Andrew Clyde: “I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Keller), my good friend and colleague, for yielding. Madam Speaker…”

“I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Keller), my good friend and colleague, for yielding. Madam Speaker, veterans and their families have made many sacrifices for our great Nation. Through their service, these men and women have earned numerous benefits, and those benefits are validated by the member's individual service record. The repository for those records is the National Personnel Records Center. The center is behind in its work. With the pandemic, the backlog to obtain military records jumped from 56,000 to over 500,000 requests. That is a tenfold increase. That is 500,000 veterans and their families who are waiting on documentation that they need to apply for and receive benefits that they earned, including the GI Bill education benefits, VA loans, medical benefits, disability compensation, life insurance, and even burial benefits for their families. When these issues were first reported last year, the National Personnel Records Center stated that the pandemic prevented their employees from being able to process record requests in a safe environment. As such, Congress appropriated additional funds to address the center's concerns and to help expedite the digitization of records. However, the center did not grant its employees the proper technology to work from home during the pandemic until early 2021, nearly a year after the pandemic began. This choice by the center only compounded the worsening backlog.…”