Will the benefits for ‘blue water’ Vietnam veterans be settled soon?
Military Times By: Leo Shane III April 17, 2019
“Even though the court has ruled that the VA must provide these benefits, there is no guarantee it will happen,” Gillibrand said in a statement. “Congress must create a permanent legislative fix.”
Troops from the First Cavalry Air Mobile Division watch the carrier USS Boxer after arrival at Qui Nhon, Vietnam, on Sept. 12, 1965. (AP file photo)
The fate of disability benefits for “blue water” Vietnam veterans will be among the key topics lawmakers tackle when they return from their district break at the end of the month.
In January, a federal court ruled that the Department of Veterans Affairs for years has used faulty reasoning to deny disability benefits to veterans who served in ships off the waters of Vietnam. VA officials had argued that extending the benefits to an additional 90,000 veterans would cost as much as $5 billion over 10 years, a figure that advocates have disputed.
This week, Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., and Steve Daines, R-Mont., announced plans to reinforce that ruling and establish a permanent fix for those veterans, who claim exposure to cancer-causing chemical defoliants has caused a host of rare cancers and respirator illnesses.
Already the chairman and ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee have introduced similar plans, and that House panel is preparing for an expansive hearing on the topic early next month. read more here
No need to think too hard on this one. Considering there was a time when no member of Congress really wanted to serve on the Veterans Affairs Committee before it was turned into a money maker for anyone who can profit off their suffering, it is everyone's game now. To think, these con-artists actually think they can get away with subjecting veterans to deplorable conditions by failing to fix the problems at the VA just for the sake of their rich buddies and fat retirement funds.
Why else would they be pushing to turn your care over to for profit companies instead of making sure you got the best care possible at the VA? Read this story from NPR back in 2016 and see what he was up to back then...like this,
SIEGEL: Ten billion dollars put into Veterans Choice, and there are now more vets waiting for care than before. What do you do now? What's next? What happens?
MILLER: We continue to work with the department, with the secretary, with the veterans service organizations that are out there. I believe that many folks now accept the fact that Choice is going to be here. I think it's going to take some time. I mean, nobody expected this to be resolved overnight. You can go back and check the transcripts of most of the interviews, and nobody thought that it was going to be resolved immediately.
Hell, people like Jeff Miller could have saved a lot of lives and caused a lot less heartache had he not been more focused on his own retirement while he served as head of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. Now we know why!
The Congressman Who Turned the VA into a Lobbying Free-For-All
POLITICO By JASPER CRAVEN April 04, 2019
Jeff Miller helped open up the VA to private contractors. Now he’s out of office and lobbying for those businesses.
The Indian Treaty Room is a grand two-story meeting space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House, with French and Italian marble wall panels, a pattern of stars on the ceiling and the image of a compass worked into the tiled floor. Over the years, it has hosted signing ceremonies for historic foreign policy pacts such as the Bretton Woods agreement and the United Nations Charter.
On Nov. 16, 2017, it hosted a different kind of gathering: an intimate meeting called by the White House to discuss the future of the Department of Veterans Affairs. In the 10 months since Donald Trump had taken office, his administration had been pushing a bold and controversial agenda to privatize more of the VA’s services.
The Trump administration’s ambitions are well documented. But what has not been publicly revealed until now is the extent to which the VA—a sprawling agency with a $180 billion (FY2017) annual budget that includes the nation’s single largest health care system, a network of cemeteries and a massive bureaucracy that administers the GI Bill and disability compensation for wounded veterans—has become a massive feeding trough for the lobbying industry.
The VA’s then secretary, David Shulkin, was at the previously undisclosed meeting, along with a contingent of conservative thinkers on veterans policy, including current and former members of Concerned Veterans for America, known as CVA, an advocacy network largely backed by conservative donors Charles and David Koch. Also present were “Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth, a former CVA executive repeatedly floated to be Trump’s pick for VA secretary, and David Urban, a right-leaning CNN commentator who served as a senior adviser on the Trump campaign.
According to emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, the group drafted a strategy to “echo/amplify” Trump’s “priorities/initiatives” for accelerating the privatization process. According to three people who were there, the participants discussed how best to respond to expected resistance from traditional veterans advocates, who historically have opposed privatizing key agency services. Representatives from “the Big Six” major veterans organizations, including the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, were not invited.
But it was the presence of the most powerful lobbyist for the companies now trying to get a piece of the VA’s budget—a tan, affable Floridian named Jeff Miller—that would have raised the most eyebrows, had his attendance been known at the time.
As the head of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Miller helped write the very privatization legislation that opened the door to his lobbying operation. As an early Trump backer and a name repeatedly floated as a potential VA secretary, Miller personally shaped the president’s policy; he drafted the Trump campaign’s 10-point veterans policy paper, largely based on proposals he was unable to pass in his time on the Hill. (Moran said Miller also has communicated directly with Trump “on occasion” since joining McDermott.) read more here
The Bad Decisions that Led to Privatized Military Housing Woes
Military.com By Thomas Spoehr 2 Apr 2019
Privatization began around 1996, when Congress authorized the Defense Department to enter into long-term agreements with private companies to repair, renovate, construct and operate base housing.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr is the director of The Heritage Foundation's Center for National Defense.
Outdated family quarters at Fort Lee get demolished to make room for modern replacement units. (U.S. Army/T. Anthony Bell
Privatized military housing is under fire. It started with a Feb. 13 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, where multiple witnesses reported horrendous living conditions including "black mold, lead, infestations of vermin, flooding, radon and faulty wiring." Worse, family members testified, complaints were often met with denials, resistance, and even retribution from the private management companies and military chains of command.
None of this is acceptable. But given decisions made years ago, it was predictable.
Roughly a third of military personnel live on installations, where 99 percent of the housing has been privatized. read more here
Report blames lack of leadership at VA for Forever GI Bill implementation failures
The San Diego Union-Tribune (TNS) By Andrew Dyer Mar 23, 2019
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs failed to modify its electronic systems and lacked an accountable official to oversee implementation of the Forever GI Bill, resulting in a bungled introduction last year that affected thousands of college students, a new report from the agency’s inspector general says.
The Forever GI Bill, the widely used name for the Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act of 2017, was approved unanimously in Congress and signed into law by President Donald Trump in the summer of 2017.
The law changed how education benefits are applied for veterans, revising the formula that determines students’ stipend amounts and removing a 15-year expiration date included in the previous version of the law.
However, beginning in August, the VA’s system could not handle the intricacies of those changes in more than 400,000 claims, the report said. The result was that some students were underpaid and, in some cases, not paid at all.
In November, the VA decided to delay full implementation until Dec. 1, 2019.
According to the inspector general’s report, the VA’s failure to appoint an accountable official to lead implementation of the program resulted in “unclear communication of implementation progress and inadequately defined expectations, roles and responsibilities of the various VA business lines and contractors involved.”
Additionally, investigators found that the VA’s Office of Information and Technology and the Veterans Benefits Administration Education Service did not agree on how to solve problems once they arose.
Investigators found a 10-month gap from the time the Forever GI Bill became law and when the VA received the computer software to implement it. During those months, the VA worked with contractor Booz Allen Hamilton to develop the program. read more here
The bill carries Hannon's name because of his service as a Navy SEAL and as an advocate for the National Alliance of Mental Illness in Helena, where he retired after 23 years of military service. Hannon was dealing with post-traumatic stress, a traumatic brain injury, depression and bipolar disorder after he ended his military service. He was active in veterans' issues and helped develop a group therapy for veterans involving rehabilitating birds of prey at Montana Wild. Hannon died by suicide in 2018.
Maybe I have been watching all of this for far too long? I have become so jaded by them that the evaporation of hope forces me to ask, "Why didn't they know what would make all this suffering grow?" Who was Commander John Scott Hannon?
Scott was open about his invisible wounds of war, and
found solace and recovery in many of the causes that also
allowed him to give back to his fellow veterans and his
community. He was passionate about improving veterans’
access to mental health care and integrating service
animals into mental health care. Scott worked closely with
Montana Wild and VA Montana to develop a group therapy
program for veterans that involved birds of prey. Scott was
embraced on his journey to recovery by his family, friends,
and community. He died from his invisible wounds of war
February 25, 2018.
Ranking Member Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., speaks during a hearing of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. in September 2018.
A handout from Tester's office said expanding rural veterans' access to telehealth care and investment in "gender-specific specialists, services, and research" were part of the bill's overarching goals. If passed, the bill would also fund a study to see if there is a higher risk of suicide for veterans living at high altitude. Funding would also provide alternative treatment paths for veterans, including agricultural and animal therapy, yoga, acupuncture and meditation.
While we knew decades ago what works, it seems as if no one bothered to learn any history. It also seems that Senator Tester has not explained why the outcome is still devastating families across the country, especially when in 2009, the Montana National Guard program was touted as the best thing going and pushed across the same nation to address the same problem...veterans and military members killing themselves.
The Montana Guard's Yellow Ribbon program has become a model that the rest of America should adopt, said U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont.
"We're getting terrific responses to the program from the families of our soldiers, but also some great suggestions," said Col. Jeff Ireland, chief of manpower and personnel for the Montana Guard. "For instance, we were told it would be useful to have a special breakout session for spouses. Ireland said officials believe the session was a great idea.
"We plan to act on it and other suggestions until we meet all the needs we're aware of," he added.
With the approval and funding of the National Guard Bureau in Washington, D.C., the Montana National Guard is adding five positions and spending approximately $500,000 to fund the Yellow Ribbon program, Ireland said.
The core of the program is twofold: mental health assessments every six months after deployment and crisis response teams that can be activated immediately to check out concerns about the emotional wellbeing of a soldier.
"The genius of the Montana screening model is that it happens every six months," Matt Kuntz, Dana's stepbrother, told the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee last week during testimony in Washington.
Current suicides within the military have also increased...but hey, why bother about reviewing the failures of the past?
So why do we know that suicides in the Veterans' Community have gone up, but even as more members of Congress use the names on more bills, they remain disconnected to what the result of their other efforts produced?
Apparently they have not been notified that current military suicides have also risen.
Rep. Don Young wrote to Lt. Gen. Nadja West requesting an inquiry into suicides at Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks, The Daily News Miner reported Tuesday. "As the number of military suicides continues to climb in Alaska, it is clear that the battle is far from over."
Advocates, like me, continue to fight to educate them and families, but it is a constant battle because members of Congress have failed to listen to us. As we watch suicides in every branch and in every state, claim more lives, they haveeviscerated all hope we placed upon their shoulders.
As more and more members of Congress are taking about what they are doing, we are watching to see what they keep repeating and, honestly, we are fed up!
WASHINGTON — A Department of Veterans Affairs analysis of its suicide prevention programs touted mostly “positive outcomes” of the efforts even though they didn’t translate into fewer veterans dying by their own hand. Now, as the White House launches a new year-long effort to find solutions to the problem, outside advocates want to make sure that bureaucrats aren’t going to repeat the same mistakes in how they look for those answers.“We’ve already seen four years of wasted time. It’s not a partisan mistake or problem. We’ve see this across administrations. But we seem to be doing the same things over and over again.”Joe Chenelly, executive director at AMVETS.
But perhaps the most damning part of all of this came with this statement.
“More than 24,000 veterans have died by suicide since the passage of the Clay Hunt Act,” said group National Commander Rege Riley in a statement. “God willing, we won’t be stuck with the same system we have not in 2023, with a new report that highlights only that what (they) keep doing continues not to work.”
People like me have advising them to do everything that veterans like Clay Hunt did in order to heal, like Scott Hannon, but lost his battle too.
The Senate voted 99-0 to pass the Clay Hunt Suicide Prevention for American Veterans Act on Feb. 3, while the House voted 403-0 in favor of it last month. Obama signed the bill on Thursday...The bill is named after a Marine Corps veteran who killed himself in 2011 after he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder following deployments to Iraq and in Afghanistan. After his service, Hunt volunteered in Haiti to offer relief following the 2010 earthquake, and worked with other veterans who were dealing with the physical and mental tolls of war. He worked to address his own difficulties coping, but lacked adequate resources – he reportedly waited monthsto see a psychiatrist, and an appeal of his disability rating did not come through until five weeks after his death."By the time the severity of his condition was recognized, it was too late," Obama said.
Specifically, this Act requires the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to develop a program that includes screening for suicide risk factors for veterans receiving medical care at all Department facilities, referral services for at-risk veterans for counseling and treatment, designation of a suicide prevention counselor at each Department facility, a 24-hour veterans' mental health care availability, peer support counseling, and mental health counseling program for veterans who have experienced sexual trauma while in military service.
They made all kinds of speeches back then too...but it was signed by President Bush in 2007~ How long will it take before anyone cares that while lives are on the line, more and more members of Congress get applauded for naming bills after the dead they already failed...but veterans keep paying the price with their lives on the line?
Military leaders apologize for substandard living conditions at family housing
CBS/AP MARCH 7, 2019
Top leaders of the U.S. military services apologized to Congress on Thursday for allowing substandard living conditions in military family housing. They acknowledged failing to have fully understood the problem earlier and promised to fix it. One senator has even called for a criminal investigation of conduct by those who operate military housing.
"What's happened here is criminal," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat. He urged the service leaders to ask the Justice Department to consider opening criminal or civil investigations of conduct by the housing contractors, whose arrangements with the military housing authorities, Blumenthal said, are "a risk-free cash cow." read more here
Navy leader in charge of housing resigns
By: Carl Prine 2 days ago
The Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment, Phyllis L. Bayer, has tendered her resignation after a little more than a year at her post and “will retire from government and pursue other opportunities,” the Pentagon announced Friday.
Phyllis L. Bayer, left, assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and the environment, and Brig. Gen. Benjamin T. Watson, commanding general of Marine Corps Installations East-Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, tour privatized military housing with spouses on Feb. 15. (Lance Cpl. Isaiah Gomez/Marine Corps)
In a statement posted online, Navy officials applauded her service and expressed gratitude for “her extraordinary efforts this past year."
Appointed to the position on Feb. 20, 2018 after confirmation by the U.S. Senate, Bayer’s wide responsibilities included oversight and policy for sustaining, restoring and modernizing all Navy and Marine Corps facilities; protecting the environment at bases; and preserving the safety and occupational health of personnel.
But Bayer’s brief tenure collided with a tsunami of complaints from military families about abysmal living conditions in privatized housing, including allegations of widespread mold problems, rat infestation and crumbling structures after years of neglect.
read more here
Are troops signing agreements to keep quiet about their housing problems?
By: Karen Jowers 2 days ago The service secretaries and service chiefs testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7, as the committee examines problems with privatized military housing for service members and their families. (Wayne Clark/Air Force) Privatized housing companies that are asking service members to sign agreements promising to keep silent about their poor housing conditions must immediately stop, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told the service secretaries and service chiefs during a hearing Thursday.
“These organizations wave a non-disclosure agreement in front of them and say, if you sign this agreement, there may be a bonus or payment you’ll be entitled to if you don’t bring up what may be inadequate housing,” Tillis said, during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
“I can’t imagine on any level why it would make sense to have a new tenant, these young kids, sign an agreement, not understanding the implications of it,” Tillis said, noting it could well be the first lease that service member has ever signed. read more here
The new plan to prevent veteran suicides: new grants, better research, more community focus
Military Times
Military Times By: Leo Shane III March 4, 2019
Officials from the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee are scheduled to hold a roundtable with administration experts on the issue later this week. Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee ranking member Jon Tester, D-Mont., introduced new legislation on the issue last week.
WASHINGTON — The White House is creating a new high-level task force on preventing veterans suicide which will include new community outreach grants aimed at former service members and expanded projects across a host of government agencies to coordinate research and prevention efforts.
President Donald Trump will sign a new executive order on the initiative — dubbed the President’s Roadmap to Empower Veterans and End a National Tragedy of Suicide, or PREVENTS — on Tuesday afternoon at the White House.
It’s the latest in a series of steps by his administration to address the problem, which claims an estimated 20 veterans lives every day. Last year, the president signed a separate executive order providing more counseling and mental health care for recently separated service members, who face a significantly higher risk of suicide than other military groups.
According to senior administration officials, the new order will give agency officials a year to develop plans for a more aggressive approach to suicide prevention, with a goal of more state and local community engagement.
The task force will look to develop a new grant system for mental health support and outreach similar to the Housing and Urban Development-VA Supportive Housing program, which provides funding directly to local charities and city programs to help individualize assistance plans for veterans.
The research work will also include pushing the Centers for Disease Control to provide more up-to-date information on veterans suicide research. Currently, the latest available data on the problem typically trails at least two years behind current efforts. Senior administration officials are hoping to cut that wait down to no more than six months. read more here
"Hard to believe an average of 20 veterans and servicemembers take their lives everyday..." And that President Trump, is because it is NOT 20 A DAY but is much higher when the facts are actually put together!
“The VA has indicated that suicide prevention is its highest clinical priority and, with the alarming number of suicides in the veteran community, it absolutely must be. Congress is appropriating resources and the VA is turning that into action, but the numbers continue to trend in the wrong direction. This is why it is vital that we have metrics to measure the effectiveness of the VA’s mental health and suicide prevention programs. This bill will help Congress and the VA isolate meaningful suicide prevention programs so we can ensure resources are focused on efforts that save lives.”
This was in the article too.
The GAO released a report in 2018 entitled Improvements Needed in Suicide Prevention Media Outreach Campaign Oversight and Evaluation. The GAO reveals in the report that the VA had failed to establish targets to evaluate the efficacy of its campaigns, that leadership turnover led to a dramatic decline in media outreach activities and that the VA spent a fraction of its budget for suicide prevention media outreach during the last fiscal year.
This is what it was like back in 2008 Retired Vice Adm. Dennis McGinn:
Veterans with PTSD, he noted, have “much greater loss of employment and earnings” than those with physical disabilities. McGinn recommended separate criteria on the rating schedule for PTSD, as well as a way to compensate unemployable veterans for lost quality of life, not just their inability to work. So-called “individual unemployability” veterans may have formal VA disability ratings of less than 100 percent, but are still rated fully disabled because of their inability to work. The commission found that almost half of the 223,000 IU veterans have primary diagnoses of PTSD or other mental disorders.
The problem is that if a veteran has physical disabilities that lead to a 100 percent disability rating, he can still work and keep his full compensation. But a veteran who has a 100 percent disability for a mental disorder tries to work, he loses his compensation.
And yet, they are still trying to take that away when a veteran reaches retirement age...not thinking about what the reduction actually means to them suddenly losing their 100% and all that goes with it. Guess they didn't figure on the fact these veterans stopped paying into Social Security BECAUSE THEY WERE TOO DISABLED TO WORK in the first place...plus actually believed permanent and total meant something they never had to worry about again. While in the same year, the GAO found that there was no accountability for claims processors, we kept seeing the same every year after year, and doctors were accused of trying to blame the veteran as if PTSD was a matter of greedy and looking for a free ride the rest of their lives...like when Norma Perez had to apologize for telling counselors to start making fewer diagnosis's of PTSD...and some still do. I think the worst thing out of all of this is, we keep hearing how it is a top priority for the VA...as well as the DOD, but the evidence is showing it has become a top priority to use the slogan instead of find solutions. We also knew that female veterans were lacking in the care they were supposed to be receiving from the VA...and while they did some outreach to OEF and OIF veterans, they forgot about the veterans from previous wars...not just ignoring them, but pushing them to the back of the line for claims and services...and still do. There was also a huge effort beginning on educating members of law enforcement about PTSD. Give what we've seen among officers and firefighters, they still have not learned what they needed to know...and still do. We knew that veterans in rural areas of the country were lacking in services....and still are.
Decorated Transgender Troops to Testify Before Congress
Associated Press BY JULIE WATSON AND JENNIFER McDERMOTT Feb. 27, 2019
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Lindsey Muller served in the Army as a man for nearly a decade before telling her commanders in 2014 that she identified as a woman and would resign because military policy barred transgender personnel. Her superiors, citing her outstanding performance, urged the decorated attack helicopter pilot to stay so she did.
After then-President Barack Obama changed the policy, she started dressing in uniform as a woman. Muller went on to be recommended for a promotion as the surgery to complete her gender transition was scheduled, but the operation was postponed in 2017 when President Donald Trump announced on Twitter that he was reinstituting the ban.
With the ban now blocked by lawsuits, transgender troops Wednesday will testify for the first time before Congress.
This undated photo provided by her wife Jessica Kibodeaux shows Lindsey Muller and her dog Emma hiking in the Cheyenne Mountains west of Fort Carson, Colo. Muller, a 19-year combat veteran who served multiple tours in Iraq, diligently followed the Pentagon guidelines to transition. In the nearly three years since the U.S. military welcomed transgender people into the armed forces in 2016, they have served without incident. Some, like Muller, have earned prestigious medals or received other forms of recognition. (Jessica Kibodeaux via AP) THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
In the nearly three years since the U.S. military welcomed transgender people into the armed forces, they have served without incident. Some, like Muller, have earned prestigious medals or received other forms of recognition.
They say they stand as proof against President Donald Trump's argument that their presence is a burden.
"Once you meet transgender people who have served in the different branches ... it's really hard to dismiss the fact that you will find Purple Heart recipients, Bronze Star winners, attack aviators, Navy SEALs," said Muller, who will not be testifying but is a plaintiff in one of four lawsuits challenging the ban. "We've been here, and we will continue to be here regardless. In what capacity is up to the administration."
The hearing will be held by the subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee chaired by Democratic Rep. Jackie Speier. Speier introduced bipartisan legislation in February that would prohibit the Department of Defense from denying the enlistment or continued service of transgender people if Trump's ban takes effect.
Similar legislation was introduced in the Senate. It's unclear whether the legislation would be voted on as a stand-alone bill or be folded into the defense bill, which could be harder for Trump to veto. read more here
The other thing is, why did he have to find out from the Washington Post instead of knowing what was going on from the VA?
Bringing Congress to the fireside
The American Legion FEB 26, 2019
Highlights
Privatization of the VA
Sen. Isakson: “We’re not privatizing the VA. Period. We’re going to make sure that the VA doctors and the Choice doctors understand that a veteran deserves the first chance (at) good care. We’re going to make sure that the standards are equal and the access is equal. We ain’t privatizing nothing. However, if we find a private-sector doctor … who doesn’t do a good job, we’re going to … not use him anymore. And if a (VA) doctor doesn’t do a good job, we now have the Accountability Act to get rid of him.”
Sen. Tester: “None of the four of us on this stage want to privatize the VA. When we talk about access standards, we need to go back and ask, ‘Why are we even here?’ We’re here because veterans couldn’t get their health care in a timely manner. These access standards, it is so imperative that we get them right.”
Rep. Roe: “What I’m most interested in is you getting timely quality care. I don’t care where it is. If the VA can provide that care, that’s great. The quality of care you get is what I am most interested in. You getting the care you need in a timely way. That’s not privatization. That’s quality care.”
Reducing suicides in the veteran population
Rep. Isakson: "On the suicide issue … it is not exactly what a lot of us think it is. In many cases it is somebody reacting to the hand dealt to them in life. Which in some cases could not be the fault of access to a counselor, but the fault of somebody who treated them for a disease and didn’t do a very good job of it. They’re suffering from that disease. We had a lot of guys that came home from Vietnam that would not have come home from any other war … because our medicine improved. But because of that a lot more of them have needs that are much greater than the average veteran who survived. We’ve got to make sure that all of our medical services to those vets are good so they don’t get into a case where they’re frustrated.”
Sen. Tester: “We’ve got to continue to work to try to find what we can do to stop this horrible thing from happening. There is still a stigma around mental health and suicide we have to figure out how to break. I think the (veterans service organizations) can help with that area a lot. This is the 21st century. We know a lot more about the mind than we did in the ‘50s, the ‘60s and ‘70s. I can tell you unequivocally that people that get help can have mental health conditions fixed just like you fix a broken arm or a dislocated knee. We have to work as a group, as a society, to try to reduce the stigma as we try to take money and put it into areas that do the most good.”
Rep. Takano: “Next week we’re intending to have a roundtable on veteran suicide. I want my committee members on a bipartisan basis to deepen their understanding of the complexities of addressing veteran suicides. We know the majority of veterans committing suicide are not connected to the VA. We definitely need organizations like The American Legion to help us come up with strategies to reach those veterans who are not connected to the VA.”
Rep. Roe: “We were spending $8 billion a year and haven’t moved the needle a bit on the suicide rate in this country. We need to be doing something different.” read more here
UPDATE More from this event
Bill Would Allow Last WWII Medal of Honor Recipient to Lie in State at Capitol
Military.com By Richard Sisk 26 Feb 2019
A bill that would have the last Medal of Honor recipient from World War II lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda gained bipartisan backing Monday from the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees.
"I can't think of anybody who would vote against that," Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Georgia, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said of the bill introduced in January by Rep. Carol Miller, R-West Virginia, which would direct a state funeral for a member of the "Greatest Generation" who earned the nation's highest award for valor.
State funerals, and lying in state at the Capitol Rotunda, are reserved for current and former U.S. presidents and those deemed to have rendered "distinguished service." The late Sen. John McCain was granted the honor last August.
Army Gens. John J. Pershing and Douglas A. MacArthur had state funerals, but there has never been one for an identified enlisted service member. (There have been state funerals for the "Unknown Soldiers" of World War I and World War II.)
All four living recipients of the Medal of Honor from World War II were enlisted. They include former Marine Warrant Officer Hershel "Woody" Williams of West Virginia and three former soldiers: Tech. Sgt. Charles H. Coolidge of Tennessee, Tech. Sgt. Francis S. Currey of New York and Technician 5th Grade Robert D. Maxwell of Colorado. read more here
Florida military bases could lose up to $177 million to Trump’s border wall
Tampa Bay Times Steve Contorno and Howard Altman February 18, 2019
President Donald Trump will pay for his much coveted wall at the southern border in part by taking $3.6 billion from military projects across the country and the world.
LUIS SANTANA | Times A-10 Warthog jets from the 122nd Fighter Wing of the Indiana Air National Guard taxis out of Macdill Air Force Base in Tampa. Increased jet noise and activity surrounding the base are from several jets that are being hosted at Macdill Air Force Base on Dec. 6, 2018. President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency and plans to divert $3.6 billion from military construction to the southern border for a barrier. A $3 million project at MacDill is one of many that could be cut.
The decision means Florida bases could lose up to $177 million for planned construction, more than all but eight other states, according to a list of eligible projects compiled by the House Appropriations Committee and provided to the Tampa Bay Times.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the influential Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies subcommittee, said the move is an indication that Trump feels the wall “is a higher priority than these projects.”
Among the projects in jeopardy are $3.1 million to relocate KC-135 Stratotanker pilot flight simulators to MacDill Air Force Base. The KC-135 are refueling planes “critical to the joint warfighter and our allies,” Gen. Carlton D. Everhart said in a June 2018 press release, and the simulators would allow pilots to experience realistic training of these aircrafts and practice emergency protocol.
Other projects that could lose funding include: $83 million for Littoral Combat Ship support facility and $29 million for Littoral Combat Ship operational training facility at Mayport Naval Base in Jacksonville, and $35 million for a F-35A training center and $28 million for a F-35A student dormitory at Eglin Air Force Base in Okaloosa County. read more here
Families living with military housing horrors plea for reforms
STARS AND STRIPES By CLAUDIA GRISALES Published: February 13, 2019
Several witnesses and lawmakers agreed Wednesday that the residential horror stories can be traced back to the 1996 military housing privatization initiative that let contractors take over management of the residences. Previously, the military managed these properties.
Military spouse Janna Driver testifies Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2019, during a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, as fellow military spouses Crystal Cornwall, left, and Jana Wanner look on. CARLOS BONGIOANNI/STARS AND STRIPES
WASHINGTON — Termites falling from light fixtures. Toxic mold sickening families. Rodent infestations of residences. Asbestos and lead paint exposures.
This is the alarming world of dilapidated military housing today.
On Wednesday, some families who have suffered with these residential nightmares told their stories on Capitol Hill.
“Our military families do not deserve this after all the sacrifices they make,” Janna Driver, the wife of an active-duty Air Force servicemember and mother of five children, told lawmakers during an extensive Senate hearing on military housing problems. “It is criminal. It is unbelievable the extent of this cover up.”
Driver joined two other military spouses during the more than three-hour hearing to plead for help as they detailed years of battles with deteriorating housing conditions, subsequent illnesses and extensive bills.
Private military housing executives and top military officials also testified before the joint subpanel hearing for the Senate Armed Services Committee. They said they are now addressing the concerns. read more here
“That’s a waste of time,” Representative Phil Roe of Tennessee, the highest-ranking Republican on the committee, said in an interview last week about the group. “If they go big on that, it won’t be good.”
Mr. Roe, how the hell can you sit on this committee and say anything is a waste of time considering what the outcome has been for our disabled veterans? This attitude is part of the reason veterans do not trust the government to do the right thing, or honor their side of the deal for the blank check they wrote on their lives. Selling out the service of our veterans is deplorable and this investigation is part of what was pulled off against their best interest. We have watched and waited after a long line of Administrations made speech after speech while our community heard excuses for the speeches turning out to be empty words delivered seeking our votes. Enough! Someone has to start being held accountable for all that has gone wrong at the VA, just as what has gone right needs to be rewarded. You say it is a waste of time? Is it a waste of time to learn exactly who benefited by these meetings? Is it a waste of time to discover why our veterans are still committing suicide and no one has a clue, or interest, in doing anything more than settling for speeches claiming they care or "awareness" campaigns that spread the misery instead of healing? Maybe you also consider it a waste of time while for profit healthcare business make money while for years members of the Congress have been telling citizens how lousy our healthcare is, but now it is OK to kick veterans into the same system and it will be good for them? Has it not dawned on you that THEY PAID FOR THEIR HEALTHCARE IN ADVANCE WHEN THEY BECAME DISABLED SERVING WHERE CONGRESS SENT THEM? Your waste of time is FUBAR! Maybe you should read exactly what the House Veterans Affairs Committee is actually responsible for? Our Jurisdiction Committee on Veterans’ Affairs is as follows:
(1) Veterans’ measures generally. (2) Cemeteries of the United States in which veterans of any war or conflict are or may be buried, whether in the United States or abroad (except cemeteries administered by the Secretary of the Interior). (3) Compensation, vocational rehabilitation, and education of veterans. (4) Life insurance issued by the Government on account of service in the Armed Forces. (5) Pensions of all the wars of the United States, general and special. (6) Readjustment of servicemembers to civil life. (7) Servicemembers’ civil relief. (8) Veterans’ hospitals, medical care, and treatment of veterans.
House Democrats, Newly Empowered, Turn Their Investigations on Veterans Affairs
New York Times Jennifer Steinhauer February 8, 2019
According to a report last year by the nonprofit investigative news organization ProPublica, the three pressured Mr. Trump’s first veterans secretary, David J. Shulkin, then peppered him with demands before ultimately working with personnel in the department to oust him. The group also pushed — in most cases, unsuccessfully — for certain vendors to manage health care records, and had a direct line to the president.
WASHINGTON — The new Democratic leadership of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee said Friday that it would investigate the influence exerted by three members of President Trump’s Florida beach club on the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The move was viewed as an early, and powerful, indication that the committee, which has always been known as among the most bipartisan on Capitol Hill, could adopt a harder edge under the new Congress as empowered Democrats move to scrutinize the administration.
The investigation was announced in a letter to Robert Wilkie, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, from Representative Mark Takano, Democrat of California, the new chairman of the committee. Mr. Takano requested documents and “information about alleged improper influence” of the members, Isaac Perlmutter, Bruce Moskowitz and Marc Sherman, “over policy and personnel decisions of the Department of Veterans Affairs.”
Mr. Takano said the three men exerted inappropriate influence over procurement at the sprawling department. read more here
