VA Completes Two Year Old Claims

The VA claims that it has completed all claims that have been pending for over two years in a special project where all work was put on hold to focus on only such claims.  Now VA is moving on to claims that have been pending over one-year.  The implication is that the VA will still focus on deciding these older claims first, even if they are not ready to be decided, and at the expense of appeals.  Even though that Congress mandated in 38 U.S.C. § 5109B and 7112 that appeals have priority, VA short thrifts appeals as part of its program to end the backlog of original claims.