Senators aim to help troubled, jobless vets - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Senators aim to help troubled, jobless vets

As the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee reviewd various legislative proposals to help veterans Wednesday, they focused on two issues:

• Why can’t veterans get jobs?

• Why can’t they access the benefits they need to make them healthy, educate them for the future, and, ultimately, keep them off the streets?

Lawmakers and veterans service organization representatives laid the blame on bureaucracy.

At the White House Office of Management and Budget, veterans make up only 1 percent of the work force, said Rick Weidman, executive director for policy and government affairs for the Vietnam Veterans of America, and he said none of those veterans has disabilities.

“Let me tell you, OMB doesn’t give a sh-- about homelessness, or else the problem would be solved,” said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C. “We can’t wait for another bureaucratic solution.”

However, according to OMB spokesperson Jean Weinberg, the office has 21 veterans — about 5 percent of its workforce — and two of them are 30 percent or more disabled. She said OMB is working with the Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development departments to end veterans’ homelessness by 2015.

And in November, President Obama signed an executive order requiring each federal agency to create a veterans employment program office to help vets through the government employment process — especially in departments that are not associated with the military, such as the Education or Transportation departments, where the numbers of veterans hired is much lower than at VA or the Defense Departments.

Burr said veterans need wrap-around services to provide the basics — mental health programs, job training, benefits and support. He was quick to add that he believes VA Secretary Eric Shinseki is passionate about his work, but still needs to break down years of VA policies that have shown more concern for budgets than veterans.

Veterans advocates also said employers nationwide have a bias against veterans, and that culture must change.

“I was astonished by how many veterans told me they leave the word ‘veteran’ off their resume,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

Raymond Jefferson, assistant secretary of veterans’ employment and training service for the Labor Department, said veterans need to be better prepared to enter the work force; that people’s perception of veterans needs to go beyond the headlines about suicides and mental health problems, especially since most veterans overcome combat stress or never encounter it at all; and that people can learn the value of hiring someone used to punctuality, working a problem until it is solved, and working with people of all backgrounds.

Murray pointed out that veterans can use Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits only at a college or university, rather than vocational schools and apprenticeship programs. Murray introduced a bill that would expand the new GI Bill to cover apprenticeships and on-the-job training.

Burr complained that even the basics seem broken. If veterans appealing VA Board of Appeals decisions mistakenly mail their claims to VA, rather than to the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, they can miss their 120-day filing deadline. That apparently happens often, Burr said.

Thomas Pamperin, associate deputy undersecretary for policy and program management at the Veterans Benefit Administration, said he has heard that it happens, but didn’t know how often. VA sends the letter back to the veteran along with a letter explaining how it should be filed, Pamperin said, but he also said the 120-day rule should be adjusted in some situations.

Veterans’ advocates, in general, were in favor of several bills that the senators had presented, including bills that would:

• Ask that veterans be pushed to the front of civilian hiring lists in places like unions and local businesses.

• Allow veterans to file claims beyond the 120-day deadline if there has been a misunderstanding

• Require VA to look at the effects of Agent Orange on Vietnam veterans’ children.

• Increase cost-of-living payments.

• Make more efforts to reach veterans in rural Appalachia.

• Waive co-payments for telehealth visits.

• Presume service-connection for sailors exposed to Agent Orange while serving on the South China Sea during Vietnam.

“VA is not funding a single Agent Orange study,” Weidman said. “Because of that, there isn’t any science for the National Institute of Medicine to review.”

The Institute of Medicine of the National Academies makes recommendations for presumption of service-connection based on reviews of scientific literature, but does not conduct research itself.

“The VA is not looking at the long-term effects of Agent Orange on veterans or their progeny,” Weidman said.

Because those claims are not automatically presumed to be service connected, the backlog keeps growing as veterans try to prove their ailments and those of their children can be traced back to exposures from 40 years ago.