Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Reading the Department of Veterans Affairs Spending Record

USAspending.gov records show Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with $70.3B in FY2024 federal contract obligations (award types A–D) against $524.2B in total budget authority. These two numbers answer different questions: budget authority is the legal ceiling Congress granted the agency across all of its spending, while contract obligations are the binding commitments made specifically through procurement contracts. Most agencies obligate far more through grants and direct payments than through contracts, so contract obligations are typically a fraction of total budget authority. Agency code 036 is the unique Treasury Account Symbol prefix used to tie every transaction on this page back to the originating appropriation.

The top-contractors breakdown below, led by Optum Public Sector Solutions, Inc., Mckesson Corporation, Triwest Healthcare Alliance Corp reflects prime awards only, not subcontractor flow-down. A prime contractor may subcontract 60–80% of a task order's value to specialist firms that never appear in agency-level summaries. For defense, IT modernization, and professional-services agencies, this means the apparent concentration of awards among large primes understates the true diversity of firms performing the work. These figures cover fiscal year 2024 contract obligations as reported to USAspending.gov.

For oversight analysts, the practical layer under $70.3B is traceability: every dollar ties back to a specific Procurement Instrument Identifier (PIID) on a specific contract, which in turn links to a Statement of Work, a funding appropriation, and a responsible contracting officer. When the obligations total looks anomalous, unusually large year-end spikes, concentration in a single contractor, or divergence from mission scope, the underlying PIIDs on USAspending.gov expose the transactions that generated the total. The figures on this page are aggregates; the story is in the individual awards.