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TREA Washington Update for July 16, 2010

Around the country last week there was love among entertainers, athletes and politicians. There were numerous high profile marriages: Carrie Underwood/Mike Fisher; Penelope Cruz/Javier Bardem; Emily Blunt/John Krasinski, Hillary Clinton’s long time aide Huma Abedin/Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY). And more politically interesting engagements: Chelsea Clinton/Marc Mezuinsky will be married by the end of July and Bristol Palin/Levi Johnston.

But in DC itself there is no love lost. While the financial regulation bill has passed the House, Democratic leadership is furious with the White House; the Senate is angry about the House’s version of the War Supplemental and no one loves BP.

1) Still Waiting For War Supplemental To Move

2) FY2011 Military Construction/VA Appropriation Bills Approved By House And Senate Subcommittees

3) 2010 Military Times Service Members of the Year Awards Presented

4) Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Hearing On the Disability Claims Process

5) Latest National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE) Is On Time

6) Department Of Homeland Security’s Briefing To VSO’s On Balanced Workforce Strategy

7) More on VA’s New PTSD Rules

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1) Still Waiting For War Supplemental to Move-Although Secretary of Defense Gates has been saying since February that if the War Supplemental was not passed before August the Pentagon would have to start taking damaging moves (including furloughing civilian defense workers and delaying paying salaries for the active duty). It looks likely that the bill’s passage will be delayed for several more weeks. It is not clear if it will pass before the August Congressional recess. This week Senator Tom Harkins (D-IA) and the Chairman of the Senate’s Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee said that Congress is trying to find new offsets for provisions added by the House to the War Supplemental to prevent the layoffs of schoolteachers. (The White House threatened a veto of the bill because to protect the jobs it cut President Obama’s “Race to the Top” education program.)

Senator Harkin said:”“Maybe there are some different offsets or something we can use. Look, nothing’s going to happen this week. Nothing’s going to happen next week. So we’ve got time to work on it.”

In May the Senate passed (67-28) its version of the War Supplemental (HR4899) of $58.8 billion to cover funding for the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Veterans benefits and money for disasters (example: Gulf Oil Spill, floods in Tennessee, etc). The House added $22.8 billion in domestic spending (including money to stop the laying off of teachers around the country and passed it on July 1 (239-182). And that is the problem.

The Senate’s bill included approximately $40 billion for the Defense and State departments (most for operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.) $13 billion was included for expansion of veterans’ benefits (please see below), while most of the remaining funds would replenish disaster relief coffers.

On Tuesday Secretary Gates met with Senate Republicans urging quick passage of the bill. Minority Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said: “This is a true emergency. He told us clearly today that it has to be done by the end of the month or he won’t be able to pay the troops. We need to figure a way to get the funding for the troops in the field, and we need to do it as soon as possible.”

Twelve Republican Senators voted for the more targeted Supplemental and are now saying that they doubt if they will vote for the larger bill. (Several moderate Democratic Senators are voicing the same concerns.

At the same time both of the Teachers’ Union and other education groups are strongly lobbying to keep the $10 billion included in the House’s version to stop teachers from being laid off.

Presently, both the House and Senate versions of the War Supplemental contain funding to pay for the new Agent Orange presumptive illnesses (ischemic heart disease, Parkinson’s disease and chronic B cell leukemias) that we have been urging be adopted for years. The VA announced the new rules last fall but this is the money to pay for the adjudication and payment of the new cases.

P.S. DoD spending for 2011 likely to be in a continuing resolution-The time is getting shorter and shorter for Congress to pass any Appropriation Bills before the beginning of the next fiscal year (October 1, 2010) so it is likely that we will have a continuing resolution for FY2011 NDAA.

2) FY2011 Military Construction/VA Appropriation Bills Approved by House and Senate Subcommittees-On Wednesday both the House and the Senate Subcommittees passed versions of next fiscal year’s Military Construction/VA spending bills. Both bills (which do have differences) are $77.3 billion-most going to the VA. Both bills also provide advance appropriations for VA’s medical programs. ($50.6 billion in both the House and Senate versions for FY20102.) The full Senate Committee may take up their bill before the end of this week.

3) 2010 Military Times Service Members of the Year Awards Presented-On Wednesday evening TREA’s Washington Executive Director Deirdre Parke Holleman and Deputy Legislative Director Michael Saunders had the honor of attending the 2010 Military Times Service Members of the Year ceremony and meeting this year’s honorees. They are:

Soldier of the Year SSG Zackary T. Filip

Airman of the Year MSgt Rodney C. Deese, II

Marine of the Year SSgt David E. Vogt, III

Coast Guardsman of the Year LCDR Richard A. Angelet

Sailor of the Year NC1 Kylee W. Bolibrzuch

To hear what they did, including a medic running unarmed into fire to save lives during the shooting at Ft. Hood’s Soldier Readiness Processing Center; mentoring young NCOs; securing slots for the first time for Airmen to attend the German Staff NCO Academy; counseling young sailors on their careers and lives; mentoring personnel, being a Court appointed CASA volunteer to advocate for neglected and abused children, rolling out the new Marine NCO Suicide Prevention Program; and all of them participating in more charitable programs than seem possible took one’s breath away. It is a joy to know that these young men and women are serving in all our services today.

4) Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Hearing on the Disability Claims Process-TREA attended a hearing held by the Senate VA Committee on Wednesday, July 14, by the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee. The hearing was on the subject of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs claims processing initiatives, pilot projects and claims processing legislation.

Representatives from both the VA and VSO’s agreed that the 17% increase in pending claims since January 2010 and the 207,568 claims that have been pending for more than 125 days are unacceptable, and that Senator Daniel Akaka’s (D-HI) claims resolution legislation, S. 3517, is seriously flawed and will not help cut down on the backlog.

The bill attempts to improve and speed payments by developing a new standard for determining the severity of disabilities by using the same procedures currently used for Social Security disability benefits and workers’ compensation.

Joseph Violante, testifying on behalf of the Independent Budget, a coalition of American Veterans, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America and Veterans of Foreign Wars, said the proposed pilot program assumes that veteran and civilian disabilities are comparable. Basing service-connected disability ratings on civilian injuries or disabilities fails to value the history and purpose of the veterans’ disability compensation system, according to Mr. Violante.

Michael Walcoff, VA’s acting undersecretary for benefits, said while testifying that the four-year pilot project at up to 10 regional offices could hurt veterans because it “would not treat veterans equally.” Walcoff referred to the possibility that a new ratings system could result in veterans in some regions receiving higher ratings and compensation than those who aren’t part of the pilot, a possibility that rankled senators on both sides of the aisle.

Violante expressed growing frustration that the claims backlog and accuracy problems seem resistant to fixes. “It seems that no matter how much money or personnel are thrown at this problem, the backlog continues to climb ever higher,” he said. “Even as new laws are enacted, studies completed and pilot programs implemented, one is hard-pressed to find objective evidence that the benefit claims processing system today is performing better than it was five, 10 or 20 years ago.”

Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) observed that “It’s either like its back to the future, or we never left the past.”

VA officials continue to talk of “breaking the back of the backlog” by 2015, hopefully by fully implementing the Fully Developed claims process (FDC) and the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS); however, a clear plan was not presented at the hearing. Mr. Walcoff pointed to “lack of follow-through,” high personnel turnover (50% of VA employees have been hired within the last five years), and a large increase in new claims (12% in 2009 and 13% in 2010) as reasons for the continued backlog.

However, Walcoff added that with the influx of relatively new hires, VA has the ability to institute a cultural change within VA where “service to veterans, and a sense of the importance of the job that they do, becomes deeply ingrained,” thus cutting down on the unpleasant experiences that many veterans have reported after dealing with the VA.

TREA will continue to keep you informed of any VA claims process updates.

5. Latest National Intrepid Center of Excellence (NICoE) is On Time-Late last month the ribbon was cut on the new “National Intrepid Center of Excellence”. The new center is located at the Naval National Medical Center (called Bethesda by most of us, but soon to be renamed Walter Reed). Its mission is “To be the leader in advancing world-class psychological health and traumatic brain injury treatment, research and education.”

On Wednesday the Center’s Director Dr. James Kelly presented an extensive brief to the members (including TREA’s Washington Executive Director Deirdre Parke Holleman) on the timeline and the goals of the world class institution. He said that the Center will start taking patients in the fall. They will be (at least at first) wounded warriors who have suffered TBI and normally also psychological problems, who have not been successfully helped by the treatments they are presently receiving. They (and their families) will come to the Center for on average 2 weeks while the experts develop a new treatment plan to be implemented back at home or at the facilities they came from.

NICoE will have the most sophisticated Diagnostic/Rehabilitation in the world including Magnetic Resonance Imaging (3-T), Functional MRI, Diffusion Tensor Imaging, Trans-Cranial Doppler Ultrasound, Positron Emission Tomography with Computed Tomography (PET/CT), Magneto encephalography (MEG) Scanner and CAREN (Computer Assisted Rehabilitation Environment) system.

They have a staff of 108 professionals to both treat their patients, perform research, and spread what is learned across the globe.

6. Department of Homeland Security’s Briefing to VSO’s on Balanced Workforce Strategy-On Friday, July 9, TREA attended a meeting held by the Department of Homeland Security’s Chief Officer of Human Capital, Jeffrey Neal, to discuss DHS’s attempts to rebalance its workforce. Mr. Neal hopes to achieve this by “insourcing” work that has been identified as “inherently governmental” and that is currently being performed by private contractors.

In March of 2009 Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano launched the Workforce Assessment Efficiency Review Initiative, which she hoped would ensure that DHS operates in the most economical and efficient manner possible. The Efficiency Review found that:

-          There are currently 230,000 DHS employees, 188,000 civilians and 42,000 active military members in the Coast Guard

-          DHS has an estimated 210,000 private contractors working for the federal government

-          Of the 210,000 private contractors, 70,000 are currently doing work that has been categorized as “Professional Support” services that are closely related to inherently governmental work.

Mr. Neal said that the entire goal of DHS’s efforts are to find an appropriate balance between federal employees and contractors, while ensuring that this “rebalancing” does not hurt veteran-owned small businesses.

In fiscal year 2010 DHS identified 3500 contractor positions that should be “insourced” to the federal government; with only two and a half months to go until the end of the fiscal year, only 500 of those newly “federalized” positions had been filled. Mr. Neal identified three reasons for the failure to meet the department’s goals:

1) The federal hiring process is broken,

) The security clearance process is even longer and more difficult and opaque than the hiring process, and

3) Bureaucratic inertia is pushing back against the changes, by delaying or ignoring orders coming from the policy makers.

To combat these issues, Mr. Neal proposed several novel solutions:

-          A DHS-wide Veteran Direct Hire Authority, allowing veterans to bypass many of the bottlenecks that make it so hard for people to secure federal employment

-          Putting DHS recruiters at military separations sites, so veterans have a greater possibility of hearing about federal jobs that they are qualified for

-          Directly targeting disabled veterans with higher disability ratings, because these veterans have much lower labor force participation rates (ie, they have much higher unemployment rates than the average non-disabled veteran).

TREA will keep you posted on any further action in Washington on these proposals.

7) More on VA’s New PTSD Rules-Last week we told you about the Department of Veterans Affairs new proposal to loosen up the rules governing the proving of service connected PTSD. The new standard will apply to service members from all conflicts. This week the VA released a fact sheet explaining the how, when and how. Below please find the Fact Sheet.

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Reminder: We have pre-written letters that  you can email or send to your Congressional Representatives. Go to: http://www.capwiz.com/trea/issues/bills/