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June 24, 2019

The Honorable Robert Wilkie
Secretary

Department of Veterans Affairs
810 Vermont Ave., NW
Washington, DC. 20420

Dear Mr. Secretary:

We are writing to raise our signi?cant concerns regarding hundreds of millions of dollars
in funding fees owed to our nation?s veterans by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

On June 6, the Department?s Of?ce of Inspector General (OIG) released a report,
Veterans Benefits Administration: Exempt Veterans Charged VA Home Loan Funding ees,
detailing that VA owes $286.4 million in home loan funding fee refunds to thousands of veterans
participating in the VA Home Loan Guaranty Program. As part of the loan guaranty program,
many veterans are exempt from paying the funding fees if they are entitled to VA disability
compensation. For the estimated 72,900 veterans affected, the amounts owed by VA averaged
$4,483, with some veterans owed as much as $19,470. Of course, this is a large amount of
money for the individual veterans.

The OIG established that the Veterans Bene?ts Administration?s (VBA) Loan Guaranty
Service management, ?was aware since October 2014 that thousands of exempt veterans may
have been charged home loan funding fees,? which the OIG noted as ?troubling.? The OIG also
found ?disturbing? that as of January of this year, the Department had not acted to issue refunds
for the erroneously collected funding fees. We share the concerns.

While we recognize that VA has largely agreed to implement the OIG recommendations,
it is unclear when veterans will see their reimbursement. The Under Secretary for Bene?ts
agreed to implement a plan for identifying and returning the funding fees to veterans by July 31
of this year. The Under Secretary also promised to establish improved control measures, in order
to prevent charging fees to exempt veterans in the future.

We therefore ask that you provide our Committees with a detailed schedule for the
funding fee repayments as well as a plan to implement the necessary ?nancial controls to
mitigate this from happening again in the future. We would also like to see the Department?s
plan for comprehensive improvements to documentation of home loan guarantees. We request a
brie?ng to the Committees? staff regarding the plan of action to schedule the repayments and all
other issues the Department is taking in response to the report by June 28, 2019.

Thank you in advance for your attention to our request.

PRINTED ON RECYCLED PAPER

The Honorable Robert Wilkie
June 24, 2019
Page 2

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The Honorable Robert Wilkie
June 24, 2019

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