Yearslong Backlog of Tens of Thousands Of Military Records Are Preventing Veterans From Receiving Critical Benefits And Services
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined a bipartisan letter to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) seeking answers about the backlog of requests for veterans’ service records. These records are often required to access critical government benefits and services like medical treatment, unemployment assistance, and emergency housing. NARA has projected that the military records backlog would include more than 84,000 cases just this month. In the letter, Senator Rosen and her colleagues point out that the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, which she helped pass, authorized $60 million for NARA to address the records backlog by digitizing service records to improve response times for requests from veterans for their military service records. Due to staffing shortages during the pandemic, NARA staff struggled to respond to veterans’ requests for documents and the backlog climbed to 600,000.
“We write to express our concern regarding reports of ongoing delays in constituents receiving their military service records from the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC),” wrote the Senators. “While we recognize and commend NARA for the significant strides it has made to address this backlog, we must ensure all incoming requests are still met with a timely response and that this does not occur again in the future.”
The full letter can be found HERE.
Senator Rosen is a leader in supporting our nation’s veterans. She recently led colleagues in a bipartisan letter urging the Biden Administration to identify and amend military records of hundreds of women veterans who deployed alongside Special Operations Forces in Afghanistan and Iraq to ensure they accurately reflect their combat service. Senator Rosen also secured authorization for a new VA hospital in Reno and Nevada’s first-ever Veteran Business Outreach Center. Last year, she helped pass the bipartisan PACT Act to extend VA benefits and health care to all veterans suffering from illnesses as a result of exposure to burn pits and other toxins during their service overseas.
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