Advocacy groups believe the 2014 veterans’ benefits bill now pending before Congress will not meet the needs of the nation’s veterans. The bill – virtually identical to the proposal the Obama administration submitted in April – would not provide the Department of Veterans Affairs with sufficient funding to support infrastructure and medical and prosthetic research, said leaders of AMVETS, the Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars in a joint statement Jan. 16. The organizations plan to submit their own proposal – known as the Independent Budget – to Congress sometime this month. The service organizations’ proposal will differ widely from funding levels now on the table. For instance, the pending bill would provide $342 million for construction; the Independent Budget will ask for nearly $800 million. The organizations also are alarmed by the bill’s plan to reduce medical-facility funding by almost $500 million. The groups support measures pending before the House (H.R. 813) and Senate (S. 932) that would fund all VA accounts through advance appropriations.