Congress Collective Amnesia on Veterans Affairs

Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
May 31, 2012

Congress is suffering from collective amnesia regarding the plight of our veterans.

Fits of social amnesia after difficult or trying periods can sometimes cover up the past, and fading memories can actually make mythologies transcend by keeping them "impervious to challenge"

Veterans are with us forever but politicians come and go. As you will read, when heads of the VA have gone, nothing really changed. Sure money was spent but it was never enough to cover the number of veterans politicians were creating by starting wars. With WWII it seemed as if they got their act together and veterans were held in such high regard, they didn't even try to mess with them, or at least that is what they wanted us to think. They did it with Korea and Vietnam just as they did it with the Gulf War. They repeated it with Afghanistan and Iraq. Praise the veterans during election time then shove them into the ditch right afterwards.

It is just another round of politicians pretending to care because of the latest scandal but there have been oh so many more.

Anthony Principi Secretary of Veterans Affairs from 2001-2005 stepped up to complain about VA problems and offered his thoughts on how to fix it.

As a former secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, I am deeply troubled by reports involving the falsification of records to conceal waiting times for veterans at VA hospitals—with at least 40 of them dying while awaiting treatment. A preliminary review by the VA inspector general, released Wednesday, found that at least 1,700 veterans waiting for care at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs medical facility were not even on a wait list.

He replace Hershel W. Gober, acting Secretary of Department of Veterans Affairs from 2000-2001, replaced Togo West (1998-2000) and this is facinating since part of the article on Wiki contains a flashback military sexual assault survivors will find interesting.

West held several posts in the administration of Jimmy Carter: General Counsel of the Navy (1977–1979), Special Assistant to the Secretary and to the Deputy Secretary of Defense (1979), and General Counsel of the Department of Defense (1980–1981). As the Secretary of the Army, West weighed in on the Aberdeen scandal, prompting stricter enforcement and investigation into the Army's sexual harassment policies.

President Clinton's appointment to head the VA was Jesse Brown, a disabled Vietnam veteran. The number of veterans receiving healthcare benefits went from 2 million in 1993 to over 3.7 million in 2000. The budget went from $36 billion to $48 billion for 2001. Sexual trauma counselors in Vet Centers was a new division in National Center for PTSD.

While I hate to slam Jon Stewart on his reporting on the records the VA and DOD were supposed to be getting together, that also started under President Clinton. "The Government Computer Based Patient Record Framework Program originated as a joint VA and Department of Defense (DOD) response to satisfy a 1997 presidential directive to create a comprehensive, lifelong medical record for all service personnel." They also started "Virtual VA" as a way of providing a paperless way to file claims.

Here is another flashback U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims

In the mid-1980s, 75 million U.S. citizens—one-third of the population of the United States—were eligible for some form of veterans' benefits. Then, as in the early 2000s, war veterans and their dependents and survivors could apply to one of the 58 regional offices of the veterans administration (VA) for disability, loan eligibility, education, and other benefits. In an average year in the 1980s, nearly 800,000 disability claims were filed, about half of which were granted by the regional offices. Before the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims was created, people whose claims were turned down had limited recourse, which did not include review by a court of law. If a regional office of the VA denied a claim, the claimant could appeal that decision within the VA to the BVA. If the BVA denied the appeal—which it did in about 75 percent of cases—the claimant had just one remaining option: to reopen the claim on the basis of new and material evidence and begin the process over again.

In July 1999 the court issued a decision which held that the veterans affairs department (VA) did not have a duty to assist veterans in developing their claims unless those claims were "well-grounded." In response Congress passed the Veterans Claims Assistance Act (VCAA) of 2000 (Pub.L. 106-475, Nov. 9, 2000, 114 Stat. 2096). Signed into law by President bill clinton in November 2000, the act eliminated the "well-grounded" language and stated that the VA was required to provide assistance in developing claims unless there was no reasonable possibility that VA aid would help the veteran's claim.

The Bush Administration walked into a VA claim backlog.

All this didn't happen overnight. Gregg Carlstrom reported for Federal Times that "Poor planning by agency leaders and underfunding by Congress created these debilitating backlogs that may take years to resolve, according to federal officials, legislators and watchdog groups. At the start of the Bush administration in 2001, VA had more than 400,000 pending claims for disability ratings, which determine a service-disabled veteran’s employability and disability benefits. The department made progress reducing that number: By 2003, the backlog was down to around 250,000."

Too bad Principi didn't have many thoughts when he had the job. Nicholson took over his chair and got blamed for most of what he walked into before he ended up letting things get even worse.

Jim Nicholson 2005-2007 Resigned

VA chief Jim Nicholson resigned in 2007. Most of us have seen few changes since he left office. This is the mess we were in back then. Nicholson walked into what Principi left behind.

"Within months of taking office at the VA, Nicholson had to deal with a $1 billion shortfall at the agency, requiring the administration to appeal to Congress for emergency spending.

Republicans blamed the shortfall on unexpected health care demands from veterans. But Democrats said it was an example of what they said was the administration's inadequate planning for the war in Iraq.

Nicholson came under harsh criticism in Congress after it was revealed in May 2006 that VA computer files with personal data, including Social Security numbers, for 26.5 million veterans and military troops, were missing."

"As a veteran, I am outraged. Frankly I'm mad as hell," Nicholson said, pledging strong action against those responsible. "I can't explain the lapses of judgment on the behalf of my people. We will stay focused on these problems until we get them fixed."

Why did people want him to resign?

Nicholson Underestimated Funding for Veterans' Health Care by at Least One Billion Dollars. "House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) and Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson, who had both argued that the department could get through this year without additional cash, held a joint news conference to announce "immediate action" to fill a fiscal 2005 shortfall of at least $1 billion, and another shortfall of at least $1.5 billion in the House-passed appropriation for VA health care in fiscal 2006. Nicholson told lawmakers Tuesday that the administration had vastly underestimated the number of service personnel returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who would seek VA medical treatment." (Washington Post, 6/30/05)

Nicholson Repeatedly and Incorrectly Assured Congress that VA had Adequate Funds for Veterans' Health Care. An April 5 letter written by Nicholson to the Senate stated: "I can assure you that VA does not need emergency supplemental funds in FY2005 to continue to provide timely, quality service that is always our goal." (Washington Post, 6/24/05)

American Legion Commander: ‘I Blame Bush And Congress’ For Veterans Cuts President Bush spoke to the American Legion today, claiming that “support of our veterans has been a high priority in my administration,” and that one of his priorities is “making sure that our veterans have got good, decent, quality healthcare.”

President Bush should save his rhetoric. In an interview with National Public Radio, even American Legion National Commander Paul Morin, a regular political ally of the White House, pointed out that Bush has consistently skimped on veterans funding. “We are not pleased with the budget for the military and for the VA hospitals for our veterans,” Morin said. “I blame the President and Congress for insufficient funding of the VA health care system.”

And this from the GAO

For fiscal year 2005, Congress appropriated $31.5 billion for all of VA's medical programs, and VA provided medical care to about 5 million veterans. During fiscal year 2005, the President requested a $975 million supplemental request for that fiscal year and a $1.977 billion amendment to the President's budget request for fiscal year 2006. In congressional testimonies in the summer of 2005, VA stated that its actuarial model understated growth in patient workload and services and the resources required to provide these services.

"An unrealistic assumption, errors in estimation, and insufficient data were key factors in VA's budget formulation process that contributed to the requests for additional funding. According to VA, an unrealistic assumption about the speed with which VA could implement a policy to reduce nursing home patient workload in VA-operated nursing homes for fiscal year 2005 led to a need for additional funds. VA officials told us that errors in estimating the effect of a nursing home policy to reduce workload in all three of its nursing home settings--VA-operated nursing homes, community nursing homes, and state veterans' nursing homes--accounted for a request for additional funding for fiscal year 2006. VA officials said that the error resulted from calculations being made in haste during the OMB appeal process. Finally, VA officials told us that insufficient data on certain activities contributed to the requests for additional funds for both years. For example, inadequate data on veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in an underestimate in the initial funding request.

In other words the GAO found they did not plan for the return of wounded and disabled veterans from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Joe Galloway wrote a great piece on what all of this meant. In "At long last sire, have you left no sense of decency?" in a piece on McClatchy

Nicholson, on White House orders, blocked four congressional attempts to streamline the VA's handling of a disgraceful six-month backlog in veterans benefit claims — a backlog that's only grown worse in subsequent years.

With its eyes on maintaining public support for Bush's war in Iraq, and not on those it sent to fight it, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's Pentagon pressured the Army and Marines to discharge their wounded as fast as possible with the lowest possible disability ratings.

As a result, those who had borne the battle were abandoned to the dysfunctional VA healthcare system, in which it takes six months just to get into the system and a month or more to get a doctor's appointment.

The Bush administration grossly underestimated the flood of post-traumatic stress disorder cases coming home from combat and, when confronted with the reality of more than 320,000 new veterans suffering from PTSD, major depression and TBI, it did little or nothing to expedite their care. In fact, of the 84,000 new veterans diagnosed with PTSD, only half, or 42,000 have managed to get their disability claims approved by the VA.

Some veterans committed suicide while they awaited medical and financial help, itself evidence of the abject and disgraceful failure of the system, and the nation and the administration of George W. Bush. The VA responded by understating the numbers of veterans' suicides and then covering it up. Only after a veterans group sued it did the VA establish a suicide hotline. A heckuva job.

President Bush proposed a half-percent increase in the VA budget for fiscal 2006 after his own appointees at the agency told Congress that they needed a 13 percent increase to meet — barely — the urgent needs for medical and mental health care for the wounded coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 2007, Bush threatened to veto a bill to boost VA spending by 10 percent, or $3.2 billion. He said that was too expensive and countered with an offer of 2 percent. After Congress passed the bill almost unanimously, Republicans included, The Decider decided to swallow it and signed the bill.

James Peake 2007-2009 walked into this.

The VA's backlog is between 400,000 and 600,000 claims, with delays of 177 days. Nicholson in May pledged to cut that time to 145 days, but he has made little headway with thousands of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan returning home.

VA staff charged $2.6 billion to their government credit cards
Investigators Review VA Credit Charges
By HOPE YEN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Veterans Affairs employees last year racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in government credit-card bills at casino and luxury hotels, movie theaters and high-end retailers such as Sharper Image and Franklin Covey — and government auditors are investigating, citing past spending abuses.

All told, VA staff charged $2.6 billion to their government credit cards.

The Associated Press, through a Freedom of Information request, obtained the VA list of 3.1 million purchases made in the 2007 budget year. The list offers a detailed look into the everyday spending at the government's second largest department.

So yet again we have yet another head of the VA saying they "regret" but no one in congress seems to be able to admit the same thing even though they are in charge or who has been in charge all along. Had they fixed any of this before then Veterans for Common Sense would not have had to file a lawsuit because veterans were committing suicide and the VA was covering it up in 2008!