 Congress. And we have the Senate, the Democrats took us to the majority, and we have Chairman John Tester, who's been on the committee a long time as a ranking member, who is now chaired in. He is from Montana. And a new member, Jerry Moran, again, a long-term committee member, is now from Kansas, our ranking member. And the House of the Democrats did re-maintain the majority. Mark Tejano maintains his chairmanship in Houston, California. And a ranking member, Mike Boss, is from Illinois as a ranking member. And on this light deck, I put all of the Senate members, Affairs Committee members, and a list of the House Affairs Committee members. So be sure to take a look at those, make sure if you've got someone on the committee, that's a great asset. And you want to definitely reach out and make sure that you make contact with them. So if we need some assistance, we'll be calling you, perhaps, on an, you know, action alert piece of legislation. And your member may be one of the people that's a key person in that fight. So please do that if you haven't already. Today, we're just going to provide to you an update on the critical policy goals for the 117th Congress. So each of the staff will be covering their policy issues, protecting our toxic exposures first, which you've heard a lot about, if you've been following them, following along, she'll be talking about that, protecting our government from the plague and the appeals process. Tony's going to give a little bit of an overview. Jeremy on expanding survivors' benefits and legislation that's been introduced. And our people will be covering and ensuring equity for women and minorities at turns. And as well as, I'm sorry, that's actually going to cover that. I'm sorry. Yeah, I know you're going to cover that. But actually, we'll be doing that. Marquis is going to cover mental health and suicide prevention services along with some update on the independent budget recommendation. And then I will wrap up with building a better healthcare system for the future. Again, DAB is part of the independent budget along with the BFW and PDA. And so just want to make you aware on our DAB's website under our legislative advocacy section, there's a resources page where we include the independent budget, where we've got policy recommendations for the 17th Congress and the ID numbers for FY22. And the last thing, for me and just of our opener here, just as a reminder, make sure that you make yourself available for tomorrow afternoon to apply. We will have our DAB served in the legislative center. And our DA guest this year will be Mr. Michael, who is the principal deputy under Secretary for BDA. And Dr. Carolyn Clayton, she is the assistant under Secretary for Health, the discovery of education and affiliate networks from the BHA side. Make sure you come early and get a seat, though the start will start promptly on that. Jim and I will be moderating that session. And then I'll be joined by Shane and Jim will be joined by Scott Ho. And we're going to do an open mic, a townhouse style, ask your questions about DAB legislative issues or benefit issues or anything that's not in line. So think about questions that you'd like to get an update on. And we will do our best to answer those. And I'm going to turn it over to Shane. Good morning, everyone. I take it I'm loud enough and I don't need the microphone closer. Correct? All right. So let's go ahead and get where they strap yourselves in. Get ready to feel the cheese. Are you guys ready for this? All right. Thank you. We go a little update on toxic exposures and specifically these critical policy goals of 2021, which is to ensure members who were exposed to toxic substances received full attempted benefits, particularly for burglars, age of morning, and other known exposures. So what we're going to cover real quickly this morning with you is a couple of the updates, one specific to the veteran's burglars recognition exposure act. Two, we're going to talk about other exposures in some of the pills that are out there for agent orange, K2 radiation risk activity, foreclosure and keep fast exposure. And then we're going to round it out. There are two major toxic exposure votes are on the list of those one house, one in the Senate that are currently pending. And I'm going to run through those with you a little bit just to give you an idea of what's going on with those larger bills. So first up is the veteran's burglars recognition exposure act. And as many of you know, currently VA is denying roughly 77% of all burglars related to disability claims. 77% are being denied. The veteran's burglars recognition exposure act would incede exposure based on contrary, it would also incede exposure to over 40 VA accepted toxins that they have identified being related to burglars. And it would also require the VA to provide them that food and an opinion if needed to claim the claim. This is a very important piece of legislation. We're very fortunate that last Congress and again this Congress, we got introduced in the Senate by Senator Sullivan out of Alaska and Senator Manchin out of West Virginia, a bipartisan bill, S-437. There are currently 38 co-sponsors in the Senate. I know you might be thinking, well, change 38, that's not a big number. Well, it's not a big number, but guess what? That's over a third of the Senate. So think about that. Over a third of the Senate is a co-sponsor of this bill. It passed last year in the Senate fairly easily. The veteran compares to admitting not the Senate itself. So we're pretty good about where it is. Now, we testified on this bill early this year in March and in April before the Senate. And look at that. Over 9,600 e-mails were sent by you guys in your networks, back in your departments, in your chapters, through DAB's Commanders Action Network. DAB can. Who can? Who can? Who can? So no, really, that's important. 9,600 e-mails. So thank you for moving up to your Senate. Now, this year was also introduced into the House by representatives Slacken and Michael both out of Michigan. So if there's any Michiganders out there, you need to make sure you thank them. There are 45 co-sponsors in the House. We testified on this bill in the House on May 5th, and 5,327 e-mails were sent by all of you. So again, thank you for being engaged and involved in keep building those networks you have within your chapters and departments. So this bill not only is supported in both chambers, it's bipartisan support in both chambers. So both Republicans and Democrats are on board with the bill, and we have eight national VSOs and MSO's that are on board and formally support this bill, too. So it is a good piece of legislation. We're feeling good about it. And when I start talking about the two on-the-lust bills, and a little bit, the major bills that are pending, the provisions about this Veterans Perfect Recognition Exposure Act are also part of that, those two bills, and we'll get into that in just a little bit. So there's an update on the Veterans Perfect Recognition Exposure Act that was based on a DAB original idea and is currently pending in the House and in the Senate. So that brings us to a whole slew of other exposters. So let's just go ahead and jump right into these. We're going to start first with Agent Orange. In the Senate House, there's a bill called the Fair Care for Vietnam Veterans Act. This will add new presumptive diseases to the Agent Orange disease list. Those two diseases are hypertension and monoclonal gam-out, but monoclonal gam-opathy of undetermined significance. Kind of like me sometimes, undetermined significance. We also call it MGUS, and it is a rare blood type of condition that can have a negative impact on long-term health. So that bill is going to add those two conditions. We testified on this bill twice, actually three times on the two bills, twice in the House and once in the Senate. And look at that. 18,000 e-mails were sent by all of you to your members of the House and in the Senate. So again, thank you very much and you can applaud yourselves. It's okay. There you go. And while we keep that in mind, I just want to hope you remember to build those networks in your chapters and partner. Get more signed up for the DAB Commanders Action Network because not one of us is able to do it by ourselves and not one of you out there can do it. It takes the entire DAB and the entire community to put pressure on our elected officials and make sure we get it done. More Agent Orange issues is the Veterans Agent Orange Exposure Equity Act. What this would do would formally codify and put into law veterans who served in Thailand were being exposed to Agent Orange. This bill would also add veterans who served in Laos and Cambodia as well. We testified on this bill a few times on the Thailand issue and on Laos and Cambodia. Another toxic exposure issue that a lot of you may be familiar with is what we call K2. There was a military base in East Pakistan that the United States military used between 2001 and 2005 called Kashi Kanameh, K2. There were a lot of toxins there and so our service members who served there were exposed. What the K2 Veterans Act would do in DAB supports would establish presumptuous service connection and health care for those with diseases contracted from serving at K2. We've also testified on this bill twice and again look at 14,000 emails people. Thank you so much. We're also going to talk real quick about radiation risk activities. There is the Atomic Veterans Health Care Parity Act. What this would do is it would consider veterans who served in the Amowataka total cleanup from January of 1977 to 1980. It would consider them as being a participant in a radiation risk activity. We testified on this bill twice, almost 13,000 emails from all of you and why is this important anybody to think of? Well, guess what? If they're considered part of a radiation risk activity, they can get health care from the VA if they have no other eligibility. So this is huge and it's not just dumb. There's another group. Paul Merris Cleanup. There was a crash, a couple of airplanes banged into each other over Spain before we were at warheads drop and radiation was spread in parts of Spain. There was a cleanup by the U.S. from 1966 to 1967. We've testified on this bill and again if it's considered a radiation risk activity, not only will they be eligible for presumptive service connection, but more importantly, they'll be eligible for health care. Fort McClone. Now, enough people have been talking about Fort McClone, but there's a lot more talk on this issue than there has been and right now there is the Fort McClone Health Registry Act. DAB supports this. We've testified on this and what it would do is it would establish a health registry for those who served at Fort McClone between January 1st, 1935, Tuesday at time of the close of May 20th, 1999. They want to start tracking all those who served there, their disabilities, diseases, and exposures and this is going to be hopefully a precursor to trying to establish presumptive service connection for conditions related. We're not all the way there yet, but again this is the first time we've gotten any traction on Fort McClone on the hill in many, many years, so this is also a second. Contaminated water is another exposure we'll look at and it's specifically PFAS exposure. PFAS is a very long technical big giant science word to keep this short and sweet for us Marines in the room. It's a chemical that's called a forever chemical that is found in firefighting foam. How many military installations and Navy ships have a lot of firefighting foam? Yeah, all of them, right? They have found this toxic chemical in over 600 military installations water supplies. So they're still trying to figure it out. We attended a few roundtables and discussions. They're still trying to figure out the long-term health impact, but what this bill would do is again establish a registry to start tracking all those negative health concerns. So now that brings us to the two large toxic exposure on those bills. One thing in the Senate called the Cost of War Act, one pending in the House called the, I just do a complete point, the honoring our pact act. That just had to reboot it there for a second. So first we're going to talk about the cost of war. This was introduced by Senator Tester, who was the chair of the Senate Billings Affairs Committee. And basically this is a combination of 14 different pieces of toxic exposure legislation. Pretty much all those bills I just talked about are all a part of this very large bill. What it would do is it would expand VA health care and provide health care eligibility for veterans exposed to toxins and most importantly, exposed to burn pins. If they have no other eligibility, they'd be eligible for health care solely in the fact they were exposed to burn pins. It would also start some of the reforming process for determining presumptive diseases in the future by creating a few different groups and commissions to help determine what diseases are related, not just for toxins and burn pins, but for all exposures. And what it would also do is we talked about that concession of exposure only a bit ago for a burn-in-pits bill. Part of that is in here because what it would do, they're going to add some presumptive diseases, but if you have a condition that's not a presumptive disease for burn-pits, they have to determine, give you an exam, run through everything, just like our bill suggested, to determine if it's related. Now what it's also going to do is provide a list of presumptive diseases over 20. Most of them are all respiratory conditions, like asthma, COPD, sinusitis, rhinocytus, bronchial, restrictive aero disease, a few other conditions, but most importantly also respiratory cancers of any type. It'll also add glioblastomas. For those of you who like change, not sure what that means and had to look it up on the old Google, that is a type of brain tumor. So brain tumors and brain cancers have been linked to toxic exposures in burn-pits as well. The Cost of War Act, as we said, for Agent Orange, it would also add hypertension and endosus-presumptive diseases and at Thailand, Cambodia, Guam, and America, Samoa as places, conceited exposure to Agent Orange. It would also add the radiation risk activities that we talked about, some additional requirements on VA, some more studies and registry, and forced DOD to have better record keeping and record sharing with VA. So you can tell this is a pretty massive film. It's an ominous film, ominous film of the Cost of War Act, and again it was introduced and passed by the second Veterans Affairs Committee. It'll be hard to find online because they haven't assigned a number yet, so you can't go to Congress about Gov and find it, but it's out there. We support the bill and what they're currently waiting on is tech assistance from the VA to go through all the provisions and make sure all of this is workable. And they're waiting for the congressional budget office, CBO, to project a cost. Now we're hearing some early estimates, and I'm just going to throw it out there, but not official, but we heard some guesstimates. This bill would cost $1.5 trillion over the 10 years. Exactly, it's not a small one. So again, we have concerns that even though this is a very passionate issue for a lot of politicians, what are they going to now point to? Oh, it just cost me. They'll take care of you, Mr. Veteran, but yeah, the bill's too high. And what do we say to that? Let me say one thing. We already paid the price once, right? We already said we paid the price, and doing the right thing for veterans exposed to toxins should never have a price tag. Here. So let's compare that to the honoring our PAC Act. There's a few differences. There's a few changes to the reform of the presumptive disease process. They would add a few more steps. We're not really sold on those, but we still support the bill. And some other differences are this would add eight additional types of presumptive diseases, specific types of cancers. So any type of cancer of the head, neck, gastrointestinal, reproductive lymphomas, and vatic, kidney, and melanomas. So again, you're looking at a very large toxic bill that adds a lot of presumptive diseases. Chairman Takano of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, introduced and supports this bill again based on multiple pieces of legislation. We support it. And they're estimating this would actually cost more than the cost of war. But again, they're waiting on tech assistance from the VA, cost assistance from the Congressional Budget Office. But let me be clear, these two bills, they're the most comprehensive, toxic exposure bill ever introduced into the House or the Senate. We're at a historic moment right here. So what do we need everybody to do? That's our contact to Congress from your representatives. And I'm going to give you a quick place to go. Go to dav.org slash burnpits. It's a separate page we get set up for toxic exposures. There's a link right down there for you to contact your senators and representatives through the DAV cam. The DA what? The DA. Who can? The DA. And somebody told me I wouldn't be able to train you guys. So that wraps up all of what I have to leave this morning. Thank you all for being here. And again, we went over the Veterans Permanent Recognition Act, all the different exposures and the very large common bus bills. So make sure you stay strapped in because oh, we're not even close to being done yet. Are you guys ready for what's coming next? That's right. You're always ready. So again, I'm Shane on the Deputy Legislative Director. There's my information. You can reach out to me if you have any questions. I'll be here the whole time you're defensive. Just run me down. And coming up next, we're going to grant our very own Assistant Legislative Director, Jeremy Villanueva. Ladies and gentlemen, give him some applause. That's awesome. Well, it's always the reason that we don't start out personally for the rest of the run. So good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Jeremy Villanueva and I am the Assistant Legislative Director at DAD. And today, I'm going to talk about how we, as the organization, advocate the legislation to improve lives of those who have sacrificed so much for this country, mainly the survivors of state elections. It's a very strong role in advocating for families and survivors who serve disabled veterans to ensure that they are not forgotten. And their sacrifices do not go unrecognized. Brock Vaughan captured our nation's challenge to itself and he said, no one, no one has given more of our freedom and our security and our hope to start families. They represent the very best of our country. They continue to inspire us every day and every moment. We are a powerful reminder of the true strength of America and we have to do everything we can to those families and honor them and be humbled by them. And we do have to do everything we can to them and improve the benefits that help them live outside the shadow of financial stress and ensuring that they do not have to worry about their benefits. Looking to the rest is the least that we can do. So what are we asking for? Well, DAD has five basic asks, which we will be discussing today. One is increasing the amount of paid survival sections so that they are not crippled financially after the loss of their veterans. The second is reducing the 10-year, the arbitrary 10-year rule to GICL disability. And three is removing the time limit for spouses of seriously disabled veterans to use their educational benefits. The fourth is ensuring that veterans who pass away due to the coronavirus receive a medical opinion as to the relationship between end-to-end stress-connected conditions. And the fifth one is lowering their barrage age for those who receive a DIC. So some of you may be asking, well, what is DIC? Well, DIC, for a dependency in an indebted conversation, is much like a disabled conversation. A tax-free, monetary, methamphetamine, paid to the strivers who seriously disabled veterans pass away due to a service-connected condition. A veteran who is 100% uniting with 10 years or a service member who passes away during their active service. Currently, the basic one came out as $1,057 for struggling spouses of veterans. But there are other benefits that can, of course, make that increase. And I would like to add now that if any of you have any questions about your benefits or your eligibility for something like this, I would encourage you to talk to one of our National Service Officers that is currently on the third floor of the swan room. So, as many of you know, we have a big way to last Congress. With the passing of the Isis and Grove Veterans Health Care and Benefits Act, which, amongst many other provisions, lower their barrage age for those who receive a DIC and retake their benefits from 57 to 55. We have been fighting for this for a very long time, and we can say with 100% certainty that this would not have been possible without the advocacy and actions that you have done. So we want to thank you for all of your effort to send me an email to one of your representatives, Sharon Hiller from Social Media, and keeping the message you're building. I always say, sign it to the Commander's Action that word for GAB can. Because who can? Well, guess what? We not only can, but we did. And that's all directed because of these. Please give yourself a round of applause. What have we done? Heck no. A resolution number 366 says that we must advocate to lower their barrage age for survivors of veterans, and we will do this act. Currently, we're the remarriage age of 55, which is not part of the efforts of federal employees, but this is not taking into consideration being here in danger that is faced day to day of our military service members, nor the much angry age of those who lose their loved ones in service or do who has illness or injury in the current service. We will keep fighting until those survivors who live their lives are not having to worry about benefits or through sacrifice and loss being stripped away through their arbitrary actions. So this leads us to the value of the DIC benefit. So currently, a veteran has 100% in merit. They receive approximately $3,200, and with that veteran passing away, the spouse, if eligible, would receive $1,300. This equates to a loss of approximately $24,000 a year. This sudden loss of income can be catastrophic. And because of this, we're advocating to increase the DIC amount to 55% of what a totally disabled veteran was ready to receive and adjust it annually for inflation. This increase of $500 a month might not seem like much, but for this benefit, which has been minimally adjusted since 1993, it is sorely needed. In addition, DAP has strongly advocated for reduction of the 10-year rule for DIC eligibility. So currently, a veteran who is totally disabled would have to retain that rating for 10 years to ensure that their survivors are eligible for DIC if they pass away due to a non-service connected condition. This rule does not take into consideration caregivers, spouses who have sacrificed their lives and dependent children who will lose their benefits if they also lose their parent premature. We are asking Congress to reduce this time period so that veteran survivors are not left with nothing if the veteran passed away prior to that 10 years. So this brings us to the caring for survivors act. Now, this is the second Congress that has introduced this legislation that includes both an increase in the DIC amount and a reduction of the 10-year time period for DIC eligibility. The second version, S976, as seen simply meant, was even discussed in a hearing in April, but it only currently has six postpons. The House version of H.R.3402 was introduced as fascinating and currently only has five postpons. Now these numbers are just half good enough. We need you to contact your representatives and let them know that this legislation is important to the DIC community. We need you to let them know that survivors and their families need to support Congress. So please, sign up for the Commander's Action Network and make your voice heard. In addition, the economic well-being in seriously disabled veterans, dependents and their survivors should be safeguarded from arbitrary time limits. So with this in mind, we turn our attention to dependents' educational assistance or Chapter 35. Now, Chapter 35 is much like the Montgomery G.I. Bill in its use and it's for spouses and children who are seriously disabled veterans and their survivors amongst others. And once an eligible dependent starts to attend a covered education or vocational training institution, the vehicle pays that person privately for tuition and supplies. However, for spouses who are eligible for Chapter 35, there is a 10-year time limit to pursue and finish their educational program. Regardless of their careers, career status, loss of a loved one, family obligations, etc. Now we believe that this delivery date should be removed completely. So what is being done? Well, there is hope. H.R. 2327 was introduced in April 2021 and it would remove the delivery date for this veteran. Now, unfortunately, the bad news. It only has one co-sponsor and that co-sponsor happens to be the first to introduce the bill. And it would remove the delivery date for those who are eligible. However, for those who received Chapter 35 on or after August 1st, 2020, we encourage you to contact your representatives and tell them that we need this for all surviving spouses without an eligibility date. That is for all of us, not just for those who receive this in the future. So, it should come as no surprise to anyone that you've heard about it. But that co-fed has made a dramatic impact on the veteran community. And as of June 2021, over 12,000 veterans have died due to novel coronavirus. A concerning aspect of this virus is that some commonly service-connected conditions, particularly amongst the non-veterans like diabetes, heart and lung disease, increases the morbidity rates amongst the afflicted. The fear is, however, that some veterans who pass away due to this disease will not have their service-connected conditions listed as contributing factors on their death certificate. A simple oversight like this can cause months, if not years of delays to the survivor family members who are applying for the veterans. We are asking the Congress to pass legislation that would require the Secretary to retain a measurable opinion when any services disabled veterans pass away from COVID to ensure that their family members are not long in need to die due to the service. But there's plenty of options. Two bills have been introduced that will do just that. Senate Bill S89 and HR 746, the insured survivor benefits during the COVID-19 Act in 2021, was just passed out of the Senate on July 22nd. And hopefully, it will be voted on in the House suit and the President's desk in the near future. But we can't address this close to the finish line. We have to keep pushing. Again, please take part in all of the congressional updates by signing up for DAB's Commenders Action Network or DABCAN.org. Again, that is DABCAN.org. Because who can? You can. And together, we can assure that those who have lost their loved ones in service of the nation, either overseas or many years after they took off their doubt tags, are taking care of it. Because together, we can and we should. Thank you very much. See or cry to introduce the newest member of the legislative team and the first introduction of the Associate Legislative Director, Mr. Tommy Lewis. I want to start by thanking you all for your volunteer service on the benefits of protection teams. One of the first things I was told when I joined the legislative team was just how much you depend on the benefits of protection teams and how we could use them to accomplish our goals without you working in the states. So thank you and I look forward to working with you for following me. But today, I'm going to go over our critical policy goal number three, that protecting veterans in the claims and appeal processes. So how are we going to do that? Number one, by ensuring the correct VA decisions by reestablishing the pre- decisional review or the 48-hour review. Number two, by protecting veterans' effective dates. And number three, by protecting better benefits, specifically TDIU from the promotion. First, the pre- decisional review. So what is a pre- decisional review? So for over seven years, VSOs as veteran representatives were allowed a 48-hour period to review claims decisions before they became final. Every VSO was found in error that was unable to notify the VBA of the error before that decision became final. And oftentimes, the VA would issue a new decision. VSOs were able to find an error such as incorrect evaluations, incorrect denials, or incorrect effective dates. And with this process, a lot of times the cost to an appeal was avoided. But then in April of 2020, VBA officially eliminated the pre- decisional review period. VBA strongly indiscriminate this decision. In fact, we joined the coalition of eight VSOs who sent a letter to the president asking him to correct the VBAs that the character maintained at 48-hour review. It became final, but in response to the pushback from the VSOs, the VBA launched a pilot program, which they called the Claims I Receive Request program. This was just established in April of this year. The way the program works is if a VSO identifies an error within 30 days of decision date that VSO can submit a Claims I Receive Request, or CAR, and with a Claims I Receive Request, the claim will be allowed and expedited, hired up and reviewed. Now VBA, it's too early to tell how successful the program is going to be, but VBA is going to evaluate this program and if it's successful, VBA will support getting this program codified into law. If not, VBA will support S-458 as the veteran's claim transparency act. This is a bill that would reestablish that pre- decisional review. And it's worth mentioning that this bill was introduced by John Tester, the chairman of the Senate's government affairs committee. The way it stands now, being strongly encouraged by this collaboration with VBA, and we remain optimistic that CAR pilot will address the concerns of being successful. As I said, if it is successful, we'll be pushing for this to be becoming law. If it's not successful, we'll be pushing for re-establishment of the S-488 review. Next, protecting the veteran's effective dates. So currently, if a veteran submits a claim or appeal on form, it could take V-8 months to review and advise that veteran to claim and not be accepted as a recipient on form. Additionally, V-8 doesn't consistently advise the veteran which form should have been used, and it doesn't always provide the correct form to claim it. As a result, when the veteran which involves the correct form, he or she may have lost months of entitlement, or may have even lost an appeal period. This issue was complicated by implementation of the AMA, which requires very specific forms to be used. For example, V-8 won't accept a claim for any previously denied issue on a form except for the old 9-5, which again can lead to a significant delay or loss of an earlier effective date. If a veteran submits an appeal to the board of veterans' appeals, it can be months, months before this discovery in the veteran can even incur exploration of that appeal period. It's being these positions that this process places an unnecessary burden on too many veterans, which wasn't the intent of Congress when it passed the AMA. I apologize in advance for the image on this next month, folks. They were referred to as being looking. The V-8B is testified before the Senator and Affairs Committee on this issue of the forms and effective dates. And subsequent to that hearing, the Acton Secretary for Benefits Tom Murphy, who has been a guest at the National Convention, he resolved to correct this issue of the forms and effective dates. As of yet, there hasn't been any resolution, but this is something that we're going to be asking our guests through V-V-A tomorrow at the Service and Administrative Seminar. So, throw it up. Next, protecting veterans' benefits from erosion. Specifically, T-V-I-U are total disability based individuals on the political leader. So, there are approximately 350,000 veterans in receipt of T-V-I-U. What most don't know, though, is that T-V-I-U is not wrong. It's nowhere in U.S. code. It was established by regulatory authority of the V-A Secretary. So, what does that mean? What differences does that make? Well, the V-A Secretary can alter or eliminate his program at any time because it's not law. For years, there have been proposals to pick the pocket of T-V-I-U veterans and take T-V-I-U from veterans. There have been proposals such as placing restrictions such as age on T-V-I-U or even even eliminating the program altogether. In fact, the congressional budget office made recommendations in 2013, 2014, in 2016, and 2018 to limit and restrict T-V-I-U and in 2020, the CDO report included a proposal titled N-V-A's Individual Unemployability Payments to Disable Veterans at Full Retirement in Age of Coastal Security. And why is this? Why is everybody going after T-V-I-U? Because of the table rules, Congress has required an offset cost of removal legislation by cutting current programs and one of the main targets has been T-V-I-U. And this has become a real threat when we look at the cost of toxic exposure bills like Shane talked about, the one-in-a-trillion-dollar bill that we had to pay for that cost somewhere, but we say not from T-V-I-U. In this role, to protect T-V-I-U, we have to have it codified and it is above. That way, the being will not be able to just make a regulatory change and restrict T-V-I-U. It will take an act of Congress. So our goal is for Congress to pass HR 5028 to protect the benefits for Disabled Veterans Act and protect T-V-I-U, which brings it back to the political policy goal, to protect these veterans, be the same as when it feels processes. Thank you. It was interesting to serve next speaker, but hey, give Tony a little bit more love. So now we'll bring up to you another member of the team. The one, the only, the Assistant Legislative Director, Martin Baker. It's still morning, so good morning. Shane has mentioned I am Assistant National Legislative Director, Martin Baker. I'll be talking to you today on two presentations, one for mental health services and suicide prevention efforts. And once that's concluded, I'll be talking to you about VA's fiscal 2022 budget. But we're going to begin with the mental health and suicide prevention efforts. We'll be going over the 2020 suicide report, implementations of a new law, new legislation, the Sergeant Rule of Veterans Health Act, some DAB can alerts that you should be aware of, and also some hearings that we testified at earlier this year. We'll begin by talking about the 2020 suicide veterans report. The report covers both recent data for the reporting period from 2017 to 2018. The report expands upon previous reports including veterans' suicide rates by race, ethnicity, belonging to local, international, and national issues. The report noted that for the period of 2017 to 2018 that the suicide rates didn't have a significant increase from 17.5 to 17.6. The annual report also noted that the number of veterans' suicide deaths increased by 26% from 2017 to 2018. It also noted that suicide rates among veterans that received care from the Veterans Health Administration were lower than those that did not. Implementation of a new law. On April 20th of this year, DAB submitted formal comments to the Federal Register for the first phase of the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon-Vox suicide prevention grant program. This particular grant program mandates that DA establishes a program to reduce veterans' suicide through a three-year community-based program to reduce suicides through eligible veterans and entities to provide coordinated suicide prevention services to veterans and their families. DAB's comments focused on four areas. Distribution and selection of grants, development of the measures for administering the grant program, additional innovative approaches to treat veterans' suicide prevention services, and grant them to teach referral to VA for care for veterans that risked suicide or other mental behaviors or mental health conditions. But pretty quick. Also for new legislation, Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman John Tester and ranking member Jerry Moran introduced the Reach for Veterans Act. This act would make improvements to the veterans' crisis line for VA based off of the VA OIG report. These improvements would include improvement staff training, quality review and management procedures, and also the implementation of a new suicide crisis number the 918 number by July 19th. Also for new legislation, we have the American Indian and Alaska Native Veterans Mental Health Act. This act, this legislation is aimed at improving mental health and suicide prevention efforts for minority veterans, American Indians, and Alaska Native veterans by ensuring that all VA facilities have minority veteran coordinators and that those individuals are trained and culturally appropriate service delivery methods. And also we have the Women Veterans Transition Resonance Civilization Support and Treatment Act or the Women's Trust Act. The Trust Act has the mental health component that considers the unique needs of women veterans. Women veterans who suffer from PTSD as a result of MSD or identify themselves as LGBTQ have increased risk for developing substance use disorder. Substance use disorder is noted to have increased risk for suicidal behavior, especially women. On June 30th this year, HR 2441 the Sergeant Ketchum Rural Veterans Mental Health Act was signed into law by the President. This bill requires the VA to establish and maintain three new centers for the range program in areas of interest from personnel and the need for additional mental health care in rural veterans. The range program serves veterans in rural areas for experiencing mental health illness. The program's goal is to enable veterans to live successfully and as independently as possible in their community settings. Through assertive community-based and clinical case management and psychotherapy, the program promotes health and promotes to restore mental health of this veteran population. Some VAV candidates to make you aware of. The first is HR 19-914 dental care for veterans. This bill will require the VA Secretary to furnish dental care in the same manner as any other medical services and defines a four-year implementation program beginning with veterans in priority groups one and two, for veterans with service-elected disabilities rated at 30% or more in the first year. HR 19-914, the Higher Veterans Health Heroes Act. This legislation will require the Department of Defense to identify health care professionals interested in transitioning from active military service to share information with the VA for the purpose of potential deployment with the VA. S-1664, this legislation will direct the VA to update an ongoing national training program for planning duty-takers who review planning for post-traumatic stress disorder to undergo mandatory training. Additionally, the bill will require to be a attractive quality of those PTSD plans. And finally, HR-3452, this legislation would add preventative medications and services to the list of no treatment that VA covers and eliminate propaneers for such services. All of the alerts and more can be found on the DAP Commanded Actions Network website. And finally, under the program, we'll be finally under this section on June 23rd National Legislative Director, Joy E. E., testified at the hearing. And during that hearing, there were a number of bills that were talked about that pertain to mental health and suicide prevention, specifically S-544 that directs the VA to designate one week of each year as buddy checks, and providing training for peer-rearly checks for veterans, and the Solid Start program, which was S-1198. Also on July 14th, I testified at an age-vac hearing that covers an issue that covered a number of bills as well, in particular the HR-3674, the Vet Center Support Act, and a Discussions Act about legislation to furnish vet center readjustment counseling for related mental health services to veterans and members of the armed forces for use of certain educational assistance benefits. So that is all for that. The first portion, now we're going to give you to the budget, the VA's fiscal year 2022 budget request. And as mentioned earlier in the presentation, all of these slides will be available on our website. So the independent budget is released every year with our I.D. partners, and it's an independent estimate of what the VA will need for the next year for all the benefits and services that are coming up. The federal budget is normally due out on the first Monday in February, but with the change in administration, this year's budget was a little late. The independent partners worked hard to release the budget every year, and every year we try to make sure that that independent budget was released on time. This year, the independent budget was released on February 1. This year, there are some extra areas of concern due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of veterans had burdened their care because they were uncertain about the pandemic and whether or not the VA was open. And as we found out, a lot of the VA closed their doors, so veterans were concerned about where they would be able to get their care or continue their care. Unemployment. More veterans were looking for services because they lost their jobs. They didn't have anywhere to go to get the care that they need. So they were looking to the VA to help maintain and continue their care that they lost before they lost their jobs. And as far as inflation, estimate what it would cost the VA to buy the items that they need for medical care for the veterans in the next year. The VA released their budget on May 1 this year. And with the help of DAB and other partners, the VA health care was taken care of via advanced prohibitions. The VA has already received funding for medical care for the next fiscal year. However, the VA is coming back for a second bite for additional requests for medical care issues. This on top of the money that they are already receiving from advanced corporations. In addition, the VA has three additional sources that they will be able to receive funds from. The recurring expenses transformation fund and from that fund they have approximately $820 million at their disposal. The American Rescue Plan which was part of the COVID relief package, there is $17 billion for the VA. Primarily for medical care but also they have money for areas like the VA and information technology. These funds will be available next year as well. And finally, the American Job Plan. These are opposed funds because this is part of the infrastructure field that I will discuss later in the presentation. The VA is IV partners reviewed the VA budget and testified to Congress that have approved, together with the other sources of funding, this would be the first time people would fully fund the VA for a generation. Now I'm going to highlight a few important areas funding the VA budget. To start with, we're going to talk about VA provided medicine. The funds that I want to discuss here provide for the hospitals, clinics, doctors and nurses. The IV recommended $81.4 billion and the VA requested $70.1 billion. However, there is an additional $12.5 billion for the VA from the COVID relief field. Most of it goes to COVID related care, also to veterans who have deferred their care because of the pandemic. We are also pleased to note that the VA form is proposing to hire approximately 17,500 new healthcare employees to increase its ability to provide time to help for medical care. This is healthcare that is provided outside of the VA and the community care network provided by Optum and TriWest. The IV recommended $20.7 billion and the VA requested $23.4 billion. Plus, they have an additional $2 billion from the American Rescue Plan to help support community care. Due to many veterans deferring their care because of the COVID-19 pandemic, VA expects to see more veterans coming back into the VA next year to get care that was deferred during the pandemic. This additional money does not represent a shift from VA, but a growth that is expected to occur when the mission act was created. VA's budget will shift back down for the following fiscal year of 2023. For medical and prosthetic research, it is important to note that VA provides key research. This research not only helps the vector community, but it also helps the national healthcare system as well. The IV recommended a 10% increase from fiscal year 2021 to include an additional $10 billion for women veterans' research to focus on gender-specific issues. The VA requested an 8% increase from fiscal year 2021 and the VA would like to focus on traumatic brain injuries, COVID-19, and toxic exposure. All are very important issues. When it comes to benefit administration, the IV recommended an increase to help address the claims backlog. Currently, there are 190,000 claims pending in new cases. The IV recommended that VA hired an additional 1,000 employees to help address this backlog situation. The VA's request was a little lower than the IV's, but the VA gets to count on an additional 272 million dollars from the American Rescue Plan. The IV is concerned about the difference in the new FTE request. We would like to see them beef up statutes to include new employees for the VA call center and the Freedom of Information Act request office for the Board of Veterans' Appeals to address the needs before the IV recommended 216 million dollars to help eliminate the hearing back and hiring of employees. The VA requested 228 million, but noted less employees than the IV recommended. For information technology, the IV recommended 5.2 billion dollars to include 175 million for the VA to address ways to improve how many digitized applicants. 25 million for the Board of Veterans' Appeals to help manage their place-well system that they use for day-to-day operations and for artificial intelligence systems to be able to search for documents and information in a quicker manner. And for VA research, it was 42 million dollars to make sure that VA has cutting-edge IT software. The IV wants to make sure that VA money is being used and not set just on VA healthcare, but also to ensure that VA receives funding that they need to be as effective as possible. For the electronic health market modernization, this is a huge project. This will allow VA, DOD, and the private sector to share information. The IV recommended 3 billion dollars to include 16 million for improved access to veterans and streamlined medical appointment scheduling process. VA paused the electronic health market modernization until a strategic review was completed. This review has caused a slowdown of the rollout of the electronic health record across the country to ensure that they have the proper tools that they need like high speed unit to make sure information flow can go continued. For major and minor construction, the IV recommended 2.8 billion for major construction and 810 million for minor construction to build new healthcare facilities and expand and repair existing facilities. The IV's recommendation also included 1 billion dollars to address VA's seismic differences with its ageing hospital infrastructure. The VA requested 1.6 billion for major construction and 553 million for minor construction with an additional 150 million dollars available from the Transmission Fund. Also, there is a very huge infrastructure proposal on the table from the administration that includes 18 billion dollars for VA. 15 billion dollars of that is for VA's new hospitals and another 3 billion for small facilities and non-recurring maintenance. The 18 billion dollar proposal would not be spent in one unit but over several years. This is a very large debt and if this is available, which will make the VA's budget even stronger. Next steps, both sides have to pass their appropriations. The House of Appropriations Committee has passed their version of the military construction and Veterans Affairs appropriations. The Senate appropriations committee has not passed their bill yet. Then the House and Senate have to reach an agreement with the administration in order to pass this bill. This should also be completed prior to the fiscal year which starts on October 1st. If this does not happen, then Congress will usually have to pass a CR for continued resolution to keep the government funded while they reach an agreement. If they don't, then there's a possibility of a government shutdown. However, thanks to DAB and getting advanced appropriations the VA healthcare system will continue to be funded without a question. For some additional resources, if you would like to take a look at the independent budget, the VA budget and then the independent budget testimony that was offered on Monday night. Like I said, the slides are available on our website, so you don't have to worry about trying to brush and take pictures. The information will be there for you to get to see what you need to see. Thank you for your time and attention. I will be followed by our Veterans Affairs Committee's director, Ashley Burr. Thank you, Markey. Can everybody hear me? I'll try to use my good girl voice. Very good. Hi everyone, I'm Ashley Burr, DAB's Deputy Communications Director. I know I'm short on time, so I'll keep this moving. But I'll be giving an update on our critical policy goal of ensuring equitable benefits and services for women and minority veterans. So, real quick, I just want to highlight the why here. Why we need to continue our focus on women and minority veterans issues. When we say minority, we're talking about individuals who when the VA was created decades ago, they either weren't part of the patient demographic, you know, people who look like me, or made up just a notable fraction of the population. So, therefore, their needs were never fully taken into account in how the VA does outreach, how they practice their health care, or how they deliver services. So, still some catching up to do and looking at these growing populations, what they mean, what issues are specific to them, and how the VA can adapt what they're doing to meet their needs. So, VA must ensure that enrolled veterans have equitable access to their earned health care and other programs and services. And they must work to improve health outcomes, which as we know in many cases, happen to be lower within minority populations. The VA can do this by prioritizing data collection and analysis to better identify health trends and collect a million veteran programs. Collecting that data, looking at how they can use it to inform health care providers and come up with better solutions. Reviewing methods of service delivery to underrepresented and underserved veteran populations by investigating cultural differences that may be created barriers to accessing VA, and by creating a safe, harassment-free VA environment for all veterans. So, we've been very glad to see early on a focus on women and minority veterans in 117 Congress and from VA itself. There have been a number of bills introduced in hearings held to include my very first hearing. On March 18th, the focus on VA is still remaining for women veterans. As we continue to work with Congress to ensure the implementation of the provisions from the Deborah Sampson Act, which was passed into law in January, there are still some areas that we know where work needs to be done, things like maternity care coordination, women's specific drug and alcohol dependency programs, and understanding the links between states like toxic exposure and women's health and reproduction. DAB also testified on a number of bills that either focus directly on women and or minority veterans, or that contained applicable provisions at legislative hearings on April 15th and on June 23rd. And then on May 12th, I was incredibly proud to watch National Area Supervisor Kermin McGinnis deliver a really incredible and powerful testimony before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee on Improvements to MST claims processing. Shady was also there. If you haven't seen it, I would advise moving in and looking at it. These links are all live. If you go and check out these presentations here online, you can click right on it and you'll watch Kermin. And then we continue to pay to have ourselves. So DAB also took part in a closures tour roundtable with the House Veterans Affairs Committee on April on Ending Sexual Assault and Harassment at VA. And that discussion was largely focused on the role that VA citizens play in that effort. Which is great because we all do have a part to play in that, right? We're the ones that are actually walking the hall at the VA. We're the ones who, if we see something taking place we have the responsibility and a duty to stand up for our fellow veterans and let someone know that we see inappropriate behavior happening, right? So DAB actually got a very nice shout out at that discussion because National Commander Whitehead has been incredibly engaged in this effort. You may have seen about our social media accounts calling on all of us to be part of that cultural shift at VA. VA Secretary Dennis McDonough has also had a sort of roundtable discussion back in March, which included a few of our DAB members and NSOs just to get the pulse on what's working and most importantly what isn't working for women veterans at VA right now. And then we continue to work with the Congressional Women Veterans Task Force and with VA itself to kind of see what's going on and help move their efforts along on their campaign to end sexual harassment and assault things like the white ribbon campaign. So DOD recently wrapped up a 90 day independent review commission on sexual assault in the military. You may have heard of that kind of big deal. And Secretary Lloyd Austin has been very supportive of the recommendations in that including pretty significant change in the handling of those cases by removing them from the chain of command and instead they'll be handled by independent military lawyers. So that's huge really. And that really, you know, look at how things lead over for DOD into VA and where the cultural change needs to start. It needs to be kind of a two-fold effort. It needs to be tackling it, but it really needs to begin with DOD. VA also underwent a sweeping review earlier this year to ensure that its policies are non-discriminatory towards both veterans and employees based on sexual orientation and gender identity. And additionally, VA in June released a chart book with new data on LGBT veterans, which not only looks at numbers, but also looks at how health for LGBT veterans compares to non-LGB veterans, of course we say. LGBT, let's be gay, bisexual, transgender is not really this particular chart book. But we know that that's an important part of a veteran's medical record and how providers are able to best provide care to them. Here are some of the bills that have been introduced in the 117th Congress this far that specifically focus on women or minority veterans. There are other bills that pertain to these groups as well, but I want to try and keep this list pretty sustained. So I'll run through these, run through these a little quickly, but again, check out the slides online and we get a deeper look. The Protecting Moms You Serve Act, oh by the way, I have a little graphic from there, and the House and Senate side, you can get a bill number. The legislation in the little blue check mark lets you know it's passed. So DAB can folks, I want to see more of these blue check marks. So the Protecting Moms You Serve Act adds resources from maternity care formation, something I personally use and it's fantastic. I want to take that chart that's more available for women veterans out there. It's especially important because all of that here happens outside of the VA in the community and it helps to ensure that what happens on the outside gets back to the VA. All of that here is important. The DULA Act, established as a pilot program for DULA services to foster better child in the time of health outcomes with those of you who are not familiar. DULA is essentially an advocate for pregnant women and new mothers for which for women, that's incredibly important because we know that there are a lot of service connected disabilities that can impact negatively health outcomes for both mother and child. The Veterans Family Health Services Act runs Access to Fertility Services. It also has some provisions specifically to reproductive health needs of veterans with service connected disabilities, spinal cord, MST, mental health, genital urinary as well as one thing, again, this is Shane's alley but it requires a study on toxic exposures in correlation to reproductive health so we really just don't know that much about it right now. The Women Veterans Trust Act, which Marquis talked a little bit about, just making sure that we know what women need when it comes to residential treatment programs for drug and alcohol rehabilitation. The Equal Access to Contraception Act prohibits VA from requiring full payments for contraceptive items in line with what private insurance health companies offer and what women in the military currently have as well. So just bring some equity to that. And this is Emma. Pause for a second on this one. Can anybody tell me what age will we start to require mammograms? 44? I hear a lot. There you should know this too. Lots of fun stuff starts to happen at 40, right? That's from all the good stuff. Now, anybody want to venture a guess at how old I am? So I'm 37. I also do hear a lot of men, which is probably smart. You guys are strange about it. You know better. Yeah. I'm 37. I'm also a veteran of Afghanistan. I have been exposed to board kids. What happens to me between the ages 37 and 40? Nothing. I sit and wait, right? What happens if I develop breast cancer between now and then? What is one of the most important things about cancer treatment? Early detection, right? So the Service Act would expand eligibility for being mammography screens for women veterans that are beyond the commonly practiced age criteria 40 years old. Opening it up to those who have served in specific locations and time frames or burn pits were known to be used overseas. I'm a huge fan of this bill. I think it's right up the alley of what we need. We see this women veterans population growing. We know younger women are going to be coming in. We have to make sure we're protecting them. So the Service Act, ladies and gentlemen. The VA peer support enhancement for MSD survivors act, this is another duty, requires VA to provide MST claimants and assigned peer support specialists throughout the claims process unless the veteran decides to opt out. And that traps the hearing that we have on which VA testified that their figure MSD claims are pretty unique and that VA should be working worklessly with the veteran to ensure that they understand the process, that they understand the resources that are available to them and that they know what to expect so the process is not re-traumatizing to them. The Justice for Women Veterans Act requires the GAO, Government Accountability Office study on the thousands of members of the armed forces that were involuntarily separated or discharged from the military as the result of pregnancy or parenthood. So that could be adoption becoming a step in the path of your child. And this is whether you became pregnant voluntarily, whether you were the victim of a military sexual trauma across the board. If you got pregnant, they were allowed to move you out. And those women were not given counseling. They were not linked up with veterans benefits. They did not have the discharge status to enable them to receive VA benefits. So this is a study to help identify the scope of the impact of that policy, including disproportionate impact by race and ethnicity. And then the MAMO Act, which would require VA to develop a strategic plan within a year of its enactment to create a telemography pilot, enhance BRCA testing. Again, just to focus on early detection and making sure that we're giving women veterans access to the services they need to get the best care that they can, especially when we know that women veterans are more at risk. They're at higher risk for developing breast cancer. The Veterans and Families Information Act and the American, Indian and Alaska Native Veterans Mental Health Act, these are two that are kind of aimed more on the minority veterans side. I know Marquis mentioned about the second bill there and just a little note there. It has passed a house that was just this week and we found out so yep. And then the Veterans and Families Information Act, this is another simple one, just making sure that the VA develops its fact sheets not only in English, but in the 10 most common spoken languages in the U.S. to ensure that they are breaking down those barriers so that you have a caregiver that doesn't necessarily speak English that well. You want to make sure they know what literature is out there, right? They'll be able to get access to what they need. So that would also pass from the house. I'll go ahead and close it out here by giving you a shameless plug that the Women Veterans Seminar is on Monday from 2 to 4 in the HB to Plant Ballroom if you want to hear a little bit more. We'll have some guest presentations from Chairwoman Julia Brownlee. I'm joined by a great interview with her that you guys will have a chance to watch. I'm talking about Congressional Women Veterans Task Force and kind of where they're moving ahead. Leela Jackson is the director of the VAJ's Assault for Graspment Prevention Office, also a Marine Corps veteran. And she'll be talking about VA's efforts and harassment, how VSOs play a role. She'll be offering us a chance to take the White Ribbon Pledge and maybe just maybe walk away with a free gift. And then from VBA we'll have Cheryl Rawls who's the executive director for Outreach Transition and Economic Development. And Steven Ellis, who is a senior customer experience strategist and they'll be discussing outreach to Women Veterans on the benefit side as well as the Women Veterans Journey Map, which they've done some cool work on. I thought it was just something you guys might want to stay tuned into as per me. But they're going to be detailing your Women Veterans experience. So I really hope to see you there. Thank you all so much for your time and attention. And I will now go ahead and pass it back to our fearsome, fearless leader. Thank you, Ashley. You see why I've been on our team. She's doing a great job. I'm going to try to make this really quick so we have time for some fun right at the end. I'm going to weigh in on this serious note. The last presentation here is just a quick update on building a Veterans Health Care System for the future. This is one of our critical policy goals for the 117th Congress. And we want to make sure that part of achieving this goal is going to make sure we have that faithful implementation of the VA Mission Act, realigning and modernizing these infrastructure, completing the IT and electronic health record modernization efforts, and strengthening VA's fourth mission. As part of the Mission Act, which passed in 2018 and became effective, the principles that we were very wanted to make sure were included were that VA remains the primary provider and coordinator of VA care, the new Veteran Care Networks were being established so Veterans would have access to care in the community if VA was not able to provide that care or provide it in a timely manner, and then making sure that quality and access standards are equal. We want to make sure that VA had healthcare vacancies built within the VA facilities. We know there are lots of healthcare vacancies and being able to expand that capacity is critical for VA to serve Veterans. We also want to make sure the quality of care is equal to that care in the community is equal to the VA care that is provided in that there's evidence-based treatments and that clinicians who see Veterans have a cultural competency and understand the illnesses and injuries related to military service. We also wanted to make sure that VA improves scheduling its scheduling systems to lower weight turns. A big piece of the Mission Act was the provisions for the AIR Act and part of that is looking at the infrastructure, VA has a huge portfolio of physical infrastructure of 55,600 buildings, over 170 plus VA medical centers and over 1,000 clinics in the community, but the average age of VA facilities is 50 years old, so major time frame, we still see hospitals that are that old out in the community, and VA started estimating through its own plan, which is the strategic capital infrastructure plan, in 2010, that they had a backlog of $56 billion in modernization, rebuilding, that would need to be done, and that in just a 10-year period jumped up to $66 billion, $66 billion, so that's not going away. And as part of why this has happened, we've just had decades of underplanting for VA hospitals and their facilities and the upkeep that it costs to maintain such a large physical infrastructure, and we know that these infrastructures, we've got to adapt, there's a changing way that healthcare is delivered, especially over the last, just in the last 10, 15 years, and the better demographics have changed. We have older veterans, we have younger veterans, we have a large diversity in the better population and where they live now, which is very different from when VA facilities were built. So one of the things that, just to give you that quick background on the AIR Act, I mean the AIR provisions that were in the Mission Act, was that during this 2021 period right now, the criteria is being finalized and how VA is going to evaluate. Looking at its infrastructure, commissioners are being, the packages that have been in and they have to be nominated, those nominations that will have to come forward and then those will have to go to the Senate and be confirmed. So it's going to be an incredibly important condition and we want to see all of 22 will be sent where VA has their realignment plan evaluated by the commissioners and then they're going to hold hearings, a public review and information that will come out based on what VA's recommendations are. They'll have a year to do their work and then they'll be sending their plan to the President in January 2023 and then it'll go to a review process by the President and a Congress who can either approve or reject it. So you're going to be hearing a lot about this in the year ahead. DAV's vision for modernizing the infrastructure, we have some key points. We want to make sure that there's full funding for existing VA healthcare facilities. We want to have VA invest their money wisely that they'll provide a better Congress to meet future needs of veterans and this is going to require some reforming of the infrastructure. Funding, how it's done, you have to plan for the upkeep of that infrastructure as well. And then reforming construction oversight is key. If you've been following this issue at all you know how long it takes to get approval from Congress to build something new, how long it takes to execute it, how cost surveillance can really put a damper on things to have to go back to Congress and ask for more money and it's 10 years to get a facility built at a shortage span. Also part of the modernization efforts of the electronic health record modernization, we know that VA has adopted CERNR as DOD did to try to have a seamless electronic health record. 10-year project, $16 billion started in Northwest Ohio and not without problems as you've probably heard again in your following issues. OIG and GAO reports and hopefully we're going to hear a little bit more in an update from our VA, J.S. tomorrow on that issue. But you might have universal interoperability in our systems. So that when you come from DOD and whether you're an MBA and then you're seeing that part-time in the community they're going to get those records back to VA so you can have a good comprehensive health care record that's not having the gaps and holes that we have now. Also comprehensive scheduling package between the VA and in the community. We know that is just not happening now the way we would expect it to be but we need the IT to be able to do that more seamlessly. And finally the fourth mission of the VA absolutely critically important and serves as a backup for DOD in a period of more time but support for medical response to terrors and natural disasters you've seen VA do that in many locations across the country and during national health emergencies with the pandemic we see how important the VA is to assist like they did early on in the pandemic with regard to the nursing homes and helping out to make sure that our elderly and vulnerable were taken care of. So that is in a nutshell we've got a really good look at the lessons learned from COVID developing workspaces for the future properly balancing telehealth and telemedicine and that's still to be seen how effective that was which we all had to do over the last year and more and then supply chain issues making sure that VA has its own supply on with DOD for these emergencies that was making sure that the hospital employees and response providers had the PPE that they needed to care for veterans and just overall the importance of the VA healthcare system so that's the way during this modernization and for people who think well we can just get everything we need in the community and we just shouldn't do this investment so I think you've heard enough you've been a very great audience and patient so now we're going to just do a little bit of fun and I'm going to turn it over to Jeremy for a little trivia and a little... Please in general can everybody hear me? Alright, is everybody awake? Alright, that was actually a marvel too so like you can hear me over here There we go Alright ladies and gentlemen, this is the time from the presentation that personally I love and honestly the only reason they keep me around is to see how well you guys can pay attention but there are some ground rules they're game we have rules right because otherwise it's essentially football so the first rule is don't ever okay? something we can't have in common not only are we both Marines but we don't like being one that's one thing and the second thing is please, please, please do not shout out the answer I want you to raise your hands high in the sky and I'll come up to you and I'll ask you a couple of questions and we'll see if you can answer the question and we do have some prizes up here all of these prizes are going to be available for sale so let's go and have a little bit of fun first of all, from Joy's presentation you better get this one right what is the average age of VA healthcare facilities now because I know these people were not in injection they were sick they were in the back how are we doing ma'am what's your name, where are you from what is the average age of VA 50 take the prize with me because I am a little lazy here we go we'll give that to the public what a nice water bottle of course we're happy with the AP because you know who can okay, from Shayne's presentation and I know every single death everybody's hands should just shoot up to the air whatever it is from Shayne's presentation from Shayne's presentation how many close sponsors in the senate are there for the burnt pit exposure act alright, let's go over here you know what I like the people who sat up front how are we doing sir what's your name, where are you from what branch Larry Romain, Virginia U.S. Embassy I have an idea to ask how many close sponsors are there in the senate for the burnt pit exposure act nobody goes away here so I got one shot of that one shot of one kill so here you go here's a sticker, veterans protection team thank you for being a member of it let's go over here for the person who's a lovely guy what's your name, where are you from what branch we'll work at Buchanan, Texas Army what 38, is he right again, DAB Brandon what can only be alright, from my presentation and this what is the new the remarriage age from DIC Black Panther alright, where have I not been let's go over here first of all, where's my Massachusetts delegation are we out here Massachusetts because I'm not going to call on you because every time someone calls on Massachusetts it's because I'm a tech bailing how are you, sir, what's your name where are you from, where branch I'm from Newport, South Carolina Marine Corps alright, okay, second shot for the Marine Corps what is the new remarriage age to attain the DIC veterans against my presentation, please pretend we can pay attention 57 with 55 oh, is he right yes he is, 55 years young thank you very much sir oh man, that one made me sweat alright, from Tawny's presentation the new guy please humor him, what is the name of the pilot program that just benefits this administration creating to replace the 48 hour VSO review oh this gentleman with the lovely mustache writer pretend like you don't know each other do I know you good alright, what's your name where are you from, where branch I'm from Whitney, State of Ohio Air Force what is the program sir car program oh, is he right look at that, even I didn't know that one can you give a little of what you want from this from our team, from the panel presentation do you like that too, I appreciate it anyway, what HR was signed to the law on June 30th my 20 year wedding anniversary with my lovely wife hey, HR was signed to the law on June 30th of this year alright what HR, hey buddy there we go we'll go back here just because I'm filming here alright sir, what's your name where are you from, and what branch are you going to be defending the law right now well, I'm a witness army oh man, good what was the HR thank you for watching and if you want to give yourself a nice blue key radio sir, D.A.B. Brandon here we go, have something we have out here alright, again Marquis had to have two presentations so we get two awards for Marquis' presentation oh no not much money was proposed in the American jobs plan but you know what, because of this that has to be a two part question alright sir, how much is the money 18 billion okay, back to question, pronounce my last name pronounce my last name that's close enough, yeah, we'll get a 10 million that's a lot, well, Ashley's presentation thank you Ashley's presentation, that's right but Marina's so nice she became a deputy twice which of these is a woman veteran's bail currently in the house now I'm going to give you three names, you're going to have to pick which one is the actual that alright sir, what's your name where are you from what branch Michael Coleman, Florida Air Force alright sir first of all, did you get the name that I just said okay, yeah, anyway so which is it the equalizing women's health care act the service act or the mama mama act is he right what did he say he said the mama act no sorry, are you open again so anybody got okay, this first person I saw he seemed really really happy first one, what's your name what's your name where are you from Michael Bobby, senior Chuckie that's correct and it's and what's the answer equalizing women's health care act is he correct the equalizing women's health care act so very good sir okay we're some very happy people that are going to take the room behind us are okay hi, I'm Jeremy what's your name where are you from what branch did you serve in my name is Hallie Mullins I'm the senior vice commander of our department of Washington and U.S. Navy alright, I've already been eliminated which one of those three girls is currently in the house to get crowned oh to our face the service act is she right again, thank you for reaching out to your members of Congress because who can just keep it up enjoy the rest of your convention