Category: Defense

WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs today announced the backlog of Veterans waiting for VA disability compensation and pension benefit claims fell below 70,000 for the first time since February 2020, during the first Trump Administration.

Hitting this milestone means the department has now cut the backlog of Veterans waiting for VA benefits by over 74% since Jan. 20, 2025, after it increased 24% under the Biden Administration.

A VA claim for compensation or pension is considered backlogged once it has been pending in the claims inventory for more than 125 days. In 2013, 70% of claims were older than 125 days — the most ever — compared to just 11.6% today.

VA has also reduced the average time it takes to process a claim to a record low. Today, claims take an average of 77.7 days to process – the fastest ever. Since the second Trump Administration took office, VA has decided more than one million claims in less than 30 days.

“This is what putting Veterans first looks like,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins. “We are incredibly proud of these historic numbers, which mean faster decisions, better service and more benefits for the men and women who have worn the uniform.”

This milestone is one of many landmark VA achievements during the second Trump Administration, including:

• Opening 38 new VA healthcare facilities, expanding health care access for Veterans around the country.
• Processing more than 3 million disability compensation and pension claims in FY 2025, an all-time high that shattered the previous record set in FY 2024.
• Offering Veterans more than 3 million appointments outside of normal operating hours, which gives Veterans more timely and convenient options for care.
• Permanently housing 51,936 homeless Veterans across the country in FY 2025, the highest total in seven years.

VA encourages all Veterans to visit Choose.VA.gov to learn more and apply for the care and benefits they have earned.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs today announced the establishment of a single payroll processing center for all 430,000+ VA employees and all VA medical centers, a common-sense move that reduces bureaucracy, saves taxpayer funds and lets VA focus more resources on serving Veterans.

VA originally targeted late 2027 for completing this project but finished it 15 months ahead of time.

“Needless duplication of bureaucracy is the opposite of putting Veterans first,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins. “Consolidating payroll support for all medical centers to one payroll office is a commonsense reform that will let us focus on our real mission, which is serving Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors.”

When the Trump Administration took office in 2025, the majority of VA medical centers — 114 of them across the country — were still using their own systems to handle payroll, even though VA’s Financial Services Center was set up to do this work from a centralized location. This duplication cost taxpayers millions of dollars a year to maintain.

Effective June 1, 2026, all VHA facilities are processing payroll through the FSC, which was already handling payroll for all Veterans Benefits Administration and National Cemetery Administration offices. VA expects this consolidation to save taxpayers more than $24 million each year.

No VA employees were laid off or removed as part of this shift to a centralized payroll system. The new system can be run by about 600 employees. Any VA employee who is no longer needed for payroll processing has been realigned to other work.

The Trump Administration has continued to bring good governance back to VA. The move to a centralized payroll system is just one of several steps taken to make the department run more efficiently. Among other things, VA has:

• Reduced bureaucracy and removed layers of wasteful headquarters management.
• Reformed and reorganized a disjointed and under-supported police force.
• Introduced the use of manning documents to track all job titles throughout the agency, making it easier for VA to identify and fill needed positions.

Centralizing payroll is just one of several ways the Trump Administration is making VA work better for Veterans. Among other improvements, VA has:

• Opened 38 new VA healthcare facilities since Jan. 20, 2025, expanding health care access for Veterans around the country.
• Completed an all-time high of 82,083,918 direct care appointments in FY 2025, up 4.1% from FY 2024.
• Reduced the backlog of Veterans waiting for VA benefits by 74% since Jan. 20, 2025, after it increased 24% during the Biden Administration.
• Offered Veterans more than 2.8 million appointments outside of normal operating hours, giving Veterans more timely and convenient options for care.
• Permanently housed 51,936 homeless Veterans across the country in FY 2025, the highest total in seven years.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs today announced it made more than $36 billion in payments to local healthcare providers across the country in fiscal year 2025 as part of the bipartisan VA MISSION Act.

President Trump signed the MISSION Act in 2018 after it passed Congress with widespread bipartisan support. The law created a benefit that lets eligible Veterans choose care from authorized local, non-VA healthcare providers at VA expense. VA pays for that care under the Veterans Community Care Program, which is the fourth largest healthcare payer program in America and provides healthcare services supporting more than 8.62 million enrolled Veterans.

With the enactment of the bipartisan Senator Elizabeth Dole 21st Century Veterans Healthcare and Benefits Improvement Act in 2025, Congress reaffirmed its commitment to Veterans’ healthcare choice by requiring VA to ensure that Veterans and their referring clinicians can choose community care without any additional review when it’s in the Veteran’s best medical interest. Under current law, Veterans can also choose community care in other circumstances, including if their average driving time or wait time exceeds certain thresholds or when they need a service that is not provided by VA.

While community care is an important option for many Veterans, VA is also spending record amounts of funding on direct care — a record high $101 billion was spent on direct care in FY 2025, when VA completed a record high 82,083,918 direct care appointments, up 4.1% from FY 2024.

Federal healthcare payer programs — like the Veterans Community Care Program, Medicare, Medicaid and TRICARE — are critical to the operation of every healthcare system in the country and help ensure patients get the care they need. That is especially true in rural areas, where millions of America’s Veterans live. Rural healthcare providers sometimes operate on margins of less than 1%, which means VA community care payments help ensure these providers remain open and able to care for Veterans, their families and others in the community.

Providing Veterans the ability to receive care from non-VA healthcare providers at VA expense has widespread bipartisan support. A March 2026 survey from Rasmussen Reports found that 90% of likely military voters support the policy.

In FY 2025, the top ten states that benefited from VA community care were:

• Texas, $3.3 billion
• Florida, $2.8 billion
• California, $2.1 billion
• North Carolina, $1.5 billion
• Ohio, $1.3 billion
• Tennessee, $1.2 billion
• Pennsylvania, $1.1 billion
• Michigan, $1.0 billion
• Georgia, $1.0 billion
• Arizona, $1.0 billion

See the full list of states here.

“When it passed the MISSION Act and the Dole Act, Congress promised all eligible Veterans the ability to choose the healthcare that’s best for them — whether at a VA facility or a community provider. Under President Trump, VA is delivering on that promise each and every day,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins. “VA community care is a vital benefit that ensures the health of both Veterans and the local economies where they live.”

Under the second Trump Administration, VA continues to make major improvements in the way care and benefits are being delivered to Veterans:

• VA opened 36 new health care clinics since January of 2025, expanding access for Veterans around the country.
• The backlog of Veterans waiting for VA benefits is down 72% since Jan. 20, 2025, after it increased 24% during the Biden Administration. In February, this backlog fell to less than 100,000 claims for the first time since 2020.
• VA will spend nearly $5 billion in FY2026 to modernize, repair and improve health care facilities, the largest non-recurring maintenance investment in VA’s history.
• As of June, VA has enrolled more than 180,000 new Veterans in VA health care in 2026.
• Since Jan. 20, 2025, VA has offered Veterans more than 2.8 million appointments outside of normal operating hours. These early-morning, evening, and weekend appointments are giving Veterans more timely and convenient options for care.
• VA permanently housed 51,936 homeless Veterans across the country in FY25, the highest total in seven years.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Veterans Affairs today announced a series of reforms to the VA police force that will improve police recruitment and retention while increasing safety and security for Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors, and VA employees.

VA police officers respond to emergencies, prevent crime, conduct investigations and carry out Veteran-focused safety initiatives for the largest integrated healthcare system in the country. When the Trump Administration took office in 2025, it inherited a fractured VA police force that was plagued with problems that had been highlighted for years by VA’s Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office.

Major issues included:

• The more than 5,000 employees in VA’s police force were managed by individual VA medical facilities and reported to medical center personnel instead of law-enforcement leaders. This led to inconsistent policing standards across VA facilities and a lack of discipline and accountability. In some facilities, VA police were being used for non-police missions, including serving as valets to park cars.
• The lack of a centralized police structure made it difficult to hire, retain and promote seasoned officers. As a result, VA lost many senior officers to other law enforcement agencies.
• To make matters worse, VA police positions were not properly classified in accordance with federal standards. The Biden Administration’s scattershot approach to addressing this problem threatened to lower the grades and pay of many VA police officers. The threat of lower grades and less pay created an even deeper crisis for the force, as it became far less competitive compared to other law enforcement agencies.

VA has taken several steps during the second Trump Administration to fix these issues and stabilize its police force:

• VA created a unified law-enforcement chain of command by placing the entire VA police force under a dedicated assistant secretary within the new Office of Operations, Security, and Preparedness. Now, VA police officers are no longer managed by medical facility staff and are led by law enforcement leaders who can consistently enforce standards and discipline, provide standardized training, and ensure nationwide staffing requirements are managed and fulfilled. This reorganization is underway and will be completed by the end of fiscal year 2026.
• This new centralized structure will make it easier to hire, retain and promote officers, as it creates a system that supports career advancement. VA has already seen signs this new structure is attracting more candidates – a recent job-posting for VA police officers garnered 3,800 applicants across the country.
• VA is conducting a complete review of VA Police job responsibilities and requirements and classifying VA police officers at higher pay grades based on the complex work they do.
  • VA raised the entry-level grade for police officers to GS-6 and created positions from GS-6 through the senior executive service level, creating more career stability and making VA a more attractive place to work for law-enforcement professionals.

“Keeping the millions of Veterans, families, caregivers and employees who visit VA facilities safe is our most important responsibility,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins. “These reforms will help us accomplish that mission by creating a stable VA police force with clear lines of authority, accountability and career progression. The result will be better police recruitment and retention as well as improved safety and security for Veterans, staff and visitors.”

For more information about a career with the VA Police Force, visit vacareers.va.gov.

WASHINGTON —The Department of Veterans Affairs today formally launched the VA Partial Claim Program, a new effort to help Veterans facing financial struggles avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.

The VA Partial Claim Program is authorized by the VA Home Loan Reform Act , which President Trump signed into law July 30, 2025. Here’s how it works:

• Mortgage servicers identify Veterans who are in default and might be able to qualify for the Partial Claim Program.
• Servicers place qualified Veterans on a three-month trial payment plan to assess their ability to stay current on their loan.
• When a Veteran successfully completes this trial period, the mortgage servicer will pay the overdue amount on the mortgage to make the Veteran current again.
• VA will then pay that same amount to the mortgage servicer.
• Servicers must repay VA when the loan is paid in full, refinanced, or the property is sold.

“We are grateful to Congress and President Trump for creating VA’s Partial Claim Program, which will help keep thousands of Veterans in their homes,” said VA Secretary Doug Collins.

VA’s Partial Claim Program is one of several options designed to help Veterans keep their homes and avoid foreclosure – something the department worked with mortgage servicers to do for 173,000 Veterans in fiscal year 2025 alone. Other home retention options include:

• Repayment Plans
• VA Traditional Loan Modifications
• 30-Year Loan Modifications
• 40-Year Loan Modifications
• VA Disaster Modifications
• Disaster Extend Modifications

Veterans having difficulty reaching a resolution with their mortgage servicer can contact VA at 877-827-3702, option 6. For more information about the VA Partial Claim Program and VA home loans, please visit the Loan Guaranty Service website.

VA is proud to help Veterans get access to — and retain — their homes by guaranteeing home loans with zero-down payment requirements and competitively low interest rates. Since its home loan guaranty program began, VA has helped Veterans, Service members, and survivors purchase more than 29 million homes, including more than 500,000 new home loans guaranteed in fiscal year 2025.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs announced today that it processed more than two million disability benefits claims for Veterans in fiscal year 2026 as of June 1, 2026, faster than ever before.

The prior record was set by the second Trump Administration in FY 2025, when VA hit the 2 million mark in late June. By the end of FY25, VA had completed more than 3 million claims, the most in history. VA has already awarded more than $124 billion in compensation and pension benefits to Veterans and survivors in FY26.

Since President Trump took office Jan. 20, 2025, VA has reduced the backlog of Veterans waiting for VA benefits by 72%, after it increased 24% under the Biden Administration. In February 2026, the backlog fell to less than 100,000 claims for the first time since 2020, and it has been below 75,000 for more than a month.

VA has also cut disability claim processing times nearly in half. The average time to complete a decision was 78.6 days at the end of May 2026, compared to 141.5 days on Jan. 20, 2025. VA has achieved this reduction even as it’s processing more number claims than it did under the Biden Administration.

Claims processing accuracy has improved despite the increased workload and is currently above 94% — the highest rate in two years.

“Putting Veterans first means making VA benefits faster, better and more convenient, and under President Trump, that’s exactly what we’re doing” said VA Secretary Doug Collins.

Reducing the backlog of Veterans waiting for benefits is just one of several ways the Trump Administration is making VA work better for Veterans. Among other improvements, VA has: