Members of Congress Shocked About VA When They Were There All Along?

VA audit: Overworked Seattle office didn’t read mail, told veterans they’d lose benefits
The News Tribune
BY ADAM ASHTON
Staff writer
October 2, 2015

Dozens of West Coast military veterans incorrectly received letters indicating they’d lose unemployment benefits after an overworked Department of Veterans Affairs office in Seattle lost track of records the veterans had submitted, according to a VA Inspector General report released this week.

The mail audit stemmed from a complaint that suggested about 1,000 pieces of unread mail from veterans were being stored indefinitely in a yellow bucket without a response from employees assigned to evaluate benefits claims.

In some cases, the complaint alleged, veterans were told they’d lose unemployment benefits because they had not returned information to the office in a timely manner even though they had met their deadlines.

The unemployment benefits are given to veterans who can’t hold a job because of a service-connected disability.

Auditors who visited the Seattle office in April did not find a bucket loaded with unread letters, as had been alleged in the complaint. However, they did talk to employees who were familiar with it and called it the “yellow bucket project.”

They also took a sampling of 132 employment questionnaires and determined that a fifth of the veterans had been sent letters indicating a reduction or cancellation of benefits, even though they’d mailed forms that should have allowed them to continue receiving money.
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WOW seems really shocking! That is until you are reminded of how long all of this has been going on.

These came out in 2012

VA office stacked 37,000 files on cabinets after running out of storage
NBC News
Tuesday Aug 14, 2012

Staff at the office began having trouble storing files in 2005 when that location, as part of a national initiative, started collecting and processing disability claims prior to a service member's discharge. The office was one of two regional centers in the country to handle such cases, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Staff tried to transfer or retire 50,000 files in recent years, as well request more storage space. The office was denied extra room because of a lack of money and few external storage options.

Veterans Wait for Benefits as Claims Pile Up
New York Times
By JAMES DAO
SEPT. 27, 2012

Numbers tell the story. Last year, veterans filed more than 1.3 million claims, double the number in 2001. Despite having added nearly 4,000 new workers since 2008, the agency did not keep pace, completing less than 80 percent of its inventory.

This year, the agency has already completed more than one million claims for the third consecutive year. Yet it is still taking about eight months to process the average claim, two months longer than a decade ago. As of Monday, 890,000 pension and compensation claims were pending.

But as you can see, that didn't end the wait for veterans.

Answers demanded after vets’ disability claims found in cabinet
San Francisco Chronicle
By Vivian Ho
April 21, 2015

One number will hang over a congressional hearing Wednesday looking into mismanagement at a U.S. Veterans Affairs regional office in Oakland: 13,184.

That’s the number of compensation and disability claims that were found in 2012, wrongfully stashed in a filing cabinet — some dating to the mid-1990s and many unprocessed. But what the number represents remains the source of fierce debate.

Back in 2008 members of Congress were "shocked" and said they were doing something about it. Oh but that was when there were 879,291 VA claims in the backlog.

The Senate version also includes an amendment that offers $50 million to speed up the processing of disability claims. It would pay for pilot programs to reduce the average waiting time -- which currently is six months -- for rulings on claims.

As of March, the VA reported 879,291 claims were in backlog from the same time last year.

Cullinan says, “This is just the first step in the VA funding process. It gives broad outlines of spending for the Department which the Appropriations Subcommittees will use to find specific amounts and tasks within the VA. The process is not complete until the president signs the Appropriations Bill.” The Federal government’s 2009 fiscal year begins Oct. 1, 2008.

Around the same time contractors were taking over processing claims, like Lockheed Martin as in this report from Army Times

And of the original 133,057 potentially eligible veterans, 8,763 died before their cases could be reviewed for retroactive payments, according to the report.

In February, the backlog was said to be “more than 39,000” cases. Jonas said she had been assured that the backlog would be cleared by April. That did not happen, according to the subcommittee report, because Lockheed Martin, the contractor hired in July 2006 to compute the complex retroactive pay awards, had difficulty making the computations fast enough to eliminate the backlog quickly. The complexity of the computations also hindered Lockheed Martin’s ability to develop software to automate the process.

Murray was asking about VA's response to suicides back in 2008

In asking Peake about what the VA is doing to reach out to struggling veterans who may not know about VA resources available to them, Murray referenced a VA study that found that Guard or Reserve members accounted for 53 percent of the veteran suicides from 2001, when the war in Afghanistan began, through the end of 2005. The study was made public yesterday in an Associated Press story.

As you can find more on your own with a simple Google search result, nothing should shock members of congress anymore since most of them have been there all along.