Margarita Devlin, principal deputy undersecretary for benefits at the VA, testifies during a House Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing on April 14, 2026. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
WASHINGTON — In January 2025, more than 264,000 veterans were awaiting decisions on disability claims pending before the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Now, that backlog of claims has dropped dramatically to 83,000.
Officials from the Department of Veterans Affairs delivered that message at a hearing Wednesday of the House Veterans Affairs Committee that examined the agency’s progress in addressing its claims inventory.
The hearing was titled “Faster Decisions, Stronger Outcomes: VA’s Work to Streamline the Disability Claims Backlog.”
The VA processed three million compensation and pension claims in fiscal 2025, said Margarita Devlin, principal deputy undersecretary for benefits at the VA.
The VA is on a similar pace this year, processing more than 1.5 million claims halfway through fiscal 2026, Devlin said.
“The VA receives millions of claims from veterans each year for disability benefits and continues to process them faster than ever while maintaining high accuracy rates,” the agency said after the hearing.
House Veterans Affairs committee chairman Rep. Mike Bost, R- Ill., speaks during a hearing on Tuesday, April 14, 2026. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
Advances in technology and automation have enabled the VA to more easily pull together the information required to support a veteran’s claim, as well as identify missing evidence, Devlin said.
But Devlin said that a worker is present and focused “on making decisions that require human judgment.”
She presented rates and numbers that showed gains the VA has made in reducing wait times for decisions on benefits.
The average number of days to process a claim, for example, has dropped 42% to 81 days since the beginning of the second Trump administration, Devlin said.
She also said the VA is working to issue partial benefits as it evaluates more complex claims that take longer to complete.
Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., the committee chairman, noted that there was a sharp rise in the claims backlog under the former Biden administration.
But now the VA is processing a record number, reducing the backlog and delivering benefits sooner, Bost said.
Bost also asked about safeguards for ensuring decisions are accurate.
“Maintaining quality decisions remains a core concern of mine,” Bost said.
He said that a VA Office of Inspector General audit last year found that a senior VA employee at a regional office in Philadelphia had authorized 85,000 claims from 2022 to 2024.
The employee spent, on average, less than five minutes per claim and caused multiple errors, which cost $2.2 million in improper payments, Bost said.
“President Trump has a singular focus — making sure government runs better,” Bost said. “We’re moving in the right direction but look forward to hearing more about how VA plans to sustain these gains.”
Rep. Mark Takano of California, the top Democrat on the committee, said the claims backlog was driven in recent years by the COVID-19 pandemic and then by passage of the PACT Act, which provided presumptive disability benefits for toxic exposures.
With passage of the PACT Act, the “VA accelerated implementation and surged resources,” encouraging veterans to step forward, Takano said. “The backlog reflected increased access.”
Ranking member Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., speaks during a House Veterans Affairs committee hearing on April 14, 2026. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
In May 2023, the VA reported that more than 250,000 claims for PACT Act benefits were processed after the law was enacted in August 2022.
“At this time across the agency, it has truly been an all-hands-on-deck effort to prepare for and execute on the delivery of the PACT Act,” the VA’s Undersecretary for Benefits Joshua Jacobs testified at a House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee hearing.
Takano said he is worried about a greater emphasis today on the number of claims processed in less time. “Veterans need to know the opportunity costs of a department focused on processing times,” Takano said.
Takano also complained that Wednesday’s hearing limited in-person testimony to two VA officials.
“We’re here today with only VA as our witness,” Takano said. “We need to know what is actually happening on the ground.”
Veterans of Foreign Wars did submit written testimony, which lauded the VA for improved efficiency in claims processing.
Ryan Gallucci, executive director of the VFW’s national office, wrote that the VA has modernized processes that include making back-end improvements.
The VFW is recommending that the VA now identify delays during specific phases of the claims evaluation. This would include initial processing, claims development, establishing a rating and deciding an award.
“Each of these phases is instructive to where bottlenecks persist and should be viewed as individual pain points — or backlogs,” he said.
“However, VA does not offer this granular level of information publicly to veterans, which leaves accredited representatives to manage expectations, hoping that our clients trust the explanation,” he said.
The VFW said that when claims are submitted as complete packages — with all necessary medical evidence and documentation — they can be rated in a matter of days.
“This demonstrates that the system can operate efficiently when development requirements are minimized,” Gallucci said.
