Veterans Disability Benefits Commission Update!

[Gimpy]

The Veterans? Disability Benefits Commission, controversial since it was conceived in fall 2003, has held its first three meetings now, one in May, the second early June and now the third one on July 22, 2005.

The only 'minutes' of the meetings avaible at this time are from the first meeting on May 9 and 10th and dealt mainly with testimony from several military veterans service organizations and their concerns about the commissions intended 'purpose'.

Formation of the commission was brokered by the current Administration when it agreed to the House Republican plan to relax the century-old ban on concurrent receipt of military retirement and disability compensation.

Advocates for disabled veterans look upon the 13-member bipartisan panel with suspicion, viewing it as linked to the proposal in 2003 to limit the eligibility for disability pay of future veterans to those whose injuries or illnesses result from performance of duty. Current disabilities are deemed service-connected, and therefore compensable, if the injury or illness occurred while the member is on active duty.

Veterans associations were so outraged by the original proposal that it was quickly withdrawn. Instead, Congress and the White House agreed to a limited lift of the ban?for those most seriously disabled only?and to create a commission, whose stated purpose is to review current disability programs and recommend reforms if deemed necessary.

Below is a 'Position Statement' from the DAV with their concerns regarding the Commissions' supposed 'intent'.

####START####


DISABLED AMERICAN VETERANS

Building Better Lives for America's Disabled Veterans
__________________________________________________ __

Position Statement:


The Erosion of Veterans Benefits and Services:
July 2005

Congress was unable to enact fiscal year (FY) 2003 appropriations before the beginning of the fiscal year on October 1, 2002. After the series of continuing resolutions that began in September 2002 and continued into February 2003 to keep the government running, Congress enacted a single bill consolidating the 11 remaining FY 2003 appropriations bills, and the President signed it into law on February 20, well into the second quarter of the fiscal year. Until its enactment, VA was funded at the FY 2002 spending level.


As we entered March 2003, war with Iraq was all but imminent. While the politicians were making patriotic speeches and offering high praise for America?s military, some were preparing their own assault on veterans? programs. On March 12, 2003, the House Budget Committee debated its budget resolution for FY 2004.

To lower government spending to accommodate the loss of revenue from the President?s proposed $726 billion tax cut, which the Congressional Budget Office projected would result in $1.8 trillion in budget deficits over the next 10 years, Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) presented a draft resolution that included increases in spending on defense and homeland security but called for across-the-board cuts in all domestic spending other than Social Security and unemployment programs.

Under the Nussle plan, veterans? programs would have been cut approximately $25 billion over the next 10 years. To carry out these cuts, the Veterans? Affairs Committee would be required to make changes in the laws to reduce or eliminate programs. During 14 hours of debate on the resolution, the Budget Committee, voting strictly along party lines, defeated by a vote of 22 to 19 an amendment offered by Representative Darlene Hooley (D-Oreg.) to restore funding to veterans? programs.

Again by a vote strictly along party lines, the Committee defeated by a vote of 22 to 17 an amendment offered by Representative Chet Edwards (D-Tex.) that would have included funding to pay for legislation to authorize concurrent receipt of military retired pay and disability compensation. With cuts in veterans? programs included, 24 members of the Budget Committee voted for the resolution, and 19 voted against it.


The Committee therefore reported the resolution on March 17 for a vote by the entire House. This disheartening betrayal of America's veterans on the eve of the war with Iraq, and a major veterans grassroots campaign to defeat it, set the stage for the dramatic showdown that followed between the congressional leadership and veterans? supporters in Congress.


Then, House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) along with Michael Bilirakis (R-Fla.), Rob Simmons (R-Conn.), Charles W. 'Chip' Pickering, Jr. (R-Miss.), Walter Jones (R-N.C.), and Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.) refused to bend to strong coercion by the House leadership to vote for the resolution with cuts in veterans' programs included. Without their votes, the House leadership could not muster a majority, and the Nussle budget plan, with the tax cuts, was doomed.

Against extreme pressure from their own leadership and the Budget Committee Chairman, Representative Smith, and this handful of lawmakers forced a concession from Budget Committee Chairman Nussle not to cut veterans' programs. Under House rules, the budget resolution could not be amended at that point, but it faced certain defeat on the House floor if the demands of these holdouts were not met.

Chairman Nussle committed, in exchange for their votes, to accept the Senate's budget for veterans' programs when the Senate and House met in conference to work out the differences between their two versions of the resolution. The Senate budget resolution made no cuts in veterans' mandatory programs or discretionary programs and called for $1.8 billion above the President's budget request for discretionary spending, primarily funding veterans' medical care.

With the votes of these six holdouts, the House passed its budget resolution on March 21, 2003, by a narrow margin of 215 to 212 with the language calling for the cuts still included but with the promise of the House Budget Committee Chairman to abide by the Senate provisions rather than those in the resolution just passed by the House. The first battles of the war with Iraq had just begun the day before.


Again for fiscal year 2004, Congress was unable to timely pass an appropriations bill. Finally, in late January 2004, Congress passed an appropriations bill containing funding for VA.

After decades of inaction and sidestepping the issue of concurrent receipt of military retired pay and disability compensation, the House leadership came under ever-increasing pressure to enact legislation to authorize it in late 2003. The leadership was not to come forward with meaningful legislation without first trying to find a way to make veterans themselves pay for the costs of concurrent receipt by taking the money from them elsewhere.

The leadership brazenly schemed to rip at the heart of veterans' benefits, the disability compensation program. Under current law, veterans are compensated for disabilities incurred or aggravated during military service unless due to misconduct, alcohol or drug abuse, or incurred during an unauthorized absence. Members of the Armed Forces serve under extraordinary physical and mental stress; serve in jungles, deserts, and other extremes of climate; serve in third-world countries where tropical diseases are endemic; and are exposed to all manner of dangers and hazardous substances. The military environment subjects servicemembers to stresses and trauma not common in civilian occupations. Therefore disabilities that arise or are aggravated during service are presumed to have been incurred 'in the line of duty' under the law.


The ill-advised plan of the House leadership was to change the law to authorize service connection only for disabilities proven to have been directly caused by performing the activities of a servicemember's particular military occupation. Injuries sustained during mealtimes and off-duty hours, for example, would not be service connected. Mental disorders and diseases would not be service connected unless the member could prove that performing his or her military job functions, and nothing else, caused the mental disorder or disease.

Disabilities from the stress of the general military environment or military activities not strictly a part of a member's military occupation would not be service connected. Infectious diseases incurred during service could not be service connected unless the member could prove the infection was incurred while performing activities of his or her military occupation. For example, a member who contracted malaria while serving in a remote jungle location could not be awarded service connection unless the member could prove the mosquito bite occurred while performing job functions, as opposed to while resting, eating, or sleeping.

VA projected that approximately two-thirds of the veterans who have service-connected disabilities under current law would not be eligible under these proposed more restrictive criteria.

The veterans' community, and the DAV in particular, reacted strongly to this unconscionable scheme. To say the House leadership stirred up a hornet's nest would be a gross understatement. Veterans were deeply angered at this willingness of some in Congress to abandon our Nation's most fundamental obligation, to care for those disabled in the service of their country, to let our sons and daughters serve in the Armed Forces at their own risk.

We issued an extremely critical news release, with the headline 'Congress Declares War Against Disabled Veterans.' We communicated our shock and displeasure to every member of the House, and mounted an urgent grassroots campaign.

Congressman Lane Evans (D-Ill.), Ranking Member of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, followed with a news release condemning the move. Then Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) hurriedly convened a special committee hearing to receive testimony on the ramifications of such a change in eligibility criteria for service connection.

We testified before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee on September 23, 2003. Witnesses and Committee members alike made strong statements against this House action. Ranking member, Senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), raised emphatic objections to the procedural irregularities through which this change was being pursued and to the substantive provisions of the change itself. Senator Specter similarly voiced serious concerns. Immediately after the hearing, Senator Specter met with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and other key members of the of the Senate leadership, where he communicated the depth and unity of the opposition to this unacceptable scheme.

We understand that the Senate leadership decided promptly not to support this move by the House. Press reports observed that this House plan 'met with near universal disdain.'


The proponents of this scheme quietly abandoned it, and the House Armed Services Committee began working on a compromise proposal that would not authorize full concurrent receipt for disabled military retirees, as passed by the Senate, but would begin a phase-out of the offset between retired pay and compensation for combat disabilities and veterans with the more severe levels of service-connected disabilities.

As perhaps a stubborn refusal to accept total defeat and a remnant of the desire to eliminate compensation for many disabled veterans, the plan devised by the House Armed Services Committee leadership, included provisions for a new commission to investigate the justification for the disability benefits veterans receive.

On October 16, 2003, as U.S. casualties continued to mount in Iraq and Afghanistan, the House leadership publicly announced a plan through which the offset between retired pay and compensation would be phased out over 10 years to provide full retirement and disability benefits for military retirees rated 50% or more disabled by service-connected disabilities.

Veterans rated less than 50% would receive special compensation for combat-related disabilities in addition to the disability compensation paid. The plan included provisions for a 13-member Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission to study the appropriateness of disability and death benefits for service-related conditions, including the 'appropriate standard or standards for determining whether a disability or death should be compensated.'


One year later, by section 666 of Public Law 108-375, which was enacted on October 28, 2004, Congress directed a study of disability benefits for current and past members of the Armed Forces with service-connected disabilities. The substance of this study, to be conducted by the Department of Defense, is similar to the issues to be addressed by the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission.

Additionally, the bill calls for a Government Accountability Office study of benefits payable under federal, state, and local laws to government employees for work-related disabilities incurred in the performance of their jobs. The study is to pay attention to tasks performed by government employees with risks similar to the performance of military duties. By the end of October 2004, more than 16,000 sick and injured U.S. troops had been evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan.


In January 2005, the House leadership removed Representative Chris Smith as Chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee. Chairman Smith's removal, two years before his six-year term limit, was the direct result of Chairman Smith's strong advocacy on behalf of our nation's veterans and his refusal to allow his colleagues in Congress to forget our government's commitment to sick and disabled veterans.

The House leadership also passed over Representative Bilirakis, Vice-Chairman of the Committee and a strong veterans' advocate, for the less senior Congressman from Indiana, Steve Buyer, who has been a strong proponent of reducing the number of veterans who are eligible for VA health care.

On Tuesday, April 19, 2005, Senators Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), along with VA Secretary James Nicholson and a representative of the Department of Defense, announced the introduction of legislation to provide certain military members who suffer traumatic injuries to receive a lump sum payment for their disability.

To pay for this new benefit, servicemembers will be charged a monthly premium. This is the first time that our government has sought to charge military members for a new benefit related to a service-connected injury. The intended purpose of this legislation is to relieve the financial hardship experienced by servicemembers, who are receiving care and rehabilitation services at military medical facilities, and their families who want to be near their injured relative.

While DAV supports the need for a 'family hardship allowance,' we do not support charging the military member for this new benefit. DAV believes this is an abrogation of our government?s responsibility 'to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.'


DAV is also greatly concerned that this legislation had been put on a fast track, without benefit of congressional hearings or even substantive public discussion of the issues involved. There are also some rather disturbing inequities and potential unintended consequences that will or can develop as a result of the passage of this legislation.


Our government should bear that burden and not require servicemembers to indemnify themselves against getting hurt. Further, some disabilities that would be catastrophic would not even be covered. The legislation undermines the very foundation of how we historically have cared for those who wage our battles and places the burden squarely on the warrior.

Summing up:

All taxpayers should be responsible for payments needed to make the servicemember whole.

Estimated payments by servicemembers are approximately $30 million per year with additional payments by DoD only if the benefits paid out exceed that amount.

Servicemembers who are catastrophically disabled during military service would be paid only if they have the "right" injury. Other equally disabled servicemembers who have paid premiums would receive nothing.

There is clearly a need for additional income to all servicemembers who suffer a catastrophic disability. Mandatory insurance paid for by servicemembers is not the appropriate manner in which to provide it.


####END####