Bachmann plan would cut veterans benefits

[Bfgrn]

The tea party is 'for the people'...yea right!

Tea party favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has unveiled a plan for cutting $400 billion in federal spending that includes freezing Veterans Affairs Department health care spending and cutting veterans’ disability benefits.

Her proposed VA budget cuts would account for $4.5 billion of the savings included in the plan, posted on her official House of Representatives website.

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, said cutting veterans’ health care spending is an ill-advised move at a time when the number of veterans continues to grow as troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan. Sullivan said he finds it difficult to see how VA could freeze health care costs without hurting veterans.

“It is really astonishing to see this,” he said.

Bachmann plan would cut veterans benefits - Air Force Times

Disabled Veterans Decry Wrongheaded, ‘Heartless’ Budget Cuts

WASHINGTON -- If Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) wanted to make a name for herself by proposing to cut funding for veterans health care and disability compensation, she has succeeded. “Such an ill-advised proposal is nothing short of heartless,” according to Disabled American Veterans Washington Headquarters Executive Director David W. Gorman.

“It is unconscionable that while our nation is at war someone would even think of forcing our wounded warriors to sacrifice even more than they already have,” Gorman said. “Their injuries and disabilities were the result of their service to the nation, and our nation must not shirk its responsibilities toward them. How do you tell a veteran who has lost a limb that he or she has not sacrificed enough? Yet Rep. Bachmann wants to do just that.”

SunHerald.com

It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.
Albert Camus

 

[waltky]

Granny says dey oughta hang dem politicians...

Budget cuts may hit homeless vets
March 1, 2011 WASHINGTON -- Among the more controversial GOP budget cut proposals is an effort to kill $75 million that's slated to house homeless veterans.

It's the cut that Democrats like to point to when they accuse of Republicans of going too far. And Democrats have even started to make it a campaign issue. Republicans are quick to point out that the cuts won't impact veterans who were homeless but now receive housing vouchers. Vouchers give homeless veterans a place to live for a year and can be renewed annually, assuming federal funding is available. The cuts would hurt some 11,000 homeless veterans who have already qualified for housing this year but have yet to receive vouchers. "It's really unnecessarily prolonging homelessness for another year," said John Driscoll, president of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans in Washington.

The cut is among hundreds tucked into the spending bill that House Republicans passed last week that slashed $61 billion in the remaining six months of the 2011 fiscal year. Republicans say they're targeting the housing subsidy program because it's too slow. While 30,000 vouchers have been issued to veterans, they point to the 11,000 yet to be issued. Republicans say they're just zeroing out unused vouchers. "Until all of the vouchers are used, there is no point in providing additional vouchers that will sit unused," said Jennifer Hing, spokeswoman for the House Appropriations Committee.

But it generally takes 8 months, start to finish, to get a veteran into housing, according to Driscoll. He said that lawmakers who want to cut program funding misunderstand the process. Driscoll said that homeless veterans often suffer from mental health and substance abuse problems. Studies have shown they remain chronically homeless, unless the federal government steps up to put a roof over their heads. That's why housing homeless veterans is a top priority for President Obama, who has called for more vouchers with a goal of ending veteran homelessness in 5 years. The voucher program was among the few that the White House highlighted for more funding in 2012. The administration estimates that on a single night in January 2009, 75,600 veterans were homeless. At the current funding levels, federal officials are nearly halfway to ending veteran homelessness.

Congressional Democrats say they'll fight for the program to house homeless veterans. During the budget cut debate, Rep. Bob Filner of California tried to blunt the cut but was unsuccessful. Democrats are also using the issue as fodder for the 2012 elections. Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched a new series of automated calls to voters in the home districts of 7 Republicans who supported the bill. In the so-called "robo-calls," a voice compares housing subsidies for homeless veterans to tax breaks for the oil and gas sector, which the GOP tends to support. "The DCCC will continue going district by district to hold House Republicans accountable for forcing homeless veterans to sleep in the streets," said Jesse Ferguson of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Source

 

[waltky]

Those who have served our country deserve better...

Technicality Keeps Thousands of Post-9/11 Vets from VA Benefits
Nov 14, 2015 | Nearly 30,000 post-9/11 combat veterans -- some of whom have been waiting for years -- are still without Department of Veterans Affairs health benefits due to a technicality more than three months after a whistleblower brought the issue to light.

VA officials apologized but say they do not have the authority to automatically enroll the veterans, even though they filled out the proper paperwork and are guaranteed at least five years of enhanced care by law. At issue is an optional means test, which the veterans in question did not fill out. The free care they are guaranteed by a 2008 law does not require them to fill out the means test, but without that information, their applications are automatically placed into "pending" status. When VA program specialist Scott Davis first reported the issue in August, 35,000 combat veterans were on the pending list, half of whom had waited five years or more to be enrolled.

The VA did not start reaching out to the veterans until Davis publically reported the problem, and now says there are about 29,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in pending status. Benita Miller, director of the VA's Health Eligibility Center, said the VA had enrolled 9,000 servicemembers since August. (Roughly 3,000 new veterans applied in that time.) Miller said her office is continuing to reach out to veterans by telephone and by mail. The department has apologized for the problem but also said the system is working as designed and that the vets need to specifically opt out of the means test to move forward, to show that they accept the potential of co-pays. VA Secretary Bob McDonald has repeated the assertion that he does not have the authority to change a veterans enrollment status.

Davis, who handles the enrollment applications, refutes the VA claim that the department cannot automatically enroll the veterans and says they have in fact done just that in the past. "Those combat veterans are clearly applying for health care; we have always just enrolled the people without asking questions," he said. McDonald "has a moral, legal and ethical responsibility to enroll these veterans." When asked by a Stars and Stripes reporter whether VA lawyers had specifically given guidance that the department could not enroll the veterans, Miller demurred. "We didn't have the guidance to make an agreement to enroll them in VA health care," she said in a phone interview with Stars and Stripes.

The House Committee on Veterans Affairs requested that the VA provide information by Friday about the combat veterans on the pending list, including the list of veterans who may have died while their enrollments were still pending, but they did not receive the information, according to a committee official. "The law hasn't required a means test from recent combat veterans since 2008, yet VA still hasn't come up with an efficient way to enroll these veterans in its health care system without one," committee Chairman Rep. Jeff Miller said in a statement. "This is either blatant incompetence or cold-hearted indifference." Benita Miller said her team was still compiling the data and did not have statistics on the number of veterans who may have died while awaiting enrollment.

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[Stephanie]

for Starters lets deal with the first lie. Bachmann is not from the Tea Party. she has been in office way before the Tea party came around. so right off you aren't to be taken serious.

And, We haven't seen any Democrat submit anything asking for more be given to our vets. Usually you all are wailing how we SPEND too much on the military. so there's your second strike. so you all only care when you can use it to bludgeon someone with. so go call her and bitch to her about it.

 

[whitehall]

Do idiotic left wing "alleged" Veteran affairs proponents think that the Barry Hussein administration is the standard by which V.A.treatment should be judged? Only a moron would try to accuse republicans of ,yada yada bad water and reduction of V.A. benefits when we saw the worst possible treatment of Vets under the Hussein administration.

 

[Stephanie]

Do idiotic left wing "alleged" Veteran affairs proponents think that the Barry Hussein administration is the standard by which V.A.treatment should be judged? Only a moron would try to accuse republicans of ,yada yada bad water and reduction of V.A. benefits when we saw the worst possible treatment of Vets under the Hussein administration.

It's the double standards and dirty politics usual from the Democrats. What are they going to run on. How under Obama our Vets were treated the shoddiest ever?