Workers there cut the number of pending disability applications from veterans across Wisconsin from a peak of 11,900 in July last year to 7,900 on Jan. 31. They slashed the number of pending pension claims from a high of 12,900 in late 2012 to 4,400.

 

But members of the state’s congressional delegation want those numbers cut even further. They say veterans across the state are still waiting too long, in many cases more than a year.

 

Reps. Sean Duffy, R-Wausau, and Gwen Moore, D-Milwaukee, organized a rare bipartisan briefing recently for the state’s Housedelegation with VA officials and discovered that the Milwaukee office has been taking on cases from other states -- 9,000 since last summer -- which has stalled processing of more Wisconsin claims.

 

“Our guys, our people aren’t being processed, they’re being equalized,” Duffy said. “We could reap the rewards of having a wonderfully functioning VA office in Milwaukee where we process our veterans’ claims more quickly, but instead of letting Wisconsin benefit from its great work ethic, we’re getting penalized in a sense that we’re going to have to carry the slack from other offices around the country.”

 

He said he and other members who attended the briefing, including Moore, Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Sherwood, Rep. Tom Petri, R-Fond du Lac, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville, and Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, are now considering sending a joint letter to get more information from the VA.

 

The Milwaukee office serves more than 400,000 veterans in Wisconsin. It is one of 58 VA offices across the country that have been grappling with a nationwide surge in veterans claims that peaked last year with 900,000 pending claims. Of those, more than 600,000 had been pending for more than four months.

 

There are now 648,000 pending claims, including for disability, pension and survivors’ compensation. Roughly 57 percent of those have been waiting longer than four months. The Obama administration has vowed to eliminate the backlog by the end of 2015 and ensure no one waits longer than 125 days.

 

In Wisconsin, the average wait time as of the end of January was 160 days, down from 263 days last summer, and there were 61 applications that had been pending longer than a year. VA officials touted that as an improvement to Wisconsin lawmakers, noting that last year, there were 552 claims that had been waiting more than a year.

 

“They are congratulating themselves on where they are now as opposed to where they were,” Moore said. “But I mean the bar is a little bit too low.”

 

She, Duffy and Ribble said their offices are still flooded with calls from constituents whose applications have been languishing.

 

“It is among the most common complaint we get,” Ribble said. “A year or 18 months is plain and simply too long.”

 

He and the others are hopeful that they will get more answers and possibly action from VA officials in the coming weeks. The officials said during the briefing that their progress on the backlog is hampered in part by a laborious processing system. They said it wasn’t a question of budget.

 

“It’s unique for an agency to tell us it’s not a money problem because they’re always telling us it’s money,” Duffy said, adding that the group had trouble getting the officials to pinpoint potential solutions. “They didn’t have good answers and that’s why we have to keep following up.”

 

Democratic Rep. Ron Kind of La Crosse, who wasn’t able to attend the briefing but sent a staff member, said the issue transcends partisan lines within the House delegation of five Republicans and three Democrats. He said he, too, is concerned about the Milwaukee office taking on casework from elsewhere.

 

“We’re worried that this could bump some of our residents down the line a little bit as far as priority cases,” he said.

 

Calls to the VA seeking comment were not returned.

 

Ribble said he’s not sure what will come of the delegation’s efforts, but he remains hopeful.

 

“It certainly gets their attention when you have an entire delegation sitting there,” he said.

 

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