Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, wants to boost the Administration’s 2008 VA budget by $2.9 billion to expand funding for veterans’ medical care. The Administration has requested $36.6 billon out of a total VA budget of $87 billion to pay for medical services. Akaka says the boost would ensure the VA can “treat all eligible veterans” and provide “resources to absorb the thousands of service members presently on medical hold” at various military medical facilities.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth this week released strategies meant to focus the Pentagon’s “alphabet soup” of innovation organizations and proliferate artificial intelligence—moves that experts say could provide the structure needed to make the military’s efforts to integrate and field new technology more effective.
