by: Raymond Toenniessen, Deputy Executive Director and Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation
We spend more than $13 billion each year on programs designed to help veterans transition to civilian life. A 2024 RAND study found we cannot clearly show that any of it is working.
What that study revealed should give everyone in this space pause. Forty-five programs, run by eleven federal agencies, each with its own budget, its own goals, and its own definition of success. In some cases, the results are not just disappointing. They are difficult to defend. The Transition Assistance Program, which is mandatory for every service member separating from the military, is associated with lower wages for participants. The Post-9/11 GI Bill, the largest program by far at over $8 billion annually, has produced modest increases in educational attainment but limited increases in earnings. Research from the Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness at Penn State found that 62 percent of veterans remain underemployed more than six years after separation.
A 2020 GAO review found that nine of the forty-five programs had neither tracked their outcomes nor conducted any evaluation at all. When RAND researchers attempted to gather budget and performance data directly from program offices, no program officials responded to their survey.
A system that grows for decades without a shared framework, without consistent data standards, and without any accountability mechanism produces exactly what RAND found. That is the problem Senate Bill 3726, the National Veterans Strategy Act of 2026, is designed to solve.
More than ten years ago, my colleagues Mike Haynie and Nick Armstrong published what I still consider one of the most important and underappreciated pieces ever produced by the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families: A National Veterans Strategy: The Economic, Social and Security Imperative. The premise was straightforward. The nation needed a whole-of-government approach to veteran success, one that treated the outcomes of those who served as a genuine national interest, not a collection of departmental line items. It made a serious argument and turned some heads, but it never gained traction on Capitol Hill.
That was 2013. In January of this year, Senators Jerry Moran and Richard Blumenthal, the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, introduced the National Veterans Strategy Act of 2026. Since its introduction, Senators Cassidy, Blackburn, and Boozman have signed on as co-sponsors. The D’Aniello IVMF is publicly on record in support, alongside The American Legion, Vietnam Veterans of America, Paralyzed Veterans of America, AMVETS, Hire Heroes USA, and others. That kind of depth across the ecosystem does not happen by accident. The idea that took a decade to reach this point deserves more than a press release and a real conversation about what the bill does, where it could be stronger, and what the veteran-serving community needs to do right now.
The bill amends Title 38 of the U.S. Code to require the President to define veteran success and develop a National Veterans Strategy every four years. The strategy must coordinate across federal agencies and non-federal stakeholders, establish standardized metrics to assess veteran outcomes across health, mental health, economic security, education, and civic engagement, and reduce barriers to public-private partnerships.
The federal government has never formally defined veteran success, but researchers have. A 2025 peer-reviewed study published in Armed Forces and Society, authored by Karre et al., with IVMF colleagues Nick Armstrong and Rosy Maury proposed a framework for assessing transition success across multiple life domains: employment, physical health, mental health, financial stability, and social connection. The research found that veterans improved in some areas over time, stagnated in others, and actually struggled more in areas like physical health as years passed. The scholarly community has been asking this question seriously for years. The federal government never has. S. 3726 would change that.
The VA produces a strategic plan every four years, but that plan is focused on VA’s internal operations, not the broader ecosystem of programs, organizations, and employers trying to serve the same population. S. 3726 would require the President to answer a question that has somehow never been formally asked: what does it actually mean for a veteran to succeed after service, and how would we know if we got there? The metrics provision matters more than it might appear. Right now, organizations across the veteran-serving space track what they can, report what their funders ask for, and often have no way to connect their work to long-term outcomes for the people they serve.
A veteran who completes a workforce program, finds a job, builds a career, and thrives a decade later generates almost no data that connects back to the intervention that helped them. Standardized metrics do not solve everything, but they create the foundation for accountability, learning, and making better decisions about where resources go. The bill is also bipartisan in the truest sense, introduced by the chairman and ranking member of the relevant committee, not just co-signed across the aisle as a courtesy. That is meaningful, and it is not something those of us working in the field should take for granted.
Supporting this legislation does not mean pretending it is complete. In its current form, I don’t believe it is. I think we need to go further.
The RAND study makes clear that the accountability problem in the veteran-serving space runs deeper than any strategy document can fix on its own. The challenge is not just that we lack a strategy; it is that we lack the data infrastructure to know whether anything is working. There are no binding requirements that would change that. The raw ingredients for a better system exist. RAND researcher Jeffrey Wenger has identified specific federal datasets that, if linked under appropriate privacy protections, could provide exactly the kind of comprehensive picture we need. DoD and VA administrative records combined with Census earnings data, federal housing data, and unemployment insurance wage records could support longitudinal tracking of veteran outcomes across employment, health, housing, and benefit receipt from the moment of separation through civilian life. The infrastructure is largely there. What has been missing is the policy mandate to connect it systematically and use it to drive accountability. We also need longitudinal tracking at regular intervals, particularly for transitioning service members in the critical years immediately after separation. The Veterans Metrics Initiative proved that kind of research is possible and valuable. The same rigor should be applied to the most vulnerable populations, veterans enrolled in VA housing support, those who have reached out to the suicide crisis line, precisely because early data could drive early intervention and prevent a lifetime of dependency on crisis services.
A strategy without data requirements and real accountability is just a better organized version of what we already have. S. 3726 calls for standardized metrics, but it does not establish binding data collection requirements for federally funded programs. It does not extend accountability standards to nonprofit and private-sector organizations receiving federal grants and contracts. It does not create a mechanism to hold agencies accountable when they fail to report, evaluate, or act on what the data shows.
The budget reporting RAND found across those forty-five programs was so inconsistent they could not compile reliable figures. In one case, VR&E’s reported budget appeared to shift from $231 million to $1.47 billion between adjacent reporting periods, with no explanation. The discrepancy is staggering, and it points to a failure of oversight that a strategy document alone will not fix.
Here is the harder point, and I say this as someone who runs programs in this space: if we want the federal government to be held accountable to outcomes, we have to be willing to hold the full ecosystem to the same standard. That means nonprofits, too. It means organizations like the D’Aniello IVMF. Consistent data collection, shared outcome definitions, and a real mechanism for reporting longitudinal impact, not just activity. The veteran-serving community cannot credibly demand accountability from the federal government while remaining exempt from it ourselves. A complementary data and accountability framework, whether through additional provisions in S. 3726 or a companion effort, gives the National Veterans Strategy real teeth. Without it, we risk producing a plan that coordinates good intentions without changing outcomes.
The bill has momentum and the right people behind it, but ideas like this have stalled before. The veteran-serving community has a role to play that goes beyond a statement of support. It means engaging with Senate offices directly, making the public case for why this legislation matters, and being willing to say not just that we support a National Veterans Strategy, but that we support one with real accountability built in.
Think about what the current system looks like from the perspective of a service member transitioning today. They may interact with the Department of Labor for employment support, the VA for healthcare, the Department of Education for benefits. Three federal agencies, separate data systems, no shared framework. Before they walk through the doors of a nonprofit, connect with an employer, or reach out to a VSO, they are already navigating a system that has never been designed to see them whole. The 2024 RAND study found more than twenty separate federal programs providing referrals for employment alone. Twenty-two providing employment counseling. All of them operating without a common definition of what success looks like for the people they serve.
S. 3726 is a foundational piece of legislation. It will not solve everything, but it creates the framework inside which everything else gets better. The veteran-serving field has spent years building the research, the programs, and the relationships that make a strategy like this possible, supported by private and corporate philanthropy that has long invested in this community. Now we have to make sure it crosses the finish line, and that when it does, it has enough accountability built in to matter. And the stakes extend beyond the veteran community itself. How the country treats those who have served shapes whether others will choose to serve. That connection between veteran outcomes and the sustainability of the all-volunteer force makes this a national security concern, not just a policy debate.
If you work in the veteran-serving space, read the bill. Engage with your elected officials. Talk to your congressional contacts. If your organization has not yet gone on record in support, now is the time. And if you are a veteran, this legislation is about you. Not about the organizations that serve you, not about federal agencies, but about whether this country is finally willing to define what your success looks like and build a system accountable to achieving it. Read the bill. Share it. Tell your representatives it matters.
The window is open. It will not stay open indefinitely.