Veterans Care Financial Protection Act of 2017

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3122, as amended, the Veterans Care Financial Protection Act of 2017, and thank the bill's sponsor, the congressman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cartwright), for introducing it.

Veterans who served during wartime, and their spouses, may be eligible to receive pension benefits if they meet certain income and other eligibility requirements. Such veterans and survivors may also be eligible for additional financial benefits, known as Aid and Attendance, if the applicant needs assistance performing personal functions required in everyday living such as bathing, feeding, and dressing.

Now, VA does not charge veterans and their families to apply for Aid and Attendance benefits. In addition, veterans service organizations, such as The American Legion and VFW, offer free assistance to veterans and their families who wish to apply for this benefit.

Yet, in all parts of the country, some individuals attempt to charge fees for helping veterans apply for Aid and Attendance benefits. According to organizations, such as AARP and the Federal Trade Commission, senior veterans have increasingly become subject to scams involving insurance agents and financial planners trying to convince veterans to make quick decisions about pursuing Aid and Attendance in addition to their pension incomes. Some scammers use false representations such as suggesting automatic entitlement to benefits.

Of greater concern, though, are those who help the veteran restructure financial assets in order to qualify for pension and/or Aid and Attendance. For example, moving financial assets into a pooled- asset irrevocable trust might render a veteran eligible for pension and Aid and Attendance, despite having assets in excess of the qualifying income thresholds.

While it appears that this would benefit the veteran, what these salesmen do not tell them is that this type of restructuring might preclude them from Medicaid eligibility because of rules such as a 5- year look-back period, which considers whether one has moved substantial assets at less than market value.

H.R. 3122, as amended, would require that VA post warnings on its website about dishonest individuals who would charge fees to this very vulnerable group of veterans and their families to help beneficiaries apply for pension with Aid and Attendance benefits.

Now, this bill would also require GAO to submit a report to Congress on the types of standards used by Federal and State agencies intended to protect vulnerable populations from financial exploitation, an analysis of the types of financial exploitation facing veterans who are eligible for Aid and Attendance benefits, and any other gaps and efforts to address these issues.

H.R. 3122, the Veterans Care Financial Protection Act, enjoys broad bipartisan support in the House of Representatives as well as from our veterans service organizations. I want to also acknowledge the work of the Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs Chairman Mike Bost and Ranking Member Elizabeth Esty for their efforts to protect veterans.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cartwright).

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and again, I strongly support H.R. 3122, as amended, and urge my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3122) to protect individuals who are eligible for increased pension under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs on the basis of need of regular aid and attendance from dishonest, predatory, or otherwise unlawful practices, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 3122, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 3122, as amended, the Veterans Care Financial Protection Act.

Mr. Speaker, VA offers an additional pension benefit called Aid and Attendance, or A&A, to some disabled or elderly veterans who need help with activities of daily living such as dressing or bathing.

It may come as a shock to many Americans, but there are people out there who actually take advantage of elderly and disabled veterans by charging them money to help them apply for A&A benefits when the application process is free. If veterans need help

filling out the application, veterans service organizations like The American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, VFW, and others will help, at no charge, even if the veteran is not a member of the organization.

Unfortunately, there are many veterans who don't know that the free help is available and, more importantly, that it is illegal to charge them a dime to file a claim. So some veterans may end up falling prey to these dishonest individuals.

H.R. 3122 would help educate veterans and their families by requiring VA to post warnings on its website about scammers who actually take money from our Nation's most vulnerable veterans for a service that should be free.

The bill would also require GAO to conduct a study and submit a report to Congress on how to better protect vulnerable veterans from being taken advantage of.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 3122, as amended, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I want to associate my remarks to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cartwright). He is absolutely 100 percent correct. To have a vulnerable veteran, an elderly veteran in need who served this country, maybe in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and then to have them taken advantage of is incomprehensible to me.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I am prepared to close. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, once again, I encourage all Members to support this needed legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

THE SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Roe) that the House suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 3122, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, with Veterans Day approaching rapidly, I find it particularly fitting that we raise this important issue today, an issue affecting our veterans that should concern all of us here in the Congress.

As Americans, we enter into a moral covenant with our armed services, with the men and women warfighters that we send into harm's way. It is a covenant that says: you do this for us, and we will take care of you when the time comes, when you need us. It is a covenant that our honoring is of paramount importance, and there is no one here in the people's House who wants to turn his or her back on that covenant.

As part of this enduring covenant and commitment to those who have served our Nation, the VA provides, as has been mentioned, a modest Aid and Attendance benefit to low-income veterans in need of our support. It is a benefit that helps pay for assisted living and in-home personal care for veterans who qualify for VA pension and are homebound or require the aid and assistance of another person.

Unfortunately, as Dr. Roe mentioned, a number of unscrupulous scam artists are out there taking advantage of this commitment and this benefit provided to our veterans. They abuse the VA system by deliberately misleading our veterans into thinking they have to pay application fees, into creating damaging irrevocable trusts, into paying extra fees for so-called expediting these applications when no such expediting is available, and for paying any fees at all when, as has been mentioned, the veterans service organizations do it for free.

Practices such as these leave vulnerable, elderly veterans with few choices outside of draining their own remaining assets. My bill, the Veterans Care Financial Protection Act of 2017, is a bipartisan, commonsense approach that will direct Federal agencies to work with the States and outside experts to establish standards that will prevent this kind of exploitation of our veterans and protect them from dishonest, predatory, or otherwise unlawful practices relating to the A&A benefit, and it will require a report from the Government Accountability Office to conduct a study and report to Congress on how better to protect veterans from these scam artists.

Mr. Speaker, we owe our veterans, who have made great sacrifices for all of us, the protection and benefits that they deserve, and, as such, I urge a ``yes'' vote on this bill.

I want to thank the chairman of the VA committee, Dr. Roe from Tennessee; its ranking member, Mr. Walz from Minnesota; and the entire Veterans' Affairs Committee for taking up this bill. And I would also like to thank, over in the Senate, Senator Warren, for her hard work on this bill in the Senate as well.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 3122 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.