bill into law. The House passed the bill today by voice vote during a pro-forma session.

The legislation is based on H.R. 5083, the VA Appeals Modernization Act of 2016, authored by Congresswoman Titus, who was Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs of the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

“With the passage of this bill, our nation will finally modernize a snarled system that’s only had one major update since it was first developed in 1933. I have been fighting for more than four years to reform this process and am thankful that the framework I first proposed will become law. Together with the VA, Veterans Service Organizations, and other lawmakers, we were able to find a bipartisan compromise to ensure that veterans in Southern Nevada and throughout the country receive the benefits they so bravely earned in a timely fashion.”

BACKGROUND

There are more than 460,000 veterans stuck in an appeals backlog waiting for a decision on benefits claims. The average wait time is longer than two years and would have ballooned to a decade if Congress had not passed these reforms.  The VA estimates that the framework drafted by Rep. Titus will significantly decrease wait times for veterans filing appeals.