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Veterans and advocates press committee on mental‑health care and claim backlogs
Summary
Witnesses including the Veterans of Foreign Wars and veteran Timothy Page urged the committee to press Congress and the VA on mental‑health care access and long disability‑claim wait times, citing thousands of veteran suicides since 9/11, continuing wait‑time averages and calls for better veteran‑focused mental‑health staffing.
Witnesses and veterans pressed the Local Government, Public Safety and Veterans Affairs Committee to advance congressional and administrative fixes to veteran mental‑health care and disability‑claims processing.
David Root, speaking for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, urged support for Senate Resolution 21, saying depression and post‑traumatic stress disorder are "the top 2 most common health mental health problems facing returning troops." Root cited a figure that "more than 30,000 active duty personnel and veterans have died by suicide since the attack on 09/11," and criticized persistent VA backlogs despite the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017.
Timothy Page, a Navy hospital corpsman and recovering alcoholic, gave personal testimony about military sexual trauma (MST), long delays in receiving VA benefits and the human toll of slow adjudication. Page used the oft‑cited "22 a day" phrasing as an attention getter and later said that figure "is not quite accurate, but it has gained enough momentum" to focus attention on veteran suicides. He described repeated denials, long processing times and the emotional effects on veterans and families.
On Senate Resolution 22, Root said average completion times for certain disability claims ranged from about 139 to 146 days in recent months but noted many veterans wait far longer. Committee members thanked the witnesses, noted written testimony from the American Legion (Jacob Brault) and concluded the second hearings on the resolutions. No committee votes were taken on either resolution during this meeting.
