Following a recent testimony from an American Legion official that revealed major failings at the Veterans Affairs Baltimore office, Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., has delivered an ultimatum to the VA.
According to the Baltimore Sun, Mikulski, who oversees federal government funds as the chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, sent a letter to the Baltimore VA branch Monday expressing her disappointment in its handling of the disability claims backlog. The embattled veterans office recently came under fire after a congressional testimony from Verna Jones, a director at the American Legion, alleged that the Baltimore office was tossing out more veterans the claims they processed, the news source reported last week.
Jones also said that the office was ignoring the newly implemented fast-track program, which would speed up the claims process in order to clear out the ongoing disability backlog.
"We cannot continue to allow the Baltimore office to perform at a level that puts our commitment to veterans in jeopardy," Mikulski wrote.
The Senator is giving the Baltimore office 10 days to develop an improvement plan, and called for special leadership and processing training to be led by the Indianapolis VA office, which is one of the most successful branches in the country.
Not only is the Baltimore VA office the slowest in the nation at processing claims, but also has the highest rate of error, according to VA data.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., is leading a fight to maintain Fort McPherson's commissary, the sole military benefits store in the Greater Atlanta area that's slated to close Sep. 28.
Located just outside of Atlanta in College Park, the commissary is in danger of closing due to the construction of a future store at Dobbins Air Force Base in nearby Marietta, Ga. However, that construction has been stalled due to a lack of funding, leaving many to wonder if it will open at all.
In a letter to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Johnson urged the defense department to keep the commissary at Fort McPherson open until the one at Dobbins AFB is completed. If the commissary closes before then, Johnson wrote, thousands of servicemembers and veterans residing in the Greater Atlanta area will be left without access to a military provisions store.
A member of the House Armed Services and Judiciary committees and long-time advocate for veteran benefits, Johnson stated that cutting this "important benefit" from active-duty members and veterans undermines their service.
"These heroes have earned this benefit through service to our nation," Johnson wrote. "In these difficult economic times … it is deeply disappointing that the Department would make the decision to deprive Atlanta-area veterans of a commissary."
Although Fort McPherson stopped operating in 2011, its commissary remained open. If it closes, servicemembers and veterans will have to travel more than two hours to Fort Benning in Columbus, Ga. for the nearest military provisions store.
A congressional subcommittee has recently taken up military benefits, threatening the pay, healthcare and retirement packages of future servicemembers.
According to the Military Times, House Armed Services subcommittee chairman Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va. is in favor of cutting benefits and pay for future troops. However, he is intent on blocking base closures and cuts to armed services structures.
Wittman also insists that the potential cuts to military pay and other benefits will not affect current active-duty members.
"I think we have a moral commitment as a nation to say this is the agreement, while not legal but I think a moral agreement, under which you came into the services," Wittman said in a recent televised interview with C-SPAN Newsmakers. "I think we need to stand by that."
Wittman, who according to the news source controls roughly 40 percent of the defense budget told the television program that he believed pay cuts would be fair and not result in less dedicated troops.
Although Congress has long been against cuts to military pay, the stress of the sequester has placed a heavy burden on both the legislative branch and the military, reports Military.com. The battle over the defense budget comes to a head Oct. 1, when the military faces a $52 billion reduction in the new fiscal year.
According to the news source, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel stated last month that military benefits account for half of the defense budget.
The G.I. Bill might allocate enough tuition money for veterans to attend public universities, but an increasing number of former servicemembers are struggling to pay for room and board at out-of-state tuition prices due to a lack of benefits.
According to an analysis from News21's post-9/11 veterans project, 29 states have policies that force veterans to empty their pockets on public schools outside their state of residency. Although the G.I. Bill currently covers all tuition, fees and room and board, the exorbitant out-of-state tuition prices typically exceed the higher-education benefits.
While the easiest way to avoid these tuition costs would be to stay in your home state, that is not always an option. California, for instance, has the highest number of servicemembers in the nation, and after years of service, many military members call the Golden State home. However, the state also requires veterans to live within its border for a full year prior to qualifying for in-state tuition. Military service does not count as residency.
Thousands of veterans, including 31-year-old Brian Oller, enroll in the University of California system only to discover that they are not covered by their veteran benefits.
''I didn't know about the out-of-state tuition until the day I showed up," Oller told The Kitsap Sun.
Fortunately, veterans can alleviate their tuition costs through benefits such as the Yellow Ribbon Program, a subset of the Department of Veterans Affairs that reimburses schools with high tuition costs, the news outlet reports. A total of 21 states also have policies that eliminate residency requirements for veterans.
As the disability claims backlog continues to plague the Department of Veteran Affairs, new reports out of Baltimore unearth growing tensions between the VA and other military agencies.
While testifying before a House subcommittee this week, director of the American Legion's Veteran Affairs and Rehabilitation Division Verna Jones revealed that VA officials in Baltimore were "aggressively excluding" Maryland servicemembers from a program that would accelerate their disability claims, The Baltimore Sun reported. Jones also alleged that the American Legion, which promised last year to work with the VA faced an "obstructionist attitude" from the Baltimore office.
According to the news outlet, the Baltimore VA is not only the slowest-moving claims-processing office in the nation, taking six months to process a disability claim. By comparison, the national average for disability claims processing is four months.
A March visit to the Baltimore office revealed that the workers were spending more time throwing out veterans than processing their cases, Jones told the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs. However, regional office director Michael Scheibel said that several of these claims were thrown out because they were missing necessary documents or the veterans refused to cooperate.
The VA is currently under fire for its mishandling of disability claims, which peaked at 611,000 pending claims last March. The current number of stalled claims cases lingers around 751,000, and more than 400,000 of those claims were filed in the last 125 days, which the VA gives as a standard for correspondence, the Los Angeles Times reported this week. Though the figures remain high, they do show a slight increase for the embattled government agency.
Hundred of job-seeking veterans found a new hope in the workforce Wednesday at the "Putting America Back to Work" event in Plantation, Fla. Radio host and TV personality Geraldo Rivera made a special appearance that afternoon, handing out advice to the job hunters before broadcasting his national show live from the event.
Sponsored by local radio station WFTL-AM, the job fair mainly targeted veterans who are transitioning into civilian work, though more than half of the attendees were non-military.
The companies that attended, such as AutoNation, preferred hiring workers with military experience because of the qualities they possessed, the Sun Sentinel reported.
"They're disciplined, willing to work long hours and are looking for opportunity," said AutoNation spokesman Marc Cannon. He told the news source that the company has hired more than 200 military veterans since 2011.
Seminole Gaming, a casino company with headquarters in Hollywood, Fla., also showed its support for veterans. Seminole spokesman Gary Bitner told the news outlet that nearly 650 veterans have been hired at the company's Florida casinos since 2010.
Although the unemployment rate for veterans is continuing to decline, the numbers remain higher than the unemployment rates for the general population. The unemployment rate for all veterans in August 2013 was 7.7 percent, compared to 7.3 for the general population. However, Gulf War-era II veterans, or those who served as active- duty since 2001, have the highest unemployment rate among veterans at 10.3 percent. By comparison, 7.8 percent of World War II, Korean War and Vietnam-era are unemployed, while Gulf War-era I veterans fared better at 7.1 percent.
The increase in suicides among veterans and active-duty members over the last decade has caused many investigators to take a closer look at how military life insurance might factor into these deaths. Currently, the military provides life insurance for families of servicemembers who have committed suicide.
A possible red flag
Jami Calahan, the widow of Army Spc. James Christian Paquette, who committed suicide in 2011, told the Los Angeles Times that her husband might still be alive today if suicide was not covered under his life insurance plan.
According to the news source, Paquette visited the Ft. Wainwright, Alaska benefits office two weeks before he killed himself, asking about his plan in regard to suicide. Following his death, $400,000 was paid to his family.
Calahan told the news source that she only found out about Paquette's trip to the benefits office from investigators. Two years later, she remains angered by the fact that no one at the office recognized this as a red flag.
"He just wanted to know we would be provided for," Calahan said.
Increased rates
Until 2005, the standard military life insurance coverage was $250,000. Congress raised the coverage to $400,000 at the height of the Iraq war, when the suicide rate for servicemembers and veterans also began to rise. Unlike private insurance companies, which block suicide coverage for the first two years, coverage for suicide under military life insurance begins upon enlistment.
The current military life insurance plan covers all deaths except for execution for treason.
Although experts told the news source that life insurance is not a major factor in military suicide cases, many researchers have suggested that knowing one's family will be more than adequately covered after one's death might provide some motivation. Previous studies of private life insurance plans in the U.S. and overseas have shown that suicide rates tend to spike once restrictions on the suicide coverage are lifted, the news source reported. The studies added that the policies for those who committed suicide issued larger sums than those who died from natural causes.
Still, the delicate nature of military suicides makes the issue harder to parse, and some Defense Department members, including director of the DoD Suicide Prevention Office Jacqueline Garrick, worry that it might be unfair to leave the families of veterans and servicemembers with nothing.
"Family members should not be punished or penalized because of a medical condition of their loved one," Garrick told the news source.
An increased number of veterans who assert previous disability decisions were incorrect are filing claim appeals, The Washington Post reports.
Numbers provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs reveals a 50 percent increase in disability appeals since Obama took office in early 2009. Currently 256,061 veterans are filing appeals, and the Board of Veterans' Appeals, a subset of the VA, told the Washington Post the number of pending cases is expected to double over the next four years.
The startling number of appeals is quickly morphing into a backlog situation similar to the one already plaguing the VA – disability claims. Around 900,000 disability claims were filed with this department at its peak this year, and while the VA alleges it has cut that number by 20 percent, the backlog continues. According to the news outlet, the high profile of the disability claims controversy has overshadowed the veterans waiting on their appeals.
Veterans who file disability claims appeals are facing long waits with seemingly no end in sight. According to data on the VA website, veterans on average wait more than 1,000 days after filing an appeal through the basic administrative steps. There are ways for veterans to file disability appeals outside of the VA system – through the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims – but it takes an additional 321 days.
The Washington Post reports that the growing backlog of disability appeals is a result of a decrease in available VA resources.
A battle over spousal benefits for guard members and veterans in same-sex marriages has erupted in Texas, turning the recent shift in federal policy into even more of a bipartisan political debate.
According to the Texas Tribune, 16 Democratic lawmakers are asking the Texas National Guard to reconsider its current ban on allowing same-sex military couples and veterans from receiving spousal benefits. Military health insurance, social security assistance and identification cards are among the benefits now available to married same-sex couples, under the new directive from the Department of Defense.
The policy change comes several months after the Supreme Court issued an unprecedented ruling last June, striking down a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act that blocked federal agencies from recognizing same-sex marriage. However, the Texas National Guard is an agent of both the state and federal governments, answering to both the president and the state's governor. This dual role allowed the guard to ignore the DoD's policy change and act according to the state. Texas currently has a Family Code that bans same-sex couples from receiving marriage licenses.
Currently, Texas National Guard members can only enroll in the veterans benefits programs that are operated out of federal campuses. In their letter, the 16 lawmakers pressed Maj. Gen. John Nichols to allow state-operated institutions to grant these services.
The Texas National Guard is not the only one refusing to process claims for same-sex military spouses and veterans. NPR reported that the Mississippi National Guard will not grant spousal benefits to same-sex couples unless they apply for a marriage license on federal property.
The tuition assistance program is among the most popular benefits available to active duty servicemembers, but as the beginning of the next fiscal year inches closer, the military community is largely in the dark about what potential changes the program could see in the coming months. An estimated 380,000 troops make use of tuition assistance, and many of them are seeking answers, Military Times reports.
Earlier this year, tuition assistance was temporarily suspended as the Department of Defense grappled with spending cuts triggered by sequestration. Eventually, the program was re-instated at least until the beginning of the next fiscal year, which starts Oct. 1. Over the summer, branches have been working with the DOD, but so far the Air Force is the only one with a plan. The Air Force's new rules re-instate transition assistance for 2014 but require airmen to get permission from their supervisors to take classes.
"DOD leadership is committed to preserving a tuition assistance program that assists service members in achieving their education goals while maintaining mission readiness during this fiscally challenging time," Pentagon spokesperson Nate Christensen said.
Tuition assistance isn't the only academic program undergoing changes, as the Post-9/11 GI Bill has also seen some tweaks in recent months. Most notably, servicemembers who want to transfer their benefits to a dependent have to serve an additional four years.