The Veterans Benefits Administration announced that 1,000 new backlogged cased — those that have been pending for more than four months — have been added to its list.
Officials put the total number of cases at roughly 398,000, the Military Times reported. While the VA was able to shave 200,000 pending cases from its rolls in the eight months prior to November of 2013, the number has since stalled.
The VA said in a statement that it was “confident” that its plan for erasing the backlog in 2015 would succeed, the Military Times reported.
The author of a report by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America suggests otherwise. Jacqueline Maffucci, IAVA research director and the author of the report, said the backlogged cases raise “fresh questions about whether VA is on track,” the Military Times reported.
White House officials vowed five years ago that the VA backlog would be zero by the end of 2015.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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