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Economic Stimulus for Veterans?
by Bob Cattanach
America is watching and waiting with anticipation to see the results of President Obama’s $789 billion economic stimulus package. The new Administration and the 111th Congress worked decisively in their first month on the job to address one of the most serious issues facing our country in decades.
Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Shinseki should follow our Commander in Chief’s lead by quickly delivering an “economic stimulus”
to those who have served and sacrificed, but are stuck in a morass of red tape that slows — by many months, and often, years — the delivery of the disability benefits to which our veterans are entitled. Plainly and simply, the VA owes the money – it’s just a question of getting it into disabled veterans’ hands quickly.
Currently, veterans are forced to wait, on average, anywhere from six months to more than a year, for initial decisions on their disability claims. That’s not good for them, and it’s not good for the economy — just ask the disabled veterans forced out of their homes because their families cannot afford their mortgage payments, and the mortgage owners who take the hit on these foreclosed properties.
By acting promptly, the VA could infuse millions of dollars immediately into the American economy by paying the equivalent of a 30% disability benefit payment to the hundreds of thousands of American veterans being forced to wait to receive the benefits they have earned. This “stimulus” isn’t part of new legislation. It doesn’t need to be voted on by the House and Senate.
It doesn’t need to be approved by the President. Indeed, these funds are already there, having been authorized by Congress every single year when they approve the VA’s budget.
Providing prompt financial support to our disabled veterans is an important part of the promise that this country makes to its soldiers when they join the armed forces. It’s no secret that veterans are a group that has been hit especially hard by this financial downturn.
In addition to immediately infusing cash into our economy, a veterans stimulus — in nothing more than the form of the prompt delivery of disability benefits to America’s veterans — would act as an essential financial lifeline to those veterans suffering from the disabling physical and psychological consequences of their service to their country. Foreclosures on many disabled veterans’ homes would be prevented. The suffering of families in crisis would be eased.
Moreover, this short-term infusion of millions of dollars a month into the economy should have happened long ago; the continued neglect of the VA in resolving veterans’ claims promptly is what has prevented it. It is a national disgrace that the VA’s backlog of disability claims has, in just five years, jumped from 250,000 to more than 600,000. That staggering number will only increase as the over 1.7 million troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan become eligible for benefits.
The Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) and Veterans of Modern Warfare (VMW) are urging prompt action to fix a disability claims system that the General Accountability Office and the Congress have, on numerous occasions, decried as broken. The VVA and VMW were forced to sue the VA in Washington, D.C. federal court in order to get the VA to live up both to its statutory mandate, and moral duty, to process disability claims expeditiously.
The VVA and VMW seek a 90-day deadline for decisions on initial claims for disability benefits, and for appeals of those decisions to be resolved within 180 days. The VVA and VMW have asked that these deadlines — reasonable by any assessment — be enforced by the Court, at least partially, via the provision by the VA of interim monetary payments equivalent to a disability rating of 30% to those veterans whose claims have been delayed beyond the 90-/180-day periods. Such payments would furnish a minimal lifeline of support to veterans when they most need it.
Visit www.veteransnewsroom.com to learn more about the VVA and VMW lawsuit.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Bob Cattanach is an attorney on the case from Dorsey & Whitney LLP.
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Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=4826
Posted by Veterans Today on Feb 13 2009, With 0 Reads, Filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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How about a tax free situation for totally disabled veterans? That way, no monies have to be legislated or found to pay us.
I facxed this letter to the House Committee on Veterans Affairs this morning and then mailed the same letter to my Senators and my Congressman. It makes your point on a personal level.
House Committee on Veterans Affairs 14 February 2009
335 Cannon House Office Building
Washington D.C. 20515
Sirs:
I am a totally disabled veteran (Individually Unemployable). I believe that a realistic increase in VA compensation rates should be made to bring the standard of living of disabled veterans in line with that which they would have enjoyed had they not suffered their service-connected disabilities.
The Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission (VDBC) issued its report, Honoring the Call to Duty: Veterans’ Disability Benefits in the 21st Century, which identified eight principles as a guide to the development and delivery of future benefits for veterans and their families. One principle is that benefits and services should be provided that collectively compensate for the consequence of service-connected disability on the average impairment of earnings capacity, the ability to engage in usual life activities, and quality of life.
The current statutory basis for disability payments based on the VA Schedule for Rating Disabilities is an average impairment of earning capacity. Yet, service-connected disabilities can impede veterans from engaging in usual life activities and can impair their quality of life. Consequently, the VDBC recommended increasing the compensation rates up to 25 percent as an interim and baseline future benefit for loss of quality of life pending development and implementation of a quality of life measure in the VA Rating Schedule. In particular, the measure should take into account the quality of life and other non-work related effects of severe disabilities on veterans and family members.
The VDBC consulted with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) and Center for Naval Analyses Corporation (CNAC) on the loss of quality of life for service-connected disabled veterans. A chapter in the IOM Medical Evaluation Committee report, A 21st Century System for Evaluating Veterans for Disability Benefits, is entirely dedicated to addressing impairment, disability and quality of life, and recommended compensating disabled veterans for three consequences of service-connected injuries and disease: work disability, loss of ability to engage in usual life activities other than work, and loss in quality of life. The CNAC analysis of the VA disability compensation system found that the program does provide for reasonable earnings adjustments for most disabling conditions.
Additionally, recommendations contained in the report by the President’s Commission on the Care for America’s Returning Wounded Warriors, includes quality of life payments to compensate for permanent losses of various kinds, as well as compensation for loss of earning capacity. While the DAV disagrees with this Commission’s recommendation for a new compensation structure for the newest generation of disabled veterans that would eventually eliminate VA earnings loss payments and shift to Social Security, it is clear that current VA disability compensation does not adequately provide for the full effects of service-connected disabilities.
Congress should increase VA disability compensation to include compensation for the loss of quality of life resulting from service-connected disabilities.
If Congress cannot do this, then can we totally disabled veterans see a change in the Tax Code which allows us to have tax free income up to a maximum of $125,000 dollars a year? That would apply to both 100% scheduler and Totally Disabled Individually Unemployable disabled veterans alike. Thank you for considering this request for legislation.
Sincerely,
I am disappointed in our Congress and Senate Members who have served in Combat Situations and just sit back and do nothing to help those of us have a better quality of life It seems they do not want to help us financially. If Congress would just do right by its Disabled Veterans like working with The Disabled American Veterans Leadership maybe what really needs to get done will get done. The Veterans Disability Commission knows what is going on not Mr. Dole or Ms. Shalla. We need help while we are alive not after we are dead. Help us as Agent Orange is killing us off 1 by 1.
Six months to a year to process a claim my foot I have already been waiting for over 15 months for my claims to go through and they are still being worked on.
From my understanding they have reached the raters desk and now the rater has ordered another round of QTC exams and for what to create more delays that is what QTC is for more delays.
I have already seen an examiner twice already and now I have to see them again what a bunch of bull I have had it with the VA’s nonesense granted that they have 800,000+ claims that are backlogged but let’s put it all into perspective the private for profit health industry processes more then thirty million health claims a year…… need I say more.
The VA is a broken down insitution that needs a major overhaul plain and simple it is time to face the facts people that no one and I mean nobody cares about any vets in this country and that is the bottom line.
I am in Alaska, and the wait up here is 15 to 21 months. they took 14 months to get my partial claim, which was not this primary issue i went in for. And now i am waiting still another 8 months from htat date to get the Depentant retro and the rest of the claim. it has been “pending” or as i say, sluff under the pile for 6 months, because they are back logged or over worked and understaffed.
I have found that all of the service organisations have been hog tied and can hardly get anything moved forward, let alone expedited. and being in Alaska we are so icolated that our closest point of upper staffing of the VA is out of state.
IFIND IT TRULY AMAZING THAT OUR GOVERNMENT WILL GIVE THE BANKING INDUSTRY MILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, OUR AUTO INDUSTRY MILLIONS AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS, BUT THE VETERANS OF THIS COUNTRY WHO SPENT MUCH TIME AWAY FROM THEIR FAMILIES DEFENDING THIS COUNTRY AND FIGHTING FOR EVERYONE’S INDEPENDENCE AND RIGHTS ARE PUSHED TO THE SIDE AND GIVEN ABSOLUTLEY NOTHING. ANYTHING THAT THEY DO GET COMES FROM THEM OR THEIR FAMILIES CONSTENTLY BEING ON THE PHONE WITH GOVERNMENT AGENCIES AND SPECNING ENDLESS TIMES WRITING EMAILS OR REGULAR MAILS AND WAITING AND WAITING AND WAITING AND STILL USUALLY GETTING NOTHING IN RETURN.
THIS COUNTRY, MAINLY THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD WAKE UP AND ACKNOWLEDGE WHO DESERVES THE ASSISTANCE AND HELP. IT’S THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO PRESERVED, PROTECTED AND DEFENDED THIS COUNTRY, NOT THE BIGWIGS WHO SAT BEHIND A DESK AND SWINDLED EVERYONE IN THIS COUNTRY AND MADE BILLIOMS AND BILLIONS OFF OF THIS COUNTRY!