Vietnam veteran had to turn to Congress for answers from VA

Vietnam veteran had to turn to Congress for answers from VA
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
July 21, 2013

The most asked questions veterans have about getting justice for their service is "What do I do now?" Their stories are horrible. Faced with bills they can't pay and medical care they need, until they have a service connected disability, they run out of hope. It isn't just getting a claim approved or playing the waiting game under deadline to respond to the VA. It is trying to make sure the disability rating is what it is supposed to be. The burden is always on the veteran. It is on him/her while serving this country and afterwards should they get wounded doing it.

In a perfect world, as soon as that happens, the compensation should begin. They shouldn't have to fight for it so hard they feel as if they are begging.

We can keep complaining about the backlog of claims, but thankfully the pile is getting smaller. We can keep talking about trying to get veterans to go to the VA but when they read about things other veterans are going through, it does not seem worth it to them. Then there are cases when the VA has clearly made a mistake.

Here is one of those cases where a veteran has turned to his member of congress to get justice. It worked. The VA had made a mistake on an automatic deposit into a disabled veterans account. Even after they were contacted and asked where the payment was, no one fixed it. That is until Congressman Blumenauer's office got involved.

Intervention by Blumenauer's office keeps disabled veteran and his family off the street
The Oregonian
By Mike Francis
July 17, 2013

Donald and Lisa Graham were desperate.

He, a disabled Vietnam veteran and she, his legal caretaker with medical issues of her own, were borrowing money, hocking jewelry, pleading with their landlord and with credit card providers -- thrust into a financial crisis for reasons not of their making.

"Another month and we would have been homeless," said Donald Graham.

For years, he had received monthly disability payments from the federal Department of Veterans Affairs, which deposited the money directly into his bank account. The payments amounted to a little less than $3,000 a month -- money to which he was entitled by virtue of his hearing loss, detached retina, post-traumatic stress disorder and other issues after being wounded in Vietnam.

So she emailed the office of Earl Blumenauer, who represents Oregon's Third Congressional District, which includes their Rockwood neighborhood.

Mike Caudle, a staffer who works on constituent issues for Blumenauer, took the case. He queried the Grahams for more details, talked to VA officials and finally found the source of the problem. It seemed that the VA's payment-routing system had determined that the Graham's bank account was a bad address. Caudle isn't sure why the bank routing number stopped working after working properly for years, but it was a fairly simple matter to send a voided check from the Grahams' account to the VA's fiduciary hub in Salt Lake City.

Overnight, the VA turned on the spigot, and the Grahams got the payments they had missed -- plus substantially more. Caudle said the process of examining Graham's claim caused VA officials to realize he had been underpaid for about a year.
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The lesson is simple. If you have a problem with your claim, get your member of congress involved. If you don't get anywhere with them, then give the story to reporters so that everyone in your district knows about it. Make sure to mention that your member of congress didn't fix your problem. Congress makes the rules and funds the VA, so it is their job to make sure the VA works for you. If they see a huge issue that needs to be addressed, it makes them do something and if not, then they are not doing their jobs.