The largest VA budget request ever – $369 billion for FY 2025, 10% higher than the FY 2024 estimate – came March 11, five weeks after the often-neglected deadline for the White House to submit its annual budget proposal.  It dwarfs the $48 billion appropriated in FY 2001, before two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. And it reflects the growing responsibilities of the department – $134 billion in discretionary funding (mostly for medical care) and $235 billion in mandatory spending, including the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund mandated by the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act.

The proposed budget would allow the VA to deliver “the very best health care and benefits that this country has to offer,” VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in a press release announcing the request. But the proposal itself is far from enough: MOAA and fellow veterans service organizations (VSOs) will work with Congress and the administration to get this budget passed in a timely fashion and avoid the months of wasteful continuing resolutions that plagued this year’s budget cycle.