VA Research Reform Act of 2025

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Bill ID: 119/hr/6583

Last Updated: May 20, 2026

VA Research Reform Act of 2025

HR. 6583, 119th Congress — read as touching Hospitals & Health Systems.

The sponsor

Rep. Murphy, Gregory F. [R-NC-3]

Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.

The money

$79,400 raised

20 itemised contributions to this sponsor, pulled from FEC filings.

The alignment

64% match to Project 2025

This bill's text tracks the "Introduction" section, p. 679-681 of the Mandate for Leadership.

Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law

Track this bill's progress through the legislative process

Latest Action

Committee Hearings Held

May 19, 2026

Introduced

Committee Review

📍 Current Status

Next: The bill moves to the floor for full chamber debate and voting.

🗳️

Floor Action

✅

Passed House

🏛️

Senate Review

🎉

Passed Congress

🖊️

Presidential Action

⚖️

Became Law

📚 How does a bill become a law?

1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.

2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.

3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.

4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.

5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.

6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.

7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!

Bill Summary

Summary Style:

**Analysis of HR 6583: VA Research Reform Act of 2025**

As a visionary entrepreneur and thought leader, I'll dissect this bill through the lens of its potential impact on my empire's wealth and influence.

**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The VA Research Reform Act aims to centralize research data management within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and streamline research proposal review processes. The bill seeks to improve oversight, coordination, and efficiency in VA research activities.

**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:**

1. Establishment of a centralized research data system (VA Centralized Research Data System) to collect and manage information on all VA research activities. 2. Development of a tiered review system for research proposals based on risk and impact, with standardized national timelines for completion. 3. Granting the Office of Research and Development override authority to expedite reviews and approvals.

**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:**

1. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) 2. Researchers and scientists conducting studies within the VA 3. Veterans Health Administration facilities 4. Private sector companies involved in research collaborations with the VA

**Potential Impact & Implications:** From a self-serving perspective, this bill presents both opportunities and threats to my empire's interests.

* **Opportunities:** Streamlined review processes and centralized data management could facilitate more efficient collaboration between the VA and private sector companies like mine. This might lead to increased access to valuable research data and potential partnerships. * **Threats:** The establishment of a centralized data system and standardized review timelines may introduce new regulatory hurdles, potentially slowing down my company's research endeavors or increasing compliance costs.

**Recommendations:** To maximize the benefits for my empire, I would advocate for:

1. Ensuring that the VA Centralized Research Data System is designed with interoperability in mind, allowing seamless integration with private sector databases and systems. 2. Providing sufficient flexibility within the tiered review system to accommodate innovative research proposals that may not fit traditional risk categories. 3. Limiting the scope of regulatory oversight to avoid unnecessary burdens on private sector collaborators.

By carefully navigating these provisions, I can position my empire for success in this new regulatory landscape, while minimizing potential disruptions to our operations.

💰 Campaign Finance Network

Rep. Murphy, Gregory F. [R-NC-3]

Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle

Total Contributions

$79,400

14 donors

PACs

Organizations

Committees

Individuals

$79,400

No PAC contributions found

No organization contributions found

No committee contributions found

DOISE, DARYL

2 transactions

$13,400

KAPOOR, DEEPAK

2 transactions

$13,200

WHITEHURST, JAMES III

3 transactions

$9,900

BOWEN, JOEY M

2 transactions

$6,600

CLARK, MELISSA A

2 transactions

$6,600

SCHWARZMAN, STEPHEN

1 transaction

$3,300

ARUMUGHAM, PRADEEP

1 transaction

$3,300

DAVENPORT, S LAWRENCE

1 transaction

$3,300

DAVIS, FREDDIE H

1 transaction

$3,300

EVERETTE, ROYCE EARL MR. JR

1 transaction

$3,300

MILLER, MATT F

1 transaction

$3,300

BELL, JAMES EDWARD MR. III

1 transaction

$3,300

CRAIG, JOHN

1 transaction

$3,300

FLOYD, GREGORY E ESQ.

1 transaction

$3,300

Donor Network - Rep. Murphy, Gregory F. [R-NC-3]

Show Also Donated To

PACs

Organizations

Individuals

Politicians

Hub layout: Politicians in center, donors arranged by type in rings around them.

Showing 27 nodes and 20 connections (31 secondary connections hidden)

Total contributions: $79,400

Top Donors - Rep. Murphy, Gregory F. [R-NC-3]

Showing top 14 donors by contribution amount

14 Individuals

Industry Impact

Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 5 helped.

+Hospitals & Health Systemsconfidence 0.85
Sec. 7383(c)(2)(A) and Sec. 7385(b)(2)-(F) aim to translate research findings into clinical practice at VHA facilities, potentially increasing adoption of new treatments and technologies by VA hospitals and health systems.
+Biotech & Researchconfidence 0.80
Sec. 7385(a)-(f) requires allocation of research funds to implement high-impact research findings, including development of clinical guidelines, training, health IT modifications, and patient outreach, which could benefit biotech firms engaged in VA-funded research and translation of discoveries into practice.
+Medical Devicesconfidence 0.75
Sec. 7385(b)(3)(D) explicitly includes 'modification of health information technology or equipment to accommodate new treatments or diagnostics' as an allowable use of funds for implementing high-impact research, which could benefit medical device manufacturers.
+AI & Cloud Infrastructureconfidence 0.70
Sec. 7383(c)(3) requires compatibility with the VA electronic health record system, and Sec. 7385(b)(3)(D) allows funds for modifying health IT systems, which could create opportunities for AI and cloud infrastructure providers supporting VA data systems and research analytics.
+Telecommunicationsconfidence 0.60
Sec. 7389 seeks to improve data sharing and interoperability with external partners, which may require enhanced telecommunications infrastructure for secure data transmission, potentially benefiting telecom providers contracting with the VA.

Who funds the sponsor on these industries

For each industry this bill affects, here's what the sponsor (Rep. Murphy, Gregory F. [R-NC-3])received from donors associated with that industry during the 2022–present cycles. Donations are not proof of intent — they are a record of who funds the people writing the law.

Industries this bill HELPS

Biotech & Research$8,300
from 3 contributions
- HUNTER, FRED NEAL MR.$8,300
Hospitals & Health Systems$5,000
from 3 contributions
- RUSSO, CHERYL DR.$3,000
- CAMPBELL, GRANT$1,000
- MOORE, BRIAN$1,000

Project 2025 Policy Matches

This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.

Introduction

Moderate63.9%

Pages: 679-681

— 646 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 3. Section 121 (developing and administering an education program that teaches veterans about their health care options available from the Department of Veterans Affairs). 4. Section 152 (returning the Office for Innovation of Care and Payment to the Office of Enterprise Integration with a joint governance process set up with the VHA). 5. Section 161 (overhauling Family Caregiver Program expansion, which has gone poorly, so that it focuses on consistency of eligibility and awareness that the most severely wounded or injured may require the program indefinitely). l Require the VHA to report publicly on all aspects of its operation, including quality, safety, patient experience, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness, using standards similar to those in the Medicare Accountable Care Organization program so that the government may monitor and achieve continuous improvement in the VA system more effectively. l Encourage VA Medical Centers to seek out relevant academic and private- sector input in their communities to improve the overall patient experience. Budget l Conduct an independent audit of the VA similar to the 2018 Department of Defense (DOD) audit to identify IT, management, financial, contracting, and other deficiencies. l Assess the misalignment of VHA facilities and rising infrastructure costs. The VHA operates 172 inpatient medical facilities nationally that are an average of 60 years old. Some of these facilities are underutilized and inadequately staffed. Facilities in certain urban and rural areas are seeing significant declines in the veteran population and strong competition for fresh medical staff. In 2018, Congress authorized an Asset Infrastructure Review (AIR) of national VHA medical markets to provide insight into where the VA health care budget should be responsibly allocated to serve veterans most effectively. However, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee lacked the political will to act on the White House’s nominations of commission members, and this ultimately led to termination of the AIR process. The next Administration should seek out agile, creative, and politically acceptable operational solutions to this aging infrastructure status quo, — 647 — Department of Veterans Affairs reimagine the health care footprint in some locales, and spur a realignment of capacity through budgetary allocations. Specifically: 1. Embrace the expansion of Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs) as an avenue to maintain a VA footprint in challenging medical markets without investing further in obsolete and unaffordable VA health care campuses. 2. Explore the potential to pilot facility-sharing partnerships between the VA and strained local health care systems to reduce costs by leveraging limited talent and resources. Personnel l Extend the term of the Under Secretary for Health (USH) to five years. Additionally, authority should be given to reappoint this individual for a second five-year term both to allow for continuity and to protect the USH from political transition. l Establish a Senior Executive Service (SES) position of VHA Care System Chief Information Officer (CIO), selected by and reporting to the chief of the VHA Care System with a dotted line to the VA CIO. l Identify a workflow process to bring wait times in compliance with VA MISSION Act–required time frames wherever possible. 1. Assess the daily clinical appointment load for physicians and clinical staff in medical facilities where wait times for care are well outside of the time frames required by the VA MISSION Act. 2. Require VHA facilities to increase the number of patients seen each day to equal the number seen by DOD medical facilities: approximately 19 patients per provider per day. Currently, VA facilities may be seeing as few as six patients per provider per day. 3. Consider a pilot program to extend weekday appointment hours and offer Saturday appointment options to veterans if a facility continues to demonstrate that it has excess capacity and is experiencing delays in the delivery of care for veterans. 4. Identify clinical services that are consistently in high demand but require cost-prohibitive compensation to recruit and retain talent, and examine exceptions for higher competitive pay.

Introduction

Moderate63.9%

Pages: 679-681

Introduction

Moderate63.0%

Pages: 682-684

— 650 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Toxins, has led to historic increases in mandatory VBA spending in recent years. The VA has a time-phased plan to reassess the VASRD and its ratings for com- pensation, but this internal process can be slow and laborious, requires Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approvals, and can become politically charged both in Congress and with VSOs. l The next Administration should explore how VASRD reviews could be accelerated with clearance from OMB to target significant cost savings from revising disability rating awards for future claimants while preserving them fully or partially for existing claimants. l The VBA’s Information Technology top-line budget should be reexamined and reassessed in light of the need for expanded automation across the enterprise. l Traditionally, VHA captures the large majority of VA IT funding. The VBA needs to make the case for a larger IT budget with clear requirements to support that request. Personnel l Pursue reforms of the Human Capital Management process and operations within the VBA to build a more blended workforce with more contractors to process claims. This would free federal employees to perform other duties and be involved solely with the final decision to award benefits. l Improve the VBA acquisition workforce. The VBA needs more world-class contractor support. Currently, few of the top companies have contracts with the VBA, and the VBA needs to conduct more outreach to the private sector through senior leader engagement and industry conferences. l To identify more effective and efficient ways to complete claims, establish a knowledge exchange program with top-tier private-sector companies that do similar work. The VBA is fundamentally a financial services organization. A significant amount of its work has a private-sector analogue that could be leveraged to improve service to veterans. l For most of its existence, the VBA has been a risk-averse, insular, paper-based organization, implementing technology only over the past decade. This insularity has led to a predominantly “build it ourselves” approach, partly because VBA staff has limited experience or insight into current private- sector tools and methods and partly because the VBA struggles to compete — 651 — Department of Veterans Affairs with the VHA for IT funding. Senior executive leadership needs more innovators and trail blazers—qualities that have sometimes been lacking in the VBA’s senior ranks. Recruiting a more relevantly knowledgeable and technologically savvy team, along with robust political control of the VA, could bring about better solutions to the VBA’s workflow challenges. HUMAN RESOURCES AND ADMINISTRATION (HRA) Needed Reforms l Rescind all delegations of authority promulgated by the VA under the prior Administration. l Transfer all career SES out of PA/PAS-designated positions on the first day and ensure political control of the VA. l Take a close and analytically critical look at where hybrid and remote work is a net positive as a functional necessity and where in-person collaboration and presence will help to instill a strong work ethic and a more cohesive environment for productivity from the Office of the Secretary across the headquarters enterprise. The COVID-19 pandemic spurred a significant shift to hybrid and telework options for large segments of the staff in the Washington headquarters, in its sat- ellites, and at some VBA Regional Offices. The “remote work” expectation has been amplified and formalized within the Biden Administration team at VA to the extent that the current Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and their staffs are not “in office” as a matter of a routine presence while VA staff in Washington, D.C., have limited in-person meetings, relying more frequently on video conference calls. The short-term and long-term effects of this policy on the department are unknown, but generally, the policy may be undermining the cohesiveness and competencies of some staff functions and diluting general organizational accountability and responsiveness. Budget l Expedite the acquisition of a new Human Resources Information Technology (HRIT) system. The current system is not user-friendly; has minimal fusion, middle-ware capacity; and is not conducive to data driven personnel decisions. Personnel data needs to be organized and managed to its full potential. The HRIT system, associated databases, and other “shadow” personnel systems have no shortage of data; the problem comes with effective management of the data.

Introduction

Moderate61.6%

Pages: 676-678

— 644 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise In sum, the VA for the foreseeable future will experience significant fiscal, human capital, and infrastructure crosswinds and risks. Budgets are at historic highs, and with a workforce now above 400,000, the VA is contending with a lack of new veteran enrollees to offset the declining population of older veterans. Recruitment of medical and benefits personnel has become more challenging. Veterans are migrating from the northern states to the southern and western states for retirement and employment. Meanwhile, VA information technol- ogy (IT) is struggling to keep pace with the evolution of patient care and record keeping. Consequently, VA leaders in the next Administration must be wise and courageous political strategists, experienced managers to run day-to-day oper- ations more effectively, innovators to address the changing veteran landscape, and agile “fixers” to mitigate and repair systemic problems created or ignored by the present leadership team. VETERANS HEALTH ADMINISTRATION (VHA) Needed Reforms l Rescind all departmental clinical policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance starting with abortion services and gender reassignment surgery. Neither aligns with service-connected conditions that would warrant VA’s providing this type of clinical care, and both follow the Left’s pernicious trend of abusing the role of government to further its own agenda. l Focus on the effects of shifting veteran demographics. At least during the next decade, the VA will experience a significant generational shift in its overall patient population. Of the approximately 18 million veterans alive today, roughly 9.1 million are enrolled for VA health care, and 6.4 million of these enrollees use VA health care consistently. These 6.4 million veterans are split almost evenly between those who are over age 65 and those who are under age 65, but the share of VA’s health care dollars is spent predominantly in the over-65 cohort. That share increases significantly as veterans live longer and use the VHA system at a higher rate. VHA enrollments of new users are increasingly at risk of being exceeded by the deaths of current enrollees, primarily because significant numbers of the Vietnam generation are reaching their life expectancy. The generational transition from Vietnam-era veterans to post-9/11 veterans will take several years to complete. The ongoing demographic transition is a catalyst for needed assessments of how the VA can improve the delivery of care to a numerically declining and differently dispersed national population — 645 — Department of Veterans Affairs of veterans—a population that is more active, reaching middle age or retirement age, and migrating for lifestyle and career reasons. At the center of the VHA’s evolution during this generational transition is an ongoing tension, some of it politically contrived, between Direct Care for Veterans provided from inside the VHA system and Community Care for Veterans who are referred to private providers participating in the VHA’s two Community Care Networks (CCNs). In recent years, the budget for Community Care has grown as demand from veterans has risen sharply, sometimes outpacing the budgets for Community Care at individual VAMCs. The Trump Administration made Community Care part of its “Veteran- centric” approach to ensure that veterans would be able to participate more fully in their health care decisions and have options if or when the VHA was unable to meet their needs. The Biden Administration has watered down that effort, has sought various procedural ways to slow the rate of referrals to private doctors, and at some facilities is reportedly manipulating the Community Care access standards required by the VA MISSION Act of 2018. If the makeup of Congress is favorable in 2025, the next Administration should rapidly and explicitly codify VA MISSION Act access standards in legislation to prevent the VA from avoiding or watering down the requirements in the future. First and foremost, a veterans bill of rights is needed so that veterans and VA staff know exactly what benefits veterans are entitled to receive, with a clear process for the adjudication of disputes, and so that staff ensure that all veterans are informed of their eligibility for Community Care. Currently, veterans are not routinely and consistently told that they are eligible for Community Care unless they request information or are given a referral. l To strengthen Community Care, the next Administration should create new Secretarial directives to implement the VA MISSION Act properly. Sections for consideration and areas for reform include the following: 1. Sections 101 and 103 (Community Care eligibility for access standards and the best medical interest of the veteran). 2. Section 104 (Community Care access standards and standards for quality of care).

Showing 3 of 4 policy matches

About These Correlations

Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.

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