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“The Trump administration’s dangerous decision to roll back VA’s already limited abortion access is clearly driven by politics, not patient care,” said Congresswoman Julia Brownley (CA-26), Ranking Member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health. 

Congresswoman Julia Brownley announced the reintroduction of the Gold Star Siblings Educational Benefits Act, legislation that would extend educational benefits to the surviving siblings of fallen or permanently disabled servicemembers and veterans who are unmarried and without children.

Congresswoman Julia Brownley announced the reintroduction of the Supporting Military Families Exposed to Toxic Substances Act, legislation to extend U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) health care benefits to eligible military and veteran family members exposed to toxic substances. Specifically, the bill would provide VA health care to family members and other individuals who lived or worked at certain military facilities and have been diagnosed with a presumptive service-connected disability resulting from toxic exposure.

On this day and every day, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to our veterans and their families for their extraordinary courage, sacrifice, and service to our country. More than 40,000 veterans and their loved ones call Ventura County and the Conejo Valley home, and I am proud to work on their behalf in Congress. Honoring our veterans is a responsibility that never ends, and neither does the work to ensure they receive the care, benefits, and support they have earned.

Democrats have raised concerns that broadening access to community care will effectively lead eventually to the privatization of the VA by depriving the Veterans Health Administration of funds needed to support the department’s own medical facilities and to provide quality care. “Under this administration, we are seeing a chaotic approach to delivering veterans’ health care that undercuts VA’s internal capacity, shifts more and more care to the community, and leaves veterans and VA employees in the lurch,” said Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., ranking member of the House Veterans Affairs Health Subcommittee during a July 15 hearing on community care.

Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., questioned why VA supervisors were asked to sign nondisclosure statements and why spyware was installed on some staff computers. Collins said it is necessary to monitor office communications to ‘‘keep sensitive information internal” as he develops a reorganization plan for the agency.

For 25 years, between 1951 and 1976, women service members were involuntarily separated from the military due to motherhood, leaving without separation benefits, counseling or assistance. In 2023, Congress recognized the injustice in its annual defense policy bill, acknowledging the harm it caused to women troops. Now, Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., is leading legislation that aims to make financial and symbolic amends.

Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., authored several provisions featured in the bill and called long-term care “one of the biggest challenges facing our aging population and their families.” She praised the House vote as setting the stage for “the single largest expansion of long-term care services at VA in decades.”

The VEO bill introduced by Budzinski and Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., requires the office to report data continuously to lawmakers and calls for a Government Accountability Office review of the efficacy of the VEO’s 1–800–MyVA411 hotline. The hotline offers information on VA benefits and can connect callers with experts.

Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Calif.) introduced the Women Involuntary Separated Earnings Remittance (WISER) Act last week to “rectify a wrong perpetuated against women servicemembers” who were discharged due to an executive order by former President Harry Truman.

The drive for the award started in 2005 and hit snags that included bureaucracy and missing paperwork. Ligato and others kept pushing. U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village, led the drive in Congress, authoring a bill waiving the five-year deadline for the award. In 2018, Canley put on his Marine blues and received the award as his Marines and others yelled “Ooorah.”

“VA isn’t going to solve this problem by itself,” said Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif. “This program could be wildly successful, but it could be a financial failure as well. We have to approach this in a data-driven, continuous improvement model, to make sure every grantee is continually improving that program. And I don’t know if VA has the capability to do that.”

In October, nearly four years after Mariner’s death to ovarian cancer, President Joe Biden signed legislation naming the new clinic for Mariner. Her name was recommended by an advisory panel of veterans and community leaders put together by U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village, who helped lead the drive for the new clinic.

Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., has made helping veterans dealing with toxic exposure central to her work on Capitol Hill, and she’s focused much of her attention on those hazardous burn pits.

The clinic’s women’s health unit is the first standalone program of its kind in the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System with a separate entrance and waiting room. The program, and the clinic’s new name, are testament to the importance of women veterans, said U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village. She led the drive for the clinic and wrote the bill naming it for Mariner.

A bill filed in July by U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., would adjust language in the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2010 to increase payments to veterans under what’s known as the beneficiary travel program. Instead of saying the secretary of defense “may” adjust the mileage rate, Brownley’s measure would require that increase to be “at least” equal to the rate set for use of privately owned vehicles by U.S. government employees.

The announcement came after House committee members visited VA medical centers in Texas and Oklahoma and heard from women veterans and health providers on access to reproductive health care. Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Calif., chairwoman of the House VA Committee’s subpanel on health and the Women Veterans Taskforce, will lead the initiative.

The clinic may be named for the late Navy Capt. Rosemary Bryant Mariner, the first woman to command an operational air squadron in 1990 at Ventura County’s Naval Air Station Point Mugu. The site would become only the third of 1,255 VA facilities to be named for women veterans, said U.S. Rep. Julia Brownley, D-Westlake Village, in a news release.