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VA’s IG waves caution flag on new GI Bill

A House subcommittee was warned Thursday that many things can go wrong with the implementation of the new Post-9/11 GI Bill this summer, and also that there appears to be no quick and easy solution to the large and stubborn backlog of pending disability claims.

On the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which is supposed to take effect on Aug. 1, the Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General warns that a successful start “remains a difficult and risky challenge” because of the tight timeline and because VA is still trying to develop software to help compute payments that will vary from school to school.

The statement provided to the House appropriations subcommittee that oversees veterans’ spending says that VA plans to manually process benefits claims, with some computer help, for the first year but it may not have hired enough people, “since officials have acknowledged reducing planned hiring by 48 employees — 8 percent — due to space limitations.”

Additionally, the IG warned that VA’s hiring policy appears to be based on an annualized workload that may not take into account the peak of work tied to the beginning of the school year, and also does not account for the possibility that more veterans will decide to use the GI Bill because the current economic climate makes college an attractive option to people who cannot find jobs

On the backlog of veterans’ claims, the IG statement says reducing the pile of compensation and pension claims is VA’s “most difficult challenge”

Cutting the backlog, which ranges from 600,000 to 800,000 claims, depending on how they are counted, is difficult because new claims are arriving daily from veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, veterans with chronic progressive conditions are applying to have claims reopened because their disabilities have worsened, and older veterans are filing first-time claims

The IG is taking a closer look at claims that are at least a year old to see what has held them up, and also is looking at claims on which veterans would receive $25,000 or more in retroactive benefits to see if there are enough safeguards to prevent fraud, the statement says.

John Daigh Jr. was the IG representative at the hearing, but his testimony focused on health care issues, his area of expertise. Warnings about the GI Bill and the claims backlog were included in a written statement provided to the subcommittee that was made part of the hearing record.