{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://pappas.house.gov/media/press-releases/watch-pappas-presses-va-on-delays-to-education-benefits-to-veterans", "WATCH: Pappas Presses VA on Delays to Education Benefits to Veterans", "2025-12-16", "2025", "2025-12", "Democrat", "House", "NH", "Chris Pappas", "P000614", "pappas.house.gov", "pappas", "https://pappas.house.gov/media/press-releases", "scraper", "Today at a hearing held by the Economic Opportunity Subcommittee of the House Veterans\u2019 Affairs Committee, Congressman Chris Pappas (NH-01), Ranking Member of the subcommittee, pressed VA leadership on VA\u2019s failure to pay required education benefits on time to over 75,000 veterans and their families and survivors. View Pappas\u2019s remarks here.\n\nUnderscoring the lack of communication from VA to veterans, their families, and Congress, Pappas said, \u201cWe have not had that \u2013 in fact, in all my years on this Committee I have never experienced this level of stonewalling before\u2026 VA has issued little to no public acknowledgment for months regarding the seventy-five thousand beneficiaries whose benefits have been delayed. There has been minimal communication for months to schools and beneficiaries themselves. And there has been zero communication with Congress, unless you can count the letter that we received back that didn\u2019t answer our questions at 5:45 yesterday. Three letters that were sent from members of this committee went unanswered for a month and a half.\u201d\n\nStressing the length of time of four months for VA to share information, he said, \u201cIt took four months between this problem being identified and Congress being updated. Four months - during which tens of thousands of beneficiaries were left without any information. There\u2019s just no excuse for such an egregious lack of communication around an issue that affects so many veterans. Any reasonable person would conclude that a deliberate, political decision was made to cut off communications with Congress and veterans to avoid accountability and hide the problem.\u201d\n\nPappas shared a constituent story, saying, \u201cOne of my constituents from Manchester contacted our office and said: \u2018Due to an error with the VA benefits system I have not received my education benefits so far this semester. The call-in line that I and the University of New Hampshire veteran center staff use to resolve such issues has been deactivated for the duration of the shutdown, leaving me dead in the water. My wife\u2019s salary has so far covered our rent and food, but we are at risk of losing child care for my son due to non-payment as well as having to miss car payments.\u2019 Financial stress put on him and his family is evident. It is also unacceptable.\u201d\n\nBackground:", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://pappas.house.gov/media/press-releases/watch-pappas-presses-va-on-delays-to-education-benefits-to-veterans"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 1.8815449438989162, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}