The number of backlogged benefit claims filed with the Veterans Benefits Administration peaked at the start of President Barack Obama's second term — with more than 600,000 claims pending for more than 125 days as of March 2013.

In his 2008 campaign, Obama pledged to reduce this backlog, and until now we rated this pledge Promise Broken.

In the past year, the claims backlog has reached a new record, but this time a record low. Since August 2015, the number of benefit claims awaiting a decision for more than 125 days has stayed below 100,000, which is the lowest in department history.

As of Dec. 24, 2016, there are 92,226 such claims pending. That's an 84 percent drop from the March 2013 peak.

The drop can be attributed to the agency's 2011 Transformation Plan, which sought to modernize and streamline the claims processing system, wrote Allison Hickey, the former under secretary for benefits for the Veterans Affairs Department, in an August 2015 blog post. The agency, for example, moved from a paper-based system to an automated one.

Hickey also said that as of August 2015, veterans with pending claims were waiting on average 105 days, down from 282 days during the March 2013 peak.

While this is one measure of success for the VA, it's important to note that the reduction of the backlog has not necessarily resulted in an increase in accuracy, said Dan Nagin, faculty director of Harvard Law School's Veterans Law and Disability Benefits Clinic.

"While VA has substantially reduced the backlog of initial disability claims, questions remain about whether accuracy has been sacrificed in the name of speed," Nagin said. "At present, even by VA's own measuring stick, more than one in 10 initial claims decisions contains an error."

Additionally, the backlog for appealing a claim is also getting lengthier, he said.

It's also worth noting that the VA set a goal for itself to reduce the claims backlog to zero by the end of 2015, and it did not meet that goal.

There's still a ways to go in getting the VA's disability benefits claims backlog to a manageable amount. But there has been significant improvement over the course of Obama's second term, so we rate this promise a Compromise.