August 23, 2017

Las Vegas – Today Rep. Dina Titus of Nevada’s First Congressional District released the following statement after President Trump signed into law of H.R. 2288, The Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017, legislation the congresswoman championed in order to reform the framework for processing appeals on disability claims for veterans’ service-related injuries.

“Having led the effort to reform the VA appeals process for more than four years, I am pleased that this legislation I introduced last year will finally become law. To develop this new system, I held hearings and convened a working group consisting of the VA, VSOs, and other experts to modernize a process that has not been updated since the 1980s. What the president signed today is a result of hard work, collaboration, cooperation, and creativity to fix a snarled system that will improve the lives of veterans. Now we must work to ensure that it is quickly and carefully implemented by the VA and the VSOs.”

BACKGROUND

There are more than 460,000 veterans stuck in an appeals backlog waiting for a decision on benefits claims. There are currently 2,500 Nevada vets with appeals. In 2014, there were 1,500. The average wait time is longer than three 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.