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STATEMENT OF
ARMANDO C. ALBARRAN NATIONAL COMMANDER OF THE DISABLED AMERICAN VETERANS
BEFORE THE COMMITTEES ON VETERANS’ AFFAIRS, UNITED STATES SENATE AND HOUSE
OF REPRESENTATIVES, WASHINGTON, D.C.
MARCH 14, 2001
MESSRS. CHAIRMEN AND MEMBERS OF THE VETERANS’ AFFAIRS COMMITTEES:
I am pleased to have the privilege to
appear before you to discuss the major issues and concerns of America’s
disabled veterans. Today is one of three of my greatest honors. It was an
honor to serve my country. It was an honor to be elected by my comrades as
National Commander of the Disabled American Veterans. It is certainly a
great honor to appear before this joint session of these two distinguished
committees to bring you the solemn message of our Nation’s disabled
veterans.
Before I discuss the important issues facing disabled veterans, let me
convey their thanks and the sincere appreciation of the DAV for the support
you have continually given us. Last year, the members of these committees
worked hard to pass legislation that was particularly important to veterans,
and we are especially grateful for your efforts. We are encouraged by the
dedication and deep sense of purpose that was evident in your actions.
We want to congratulate you, Mr. Smith, on your election to the chairmanship
of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and you, Senator Specter, on your
reelection as Chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee. Both of
you have had long distinguished service on your committees. Mr. Evans, and
Senator Rockefeller, we are pleased to see you back as ranking members of
your committees. We also want to acknowledge and thank Mr. Stump for his
work on behalf of veterans as a member and as the former Chairman of the
House Veterans’ Affairs Committee.
Perhaps more than the constituents of any other committees, veterans
identify more personally and have a closer association with the members of
the Veterans’ Affairs Committees and their staff. We want to warmly welcome
the new members of the committees into our special fraternity and extend our
offer to assist you in any way we can. The DAV has one major purpose,
building better lives for America’s disabled veterans, and we will labor
with you fervently to accomplish our mutual goals of ensuring that we meet
our obligations to those who contributed and sacrificed so much to serve in
our Nation’s defense. In all that we do, let us never forget how deeply
indebted we are to our veterans. In that spirit, we look forward to working
with all of you this year to continue our efforts to solve remaining
problems and make necessary further improvements in benefits and services
for veterans.
We are confident that Secretary of Veterans Affairs Anthony Principi will be
a reliable and valuable partner in our collaborative efforts to make the
system serve veterans better. Secretary Principi comes to this job with
knowledge of veterans’ issues, extensive experience in veterans’ affairs,
sincerity, a real desire to improve the delivery of benefits and services
for veterans, and the respect of the veterans’ community.
Let me also interject here that, in our quest to build better lives for
disabled veterans, the DAV does not look solely to government. We provide
assistance directly to veterans to complement or supplement the benefits and
services available through the government, or to fill in where veterans’
needs are not met by existing government programs. The centerpiece of DAV
programs is our veterans’ claims assistance service. We employ a corps of
250 National Service Officers (NSOs) that we have thoroughly trained in
veterans’ benefits law and the medical aspects of disability evaluation.
These NSOs, who are themselves service-connected disabled veterans, must
successfully complete a combination of 16 weeks intensive classroom
instruction in our own National Service Officer academy and an additional 12
months on-the-job training. Every day in DAV offices across the Nation, our
NSOs provide free benefits counseling and claims assistance to hundreds of
veterans and their family m!
embers. Each year, we represent thousands of them in their appeals to the
Board of Veterans’ Appeals (BVA) here in Washington, D. C. Among the several
organizations that represent veterans before BVA, the DAV represents by far
the largest number and percentage of the total number of appellants. In
fiscal year (FY) 2000, we provided representation in 11,061 of the cases
decided by BVA, which was more than 35% of represented appellants and 32.5%
of all appellants. Statistics indicate that 27.9% of DAV’s cases were
allowed by BVA and another 28.6% were remanded to Department of Veterans
Affairs (VA) field offices to correct defects in adjudication or record
development. The DAV is also the largest single practitioner before the
United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Our judicial appeals
staff filed 168 appeals in 2000. Of the 127 cases for which a disposition
was reached in the Court last year, 122 were reversals or remands. The Court
affirmed the BVA decisio!
ns in only five of our appeals. We therefore had a remarkable 96% success
rate at the Court.
In striving to even more effectively meet veterans’ needs and ensure they
receive the benefits our grateful Nation has authorized for them, we have
undertaken two new initiatives to enhance and expand benefits counseling and
claims representation services to veterans. The first of the two programs
involves outreach to members of the Armed Forces at the location and time of
their separation from active service. The second involves services to
veterans in the communities where they live.
For benefits counseling and assistance in filing initial claims, the DAV has
hired and specially trained 19 Transition Service Officers who will provide
these services at military separation centers, under the direct supervision
of DAV National Service Officers. This corresponds to goals in the strategic
plans of both VA and the DAV. By accepting and deciding compensation claims
at separation centers where the service medical records and examination
facilities are readily available, VA’s strategic plan envisions better, more
prompt service to veterans in a way that is also more efficient and
effective for VA. This enhancement in assistance to those seeking veterans’
benefits will contribute to the DAV’s strategic goal of maintaining its
preeminent position as a provider of professional service to veterans.
The DAV’s new Mobile Service Office program is a part of the same goal. By
taking its service offices on the road to rural America and assisting
veterans where they live, the DAV will increase accessibility to the
benefits our Nation provides for veterans. The DAV has initially put 12 of
these specially equipped mobile offices on tour to make stops in communities
across the breadth of the country. In an initial 7-day trial run of one of
our Mobile Service Office units in January of this year, we interviewed 616
veterans and other potential claimants. We accepted new powers of attorney
to represent 336 claimants, and we completed 458 applications for benefits.
This program promises to be very successful. For its first year, we project
that we will conduct 40,000 interviews, take 29,500 applications for
benefits, and execute 20,000 new powers of attorney.
Beyond all the services we deliver through our employees, the DAV and DAV
Auxiliary together currently have approximately 10,300 volunteers who
predominantly assist employees and patients in VA hospitals. Last year, they
logged 2,341,680 hours of free service to the VA, valued at $34,727,114.
Since we began our program to furnish indigent and disabled veterans free
transportation to VA facilities for medical care, the DAV has purchased and
then donated 992 passenger vans to the VA, at a cost of $19,366,408. Through
our close relationship with Ford Motor Company, we have secured the donation
of 53 additional vans from Ford. From the transportation program’s inception
to the end of FY 2000, we provided 5,707,656 round trips to veterans, in
which our DAV drivers volunteered 11,775,630 hours of their time and
traveled 220,917,864 miles.
In addition, the DAV assists veterans and their families through disaster
relief grants, college scholarships, and a variety of other ways. Of course,
we are only able to accomplish these benevolent tasks because of strong
support from a generous American pubic and selfless dedication of our
members, who often volunteer despite their advanced age and their own
painful and debilitating disabilities. Many of our supporters and volunteers
are from what Tom Brokaw has described as “America’s Greatest Generation,”
but the rest exhibit those same admirable, steadfast qualities of character
and devotion to the welfare of others. They all deserve our respect and
gratitude.
Disabled veterans deserve special recognition. Collectively, and in their
own individual ways, they contributed much and often lost even more in the
name of freedom. In the security and expectation, or even the joy and
exuberance, of our freedom, we are too often prone to forget how it was won.
We too easily forget the immense cost in blood and suffering. To appreciate
the value of freedom, we must know and be reminded of its cost. Our
celebration of victory cannot comprehend its true significance unless we
keep firmly in mind the horrors of battle that went before. That we owe so
much to our disabled veterans does not of its own merits and importance,
without reminders, remain in our national consciousness. The stories of
individual acts of bravery will often remain untold, and these heroes will
remain unsung. Nonetheless, we know of their wounds and disabilities. Yet,
we have not accorded them the special honor they so rightfully deserve and
we so surely owe.
In contemplating the solemnity of the debt we owe our veterans, especially
our disabled veterans, Thomas Paine’s famous words resonate: “These are the
times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot
will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that
stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Franklin
Roosevelt observed, “Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy
forget in time that men have died to win them.” All the more lost in that
failure of memory are those who became disabled in military service. We have
all heard that freedom is not free. Freedom is a luxury we have been able to
afford only because veterans were willing to pay its high price, something
we would all do well to remind ourselves of from time to time.
We have many monuments here in the District of Columbia to stimulate
reflection on the meaning of our existence as a Nation. Our citizens come
here to celebrate democracy and honor those responsible for securing and
preserving it. Ironically, we have no memorial to honor the contributions,
sacrifices, and crucial role of disabled veterans in our history.
Last year, Congress enacted legislation to authorize a memorial here in the
Nation’s capital to honor our disabled veterans. However, the National
Capital Memorial Commission rejected placement of the memorial at a site on
the Mall. The Commission determined that the subject matter of a memorial to
disabled veterans is not “of preeminent historical and lasting significance
to the Nation.” Of course, we think that decision is absurd. The Secretary
of the Interior has been asked to overrule the Commission’s decision. If
legislation becomes necessary to specifically authorize the placement of
this memorial on the Mall, we hope to again receive your full support.
Naturally, our ability to work for the betterment of disabled veterans and
serve them on such a large scale gives us a deep sense of pride and
accomplishment, but let us not forget that benefits and services for
veterans remain primarily the responsibility of our Federal Government. The
citizens and government of a country that sends its sons and daughters to
defend its borders and fight its wars have a strong moral obligation to
repay them for bearing this heavy burden. Our indebtedness to veterans is
more important than any other part of our national debt because, without
their sacrifices and bravery, we would not exist as a nation. Therefore,
just as it is imperative that a nation maintain a strong national defense¾or
else risk loss of the right to determine its own destiny¾it is important for
a nation to ensure that veterans’ programs, like national defense, are and
remain a top priority.
Since its first National Convention in 1921, the DAV’s annual legislative
program has served to guide its advocacy for disabled veterans in accordance
with the will of its members. Promoting meaningful, reasonable, and
responsible public policy for veterans has always been at the heart of what
we are and what we do. Our will and commitment come from the grass roots,
from the ground of veterans’ sacrifices, and have their vitality in our
strong convictions. What we communicate to you here today echoes the hopes
and desires, and in some areas, the despair of disabled veterans, who appeal
to the conscience of the Nation to do what is right and just.
Though we can be proud that we have accomplished much for veterans in the
past, much remains to be done. In the work we do, we have no room for
complacency. When it comes to justice for disabled veterans, we cannot be
timid in our advocacy. Congress and the DAV, working together with mutual
assistance, must battle for what is best for veterans. Veterans have every
right to expect their government to do justice toward them. We call upon
you, the members of these committees, to educate and appeal to your
colleagues about the priorities of veterans’ needs.
Today, we are at a crossroads in veterans’ affairs. Delivery of health care
is undergoing a radical transformation. Modernizing and reforming the
delivery of veterans’ health care in ways that best serve them is made all
the more difficult because of their advanced age and because many of them
have lived more difficult lives and are in poorer health than the civilian
population due to their disabilities.
The timely, accurate delivery of benefits continues to present a formidable
challenge. Here again, the solutions are complicated, compounded, and
confounded by factors and illnesses and elusive cause-and-effect
relationships seemingly unique to the military environment to which veterans
have been exposed.
High mortality rates among our large population of older veterans create a
pressing need to plan and provide for additional cemetery space to meet
their burial needs.
The members of these committees will be expected to fashion legislation and
push for resources to meet these needs. In this task and these challenges,
this new Congress has new opportunities to fulfill your responsibilities to
veterans.
Against this backdrop, we call upon you to lead the campaign to honor our
obligations to veterans. In so doing, we are guided primarily by the
resolutions our members adopted to make up our legislative agenda for this
year and by the policy positions of the Independent Budget for Veterans
Programs.
At the beginning of every new Congress or session of Congress, we are, of
course, always confronted with the annual budget for veterans’ programs.
What you do in the annual budget process determines whether and how well we
live up to the solemn promises we have made to our Nation’s veterans.
In the health care legislation the 106th Congress enacted, you have shown
that you are committed to modernizing, improving, and expanding the VA’s
health care programs. This year, we must continue to invest in improvements
in veterans’ health care to allow VA to deliver high quality and accessible
services to veterans. Without adequate resources, VA cannot meet increasing
demands for medical care and the mandates of last year’s legislation. To
cover inflationary costs, to deliver expanded services mandated in law, and
to restore certain services to acceptable levels, we have recommended in the
Independent Budget a $2.667 billion increase in the medical care account.
Without this additional funding, VA will not be able to adequately meet
veterans’ health care needs and will lose ground in the improvements it has
already made. We intend to press our case for adequate funding very firmly,
but we will again need your full support to persuade your colleagues outside
the Vetera!
ns’ Affairs Committees.
The VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration continues to struggle with its
serious and longstanding problems in processing benefit claims. Secretary of
Veterans Affairs Principi has pledged to make fixing this problem one of his
highest priorities and foremost goals. His determination and good intentions
alone are not enough, however. He needs the full support of Congress. Here
again, adequate resources are a central issue. One root cause of the current
situation is Federal budgets over several successive years that provided
inadequate resources. As a consequence, the VA was forced to reduce staffing
levels in the face of increasing workloads and demands on the system. The
ensuing emphasis on production resulted in even poorer quality than already
existed. Pervasive quality problems required work to be redone, which in
turn overloaded an already overburdened system.
Despite its efforts, the VA has been unable to overcome its quality and thus
its timeliness problems. In addition to leadership, the VA must have
additional personnel to make up for the unwarranted past reductions in
claims adjudicators, to meet increased workload demands, to provide
essential training, to ensure quality, and to achieve and maintain
satisfactory timeliness in claims processing. We have recommended in the
Independent Budget an additional $60 million over current services to allow
the VA to increase staffing by 830 full-time employees for these purposes.
The lessons we have learned from a history of inadequate resources are
unmistakable. We cannot deny the destructive effects of insufficient funding
for veterans’ programs. It would be inexcusable to repeat these errors of
the past. Without sufficient trained personnel, the VA cannot hope to
restore efficiency and effectiveness to its claims processing. Without
adequate funding, the VA will not be able to implement its forward-looking
claims processing reforms, but rather will be forced to return to the habit
of fighting today’s fire with no means to deal with its troubles over the
long term.
In your deliberations on funding for the Veterans Benefits Administration,
we remind you that the VA must also contend with additional work because of
the necessity to review thousands of cases in which it did not furnish
assistance to veterans in developing evidence to support their claims. We
believe that the VA could have avoided much of this additional work if it
had joined with veterans in telling the courts that they were wrong in their
interpretation of the law on the duty to assist. Instead, the VA maintained
that the courts had properly interpreted the law and discontinued assistance
to veterans. Now, it must rework those cases to fulfill its obligation to
assist veterans. For the VA, its mistakes should be a great teacher, but
unfortunately, that learning comes at a high price for us. We urge Congress
to act promptly and decisively to provide the VA the supplemental funding it
needs to accomplish its review of these cases.
Although the VA’s benefits workload is increasing, the veteran population is
declining at a rapidly increasing rate. Currently, approximately 1,500
veterans are dying daily. More than 77,000 are interred annually in
cemeteries operated by the VA’s National Cemetery Administration. With the
aging veteran population, death rates will escalate and place great demands
on the limited existing burial space in national cemeteries and state
veterans’ cemeteries. This sharp increase in demand creates a need for more
burial space, more personnel, and more funding for state cemetery grants. In
the Independent Budget we recommend a $9 million increase over this year’s
$110 million appropriation for the National Cemetery Administration. We
recommend a $5 million increase over this year’s $25 million funding to
finance construction of more state veterans’ cemeteries. Last year, you
recognized the acute need to increase the appropriations for national and
state veterans’ cemeteries an!
d acted decisively to provide more money in the budget. We urge you to take
the same decisive action this year.
We realize, in the competition for the Federal dollar, getting the fair
share for veterans is never as easy as it should be considering the merits
of veterans’ programs. Others take bold steps to obtain funding for their
programs, and the members of these committees must take bold steps also. You
must make authoritative statements by your own willingness to jump into the
fray on behalf of veterans. When you do, you can count on the DAV’s
aggressive support. You can also count on the DAV’s full support in forging
legislation to address a range of other needs in veterans’ programs.
At the top of the list this year, is the lingering and compelling issue of
legislation to repeal the requirement that career servicemen and women
surrender the retired pay they earned to receive compensation for their
service-connected disabilities¾what we have come to refer to as “concurrent
receipt” legislation. It is time that this debt was settled, that this
injustice is remedied.
Military retirees earn longevity retired pay by virtue of their completion
of long service on behalf of the country. Disabled veterans receive
compensation for an entirely separate reason¾because of ongoing effects of
service-connected disability. Many nondisabled military retirees pursue
second careers after service to supplement their income, thereby justly
enjoying the full reward for completion of a military career along with the
added reward of full pay for the civilian employment. In contrast, military
retirees with service-connected disabilities do not enjoy the same full
earning potential. Their earning potential is reduced commensurate with the
degree of service-connected disability. To put them on equal footing with
nondisabled retirees, they should receive full military retired pay and
compensation to substitute for diminution of earning capacity. To the extent
that military retired pay and disability compensation are now offset against
each other, the disable!
d retiree is treated less fairly than the nondisabled military retiree. This
is especially inequitable where the military retiree is totally precluded
from employment by service-connected disability. Moreover, a disabled
veteran who does not retire from military service but elects instead to
pursue a civilian career after his or her enlistment expires can receive
full compensation and full civilian retired pay. A veteran who has served
this country for 20 years or more should have that same right. The veteran
should not be penalized for choosing the military service as a career rather
than a civilian career, especially where in all likelihood a civilian career
would have involved fewer sacrifices and greater rewards. Compensation
should not be offset against military longevity retired pay.
We have seen concurrent receipt legislation introduced and sometimes passed
in one chamber or the other only to fall in the end year after year. No one
seriously debates the inequity of the existing offset between military
longevity retired pay and disability compensation. Sadly, cost, not fairness
or justice, decides the matter.
Someone once said, “If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way;
if you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” The easiest way to get rid of a
difficult task is to do it. Lyndon Johnson said, “This country is rich
enough to do anything it has the guts to do and the vision to do and the
will to do.” Surely, this country can afford to do right by those who, as
career soldiers, became disabled veterans. As military retirees, they served
faithfully with the promise of the retired pay they earned. Those who serve
do so with the general understanding and confidence that our government will
compensate them for the disabilities they incur in service. Most are
surprised and discouraged to learn that, after they have faithfully
performed their part of the contract, their government uses the receipt of
one as an excuse to renege on their promise of the other, to use their
disability compensation as an excuse to avoid payment of the retired pay
they earned. Again, retired pay is !
owed for past service; compensation is paid for future impairment in earning
capacity. There is no rational basis for offset; there is no justification
for the failure to correct this. We must put honor above expedience.
Veterans are no longer accepting the excuse that we cannot correct this
injustice because of the cost.
While some complain about the complacency and detachment of our Nation’s
youth, ample evidence suggests that our youth are watching, learning from,
and condemning government’s sometimes-hollow promises, hypocrisy, and
failures. It has been observed that a Nation’s destiny lies in its youth.
Essential to our national security and the preservation of our freedoms is
the continued willingness of our sons and daughters to serve in our Armed
Forces. The Vietnam War taught us that even some of our patriotic citizens
will not lay their life on the line when they do not have confidence in
their government. We believe that, in the long run, the cost of fixing this
injustice is far less than the cost and pervasive consequences of not fixing
it.
I know that many of you already agree with me on the need for concurrent
receipt legislation. Awareness heightened last year. H.R. 303 had 322
cosponsors. Expectation among veterans that legislation will be enacted has
also heightened. Congressman Bilirakis, particularly, and others have long
pressed for remedial legislation. Senator Harry Reid has led the battle in
the Senate. These few champions of this legislation cannot succeed standing
alone, however. All of the members of these committees need to step in,
speak out, and stand firm with your congressional leadership on this issue.
I am confident that most if not all of you will hear a strong and adamant
plea this year to enact this legislation, and not only from those who will
be the beneficiaries of such legislation, but from the veteran population
generally. This is an issue that outrages and unites veterans and others who
understand the depth of the injustice. Be assured, veterans will stop
pounding this drum!
only when government listens.
Equally compelling, but involving fewer veterans and less cost, are
inequities or areas needing improvement in other VA benefit programs.
Because we have covered these issues in our published resolutions that make
up our Legislative Program for this year and in the Independent Budget, I
will highlight here only some of the more important areas in which we urge
the committees to move remedial legislation.
>From the comments some of you made in raising the estate limit for
incompetent veterans last year, we know you agree that it is one of the most
offensive, unfair, and inappropriate provisions in VA benefits law. When
mentally incompetent veterans without legal dependents are hospitalized or
institutionalized at Government expense, the law requires discontinuance of
their veterans’ benefits if they have any substantial savings or estate.
Their benefits are resumed only after their estates are spent down to an
amount that is equal to only two and one-half months of compensation at the
100% rate. No estate limit applies to other hospitalized or
institutionalized veterans. Therefore, for the purposes of estate limits,
the law distinguishes between veterans simply on the basis of whether they
suffer from mental disability.
This is an arbitrary discrimination against the mentally ill, many of whom
suffer from mental disability because of their military service. In that
instance, the law penalizes them because of their service-connected
disability. If it is unjustifiable to single out an already disadvantaged
class for further burdens merely because they are disadvantaged, it is even
more unjustifiable to penalize those who suffer from mental disability when
that disability resulted from military service. In any event, mentally
disabled veterans have the same right to compensation as physically disabled
veterans: their mental illness is not a proper reason to penalize them.
The consequences are extremely unfair and unjust. These veterans cannot
accumulate any significant savings. They can only hold relatively small
amounts in reserve for contingencies, purchases, or future expenses. They
are reduced to near paupers who must depend solely on the Government to fill
only the most meager needs. Unlike other veterans, they are unable to
accumulate estates to be left to their heirs.
The current statutory provision and its discriminatory effect have their
origins in laws dating back to a time when it was public policy to withhold
benefits from the “permanently insane”—an era when eugenics and social
Darwinism were in vogue and the mentally ill were sterilized and viewed as a
societal burden or menace. The mentally ill were segregated from society and
treated by long stays in mental institutions or insane asylums.
This provision in VA law is based on outdated notions and is inconsistent
with the more enlightened, modern approach in which the mentally ill are
treated with the same human dignity as others. No sound basis exists for
continuing this dual standard and disparate treatment of the mentally ill.
Today, no legitimate public policy goal is served by this estate limitation;
rather, its discrimination against the mentally ill is repugnant to notions
of fundamental fairness and social justice. As long as this remains in the
law, it is an ugly black mark against our Government. We appreciate your
effort last year to lessen its injustice, but we hope you will act to remove
it entirely in the 107th Congress.
Similarly, we urge you to remove the unfair reduction in the payment of
retroactive benefits to survivors when the VA beneficiary dies before
payment can be made to him or her. If a beneficiary is entitled to a
retroactive award of benefits but dies before disbursement can be made, only
benefits for the last 2 years of the retroactive entitlement period can be
paid to survivors. Consequently, if, at the time of death, a veteran had
just prevailed in a long-fought appeal and was entitled to retroactive
benefits for the period he or she was erroneously denied the benefits, the
veteran’s death would result in forfeiture of all benefits due beyond the
last 2 years. The surviving spouse or children, who suffered economic
deprivation for an extended period because of an erroneous VA decision,
would be barred from receipt of a substantial portion of the benefits the
veteran would have received if he or she had lived a little longer. The
Government’s errors and delays should not s!
erve as a means to reduce its obligation to sick and disabled veterans, who
may die before VA can correctly dispose of their claims. The DAV urges you
to remove this arbitrary 2-year limitation on payment of “accrued
benefits.”
Other benefit programs suffer from neglect to make adjustments for the rise
in the cost of living. For example, the allowance for specially equipped
automobiles for severely disabled veterans has not been adjusted since 1998.
Before that, the allowance was not adjusted for 10 years.
When this program was originally created in 1946, the law set the allowance
at an amount sufficient to pay the full cost of a lower-priced new
automobile. With subsequent cost-of-living increases, Congress sought to
provide 85% of the average cost of a new automobile, and later 80%. Because
of a lack of regular adjustments to keep pace with increased costs, the
value of the automobile allowance has substantially eroded through the
years. Currently, the $8,000 automobile allowance represents only about 32%
of the average cost of automobiles in the year 2000.
Veterans eligible for the automobile allowance are among the most seriously
disabled service-connected veterans. Often, public transportation is
difficult for them to use, and the nature of their disabilities requires the
larger and more expensive handicap-equipped vans or larger sedans, which
have base prices far above today’s smaller automobiles. The current
allowance is only a fraction of the cost of these vehicles.
If this benefit is to accomplish its purpose, it must be adjusted to reflect
the current cost of automobiles. To avoid the repeated erosion of the value
of the benefit in the future, the law should provide for automatic annual
adjustments based on the rise in the cost of living or annual adjustments
tied to the cost-of-living raise for compensation, in the same manner the
law now provides for an increase in the annual clothing allowance for
disabled veterans.
Similarly, you should adjust the amount of the specially adapted housing
grants for seriously disabled veterans and include provisions for automatic
annual adjustments or include adjustments in the compensation cost-of-living
increase.
The burial allowance has also been allowed to lose ground to inflation. As
you know, we provide burial allowances as a final measure of appreciation
for service rendered on behalf of the Nation and to help ensure that our
Nation’s military veterans will be buried with the dignity they deserve. For
deaths from service-connected causes, the law currently authorizes a $1,500
burial allowance. For nonservice-connected deaths, the law authorizes a $300
burial allowance. The allowance for service-connected deaths was last
adjusted in 1988, and the allowance for other deaths was last adjusted in
1978.
Over these several years without any adjustment, the value of the burial
allowance has eroded. The amount of the allowances should be raised to make
them a more meaningful contribution to the costs of burial for our veterans.
Let me switch for a moment to an issue that does not require any
appropriation, but which is among our priorities and should be near the top
of your agenda. That issue is the abuses of state courts that order disabled
veterans to pay their disability compensation to able-bodied former spouses
as alimony. I know of no other issue that so inflames veterans. I know of no
other issue where veterans’ anger is so deep and red hot. That anger is more
than justified.
Under long-standing Federal law, veterans’ benefits are supposed to be
exempt from the claims of third parties. Section 5301 of title 38, United
States Code, provides that “Payments of benefits due or to become due under
any law administered by the Secretary shall not be assignable except to the
extent specifically authorized by law, and such payments made to, or on
account of, a beneficiary shall be exempt from taxation, shall be exempt
from the claim of creditors, and shall not be liable to attachment, levy, or
seizure by or under any legal or equitable process whatever, either before
or after receipt by the beneficiary.” While the courts once interpreted this
broad exemption as saying what it means and meaning what it says, they later
employed all manner of convoluted rationales to hold that it does not
preclude state courts from ordering support awards to former spouses. By
their own judicially created exceptions for purposes of support payments and
alimony, the courts!
have undermined and subverted the protection Congress granted veterans. The
courts overrode the will of Congress to change the law to meet their own
notions of what the public policy should be. Unfortunately, these courts
simply do not appreciate the unique nature and purposes of veterans’
benefits.
We should never lose sight of the fact that it is the veteran who suffers,
in addition to the loss of earning power, the pain, the limitations in
routine activities of daily life, and the other social and lifestyle
constraints that result from disability. Disability compensation is a
personal entitlement of the veteran. Once a spouse is no longer a partner in
the veteran’s household and no longer a member of the veteran’s family,
veterans’ laws do not provide benefits for that spouse, and we should not
allow the states to award the spouse part of the benefits intended for
veterans and their family members. Because the state courts do not honor or
fulfill the intent of Federal law, benefits intended for disabled veterans
are now often diverted to third parties who have not contributed toward the
defense of the Nation.
In this, we do not suggest that veterans’ compensation should be immune to
valid child support orders. We do not dispute that disabled veterans have a
responsibility to support their children. Even so, disability compensation
should be the last source considered for awards of child support. A
carefully crafted amendment of the law could require a more reasoned
balancing of the rights of the veteran and children and set a more definite
and equitable basis for ordering child support payments from disability
compensation.
As it stands, compensation enjoys no real protection from unwarranted state
actions, or state actions that disregard the purpose of disability
compensation. Because these are Federal benefits created to further Federal
goals, the Federal Government should exercise some reasonable control over
them to ensure they are not misused for the states’ self-serving purposes
and diverted to uses never imagined or intended.
Therefore these committees should act decisively to replace strict limits on
access to veterans’ benefits by third parties to ensure compensation goes
mainly to support veterans disabled in the service of their country. The law
should be precise enough to ensure that, properly applied, it would never
permit an able-bodied ex-spouse to take and enjoy part of the veteran’s
payment for the effects of disability he or she suffers.
In the past you have acted with great care and concern to craft laws
tailored to address unique disabilities and needs of specially targeted
groups of veterans. Usually you did so because existing general benefits law
did not adequately speak to the peculiar situation or because you were
convinced the VA was not applying existing law fairly toward these special
groups of veterans. With these special laws, particularly, experience often
reveals areas in need of adjustment or more precision to carry out the
intent of Congress. In the laws pertaining to compensation for disabilities
related to herbicide, or “Agent Orange,” exposure; radiation exposure; and
Persian Gulf War illnesses, we have identified needed changes or
improvements.
We have had a long difficult struggle to get the VA to recognize and
compensate disabilities due to Agent Orange exposure. Our Armed Forces used
this herbicide extensively in Vietnam from 1962 to 1971. It contained the
byproduct dioxin, which is one of the most toxic substances known. It has
now been related to several diseases.
Because military records did not document all spraying of this herbicide,
because existing records are not detailed enough to allow determination of
the precise location of specific military units and individual soldiers in
relation to the spraying, and because the chemical was carried away from the
area of application by wind drift and streams, the VA determined that it
would be impossible to prove or rule out exposure in most individual cases.
Given these circumstances and consistent with the benefit-of-the-doubt rule,
the VA in 1980 adopted a policy of presuming exposure to the herbicide in
the case of any Vietnam veteran who claimed exposure. In 1999, however, the
VA abandoned the presumption although the circumstances for this policy and
its legal premises had not changed. Congress has included in law a
presumption of exposure for veterans claiming service connection on a
presumptive basis, but veterans are now placed in the impossible position of
proving exposure whe!
n they claim direct service connection for disabilities related to Agent
Orange. We therefore call on Congress to restore this presumption by
statute.
We are encouraged that the VA has recently taken a more reasonable stance on
disabilities related to radiation exposure. The former acting Secretary
initiated rulemaking to make additional diseases subject to presumption of
service connection. Laws to compensate persons who lived downwind from
nuclear test sites and civilian employees in atomic weapons programs presume
or recognize an association between radiation exposure and several cancers
not included in the list of diseases eligible for presumptive service
connection. If the proposed regulation is approved, cancer of the bone,
brain, colon, lung, and ovary will be added to the VA’s list of diseases
that qualify for presumptive service connection. If that regulation is not
promptly approved, Congress should act to make these diseases subject to
presumptive service connection by statute.
When the VA would not compensate Persian Gulf War veterans for undiagnosed
illnesses although their common experience of serving in the Persian Gulf
and the similarity of their symptoms circumstantially linked their illnesses
to their military service, Congress stepped in to mandate such compensation.
Because the causes and pathological mechanisms of the disease were unknown,
the law delegated authority to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to set the
period during which these illnesses must manifest to be eligible for the
presumption of service connection. Although the causes and nature of these
illnesses are yet unknown, the Secretary’s regulation will end the
presumptive period in December of this year. Until we have answered these
questions, we have no basis to determine how long the interval between
exposure to the causes and the onset of the symptoms should be. Some of
these veterans remain on active duty. The period for presuming service
connection should therefore!
be left open until we solve the mystery of this scientific conundrum.
Additionally, the VA has written its regulations in such a way as to exclude
service connection when a physician uses his or her best guess to assign a
diagnostic label to one of these ill-defined syndromes or illnesses. As a
consequence, one veteran may be granted compensation where another suffering
with essentially the same symptoms may be denied simply because the latter’s
physician ventured a guess as to a diagnosis.
To remedy these shortcomings in current law, Congressman Manzullo has
introduced H.R. 612 in the House, and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has
introduced S. 409 in the Senate. We ask you to again step in to bring equity
to the rules on compensation. We ask for your support of this important
legislation.
Veterans in another special group became our most disadvantaged, not because
of unequal treatment under veterans’ laws in most cases, but because of
unequal opportunities due to a complex of socioeconomic factors and
misfortunes. Often, the causes of their predicament can be directly or
indirectly tied to the lasting influences of their military service. Some
are those whose psychological wounds of war are so profound they cannot
heal. These veterans deserve a helping hand from those of us who have been
more fortunate. I am, of course, speaking of homeless veterans whose daily
existence is under the most miserable circumstances. We cannot let the
warmth, comfort, and security of our own homes and community and family
lives make us forget the awful plight of veterans who spend their lonely
lives on the hard streets and cold back alleys of our cities and in
primitive rural campsites.
That we have people, particularly veterans, of such desperate circumstances
in the world’s most prosperous democracy is an inexplicable contradiction.
Homelessness among approximately a quarter million of our Armed Forces
veterans in such times of national prosperity is not an insurmountable
irony. It is a tragedy, more because we allow it to continue than because we
allowed it to occur.
We like to say to our veterans, “you are not forgotten.” Let us make sure
that we mean it and say it to all veterans. Let us stubbornly refuse to
allow homeless veterans to become our forgotten veterans; let us firmly
resolve to give them a real helping hand.
In the DAV’s assistance to homeless veterans, “We Don’t Leave Our Wounded
Behind” has become a promise and a rallying theme. This year in May and
June, the DAV will host “stand downs” to assist homeless veterans all across
the Nation. We will have another homeless stand down at our National
Convention in Miami, Florida, in August.
Undeniably, we must devote more resources and be more resourceful to attack
the root causes, break the cycle, and defeat the blight of homelessness
among veterans. Homeless veterans need such basic services as medical care,
financial counseling, vocational training and rehabilitation, employment
assistance, and family counseling to overcome the causes of their
homelessness. The DAV and community groups operate various homeless
programs, but the need for services is far beyond our capacity to assist and
our resources. The meager funding provided by the Government for homeless
initiatives is not close to being commensurate with the magnitude of the
problem. With the focus on the problems of the homeless, we can expect the
introduction of bills and recommendation of increased appropriations to
address these issues. We hope to see the members of these committees take
the lead in supporting these measures.
Much of what I have already said calls upon you to enact laws to establish
or improve veterans’ programs, but the best veterans’ benefits legislation
is ineffective if not followed and not enforced. With judicial review, we
have a means to enforce your laws when the VA does not follow them.
Unfortunately, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims has itself sometimes
strayed from fundamental principles of VA law and has attempted to corrupt
the informal and benevolent administrative system by imposing the
formalities of litigation upon veterans and the VA. Last year you acted
without hesitation to restore the VA’s long-standing duty to assist veterans
and remove the nebulous and burdensome court-imposed formalities of the
“well-grounded claim” requirement. Additional work remains to be done,
however. This year’s Independent Budget incorporates two of the DAV’s
resolutions that seek legislation to improve the judicial review process.
The Independent Budget recommends that you change the law to require the
courts to enforce the benefit-of-the-doubt rule. The law now requires the VA
to give the veteran the benefit of the doubt when the evidence tends no more
to disprove than prove a fact material to the issue. The Court of Appeals
for Veterans Claims does not enforce this statutory rule. It will overturn a
factual finding of the VA only if it has no plausible basis in the record.
Thus, the VA has total freedom to ignore the benefit-of-the-doubt rule.
The Independent Budget recommends that you enact legislation to give the
Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit the authority to review questions
of law decided by the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Under current
law, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims can create a new rule of law
for the first time without that new rule of law being subject to further
review by any court. That situation is anomalous in our legal system and
allows ill-advised rules to go unremedied. Observing the shortcomings of
this situation, the American Bar Association has also adopted a resolution
calling for this change.
We hope to see legislation introduced this year to make these much-needed
corrections in the judicial review process for veterans’ claims. We have
also recommended that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit be given
authority to review the VA’s revisions of the disability rating schedule.
Currently, no remedy exists for revisions that are totally arbitrary or in
clear violation of the law. We should never condone an arbitrary and
capricious or unlawful rule in the area of veterans’ benefits, but we should
be especially intolerant of such a rule in the rating of service-connected
disabilities.
I want to assure you that improvements in the judicial review process are
every bit as important as improvements in basic benefits law. No matter how
well expressed, your will and your intent are frustrated and do not achieve
their laudable goals unless the VA follows your laws, and when it does not,
veterans must be able to enforce the rights you have conferred upon them
through meaningful judicial review.
With our positive recommendations to improve veterans’ programs and their
delivery systems, we call upon you to reject recommendations that have goals
or effects that are not in the best interests of veterans. Two of the
current proposals that trouble us the most are lump-sum settlements in lieu
of ongoing periodic payments of disability compensation and privatization of
veterans’ health care and other services.
As you know, current law authorizes compensation on a continuing basis for
relief from the effects of service-connected disability for as long as the
disability persists at a compensable level. The degree of disability
determines the rate of compensation, thereby requiring reevaluation of the
disability when it undergoes a change in severity. Lump-sum payments have
been recommended as a way for the Government to avoid the administrative
costs of reevaluating service-connected disabilities and as a way to avoid
future liabilities to service-connected disabled veterans when their
disabilities worsen. Like the abusive practices of some unscrupulous private
operators who take advantage of the predicament of the terminally ill to
obtain the rights to their life insurance settlements in exchange for an
immediate viatical payment that is only a fraction of the value of the life
insurance, VA would engage in the practice of enticing veterans, at a
vulnerable point in their lives, !
to bargain away their future compensation for an immediate lump-sum
settlement. Such a scheme is contrary to the benevolent purposes of our
veterans’ programs and our obligation to care for our veterans disabled in
the service of their country. The DAV strongly opposes lump-sum settlements
for compensation. We urge you to give this idea no further consideration.
While, in some instances, it may have pure motives and while it may be
attractive to veterans on its face, privatization of veterans’ health care
or other services is not in the best interests of veterans. At its worst,
with a deceptively attractive alternative to VA care or other services, this
proposal exploits some veterans’ dissatisfaction with the shortcomings of
the VA system and a desire for the simple solution to justify undermining,
diminishing, and gradual dismantling of the VA system over the long term.
Once the VA infrastructure is dismantled, veterans will have no guarantee of
care or services that fully address their special needs. At its best, its
good but misguided intentions have the same disastrous result. On the
surface, such proposals are easy to sell and easy to defend, but more
careful inspection reveals their true motives or folly. We urge you to
oppose recommendations to privatize VA services. At the same time, we urge
you to act to strengthen an!
d ensure VA maintains its health care system, particularly its capacity to
furnish specialized treatment programs at acceptable levels.
The DAV views the VA’s specialized health care programs as the core of the
veterans’ health care system. In the Veterans Eligibility Reform Act of
1996, Congress imposed the requirement that the VA report annually on its
ability, within its specialized programs, to maintain the unique treatment
and rehabilitative needs of disabled veterans with spinal cord dysfunction,
blindness, amputations, and mental illness. This law also required the VA to
maintain the capacity to treat these veterans at least at its October 9,
1996, levels. Advisory committees which monitor these programs have reported
that the VA has failed to maintain its specialized services at the mandated
levels and that these programs have been compromised by reorganization,
staff shortages, and inadequate resource allocations. Across the Nation,
wide and marked variations in the quality and level of services have
resulted. Because these programs are national assets and critical to the
treatment of disabled v!
eterans, we cannot overemphasize the importance of your oversight and
intervention where necessary.
We hope you will support and participate in a number of other activities to
remember and honor the sacrifices and contributions of America’s veterans
this year. In addition to the groundwork for a memorial to disabled
veterans, we are in the midst of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary
of the Korean War, and we have continual activities and programs to keep the
fate of America’s prisoners of war and missing in action in the American
consciousness and conscience.
As the members of our Armed Forces continue to patrol the demilitarized
zone, we are commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Korean War, the first
military clash of the Cold War and one in which the United States, the
Republic of Korea, and our allies joined under the United Nations flag for
the first time and fought a brutal war to stop Communist aggression on the
Korean Peninsula. During the commemoration period from June 25, 2000, to
November 11, 2003, a partnership among the VA; other Government and military
departments; veterans’ organizations; community and civic organizations; and
businesses and corporations will sponsor and conduct a number of special
events. The primary purposes of these commemoration events are to thank and
honor veterans of the Korean War and their families and provide Americans
with a clearer understanding and appreciation of the Korean War, its
lessons, impact, and broader historical significance.
On Memorial Day, the DAV would especially like to invite you to watch on the
Public Broadcast System (PBS) a documentary film titled Korean War Stories
that we supported and helped create along with the Ford Motor Company and
PNC Financial Services. The film features several of your colleagues and
other notable Korean War veterans who vividly recount their own experiences
during the war. Although it is often called the “forgotten war,” it is in
reality our forgotten victory¾a victory without which our world would most
likely be very different today and a victory for which we are deeply
indebted to our brave Korean War veterans. With these veterans’ firsthand
accounts, this film helps put that bravery and that victory into a
perspective unavailable elsewhere.
Among those we remember, those we must never forget are our prisoners of war
and missing in action. To focus on issues surrounding Americans taken
prisoner or listed as missing in action from World War II, the Korean War,
the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the Persian Gulf War, the DAV is hosting
a national summit on POW/MIA issues. This summit will be held in Washington,
D.C., on September 20, 2001. Our aim is to assess the current status of
efforts to achieve the fullest possible accounting of these missing
Americans, including those who might still be alive. We will also work to
provide a broad perspective on the prominent issues as a way of informing
the public and influencing our Nation’s current and future public policy on
POW/ MIA issues. We look forward to your support and participation in this
and other initiatives to keep up the vigil on POW/MIAs.
As you can see, our work for veterans continues to involve many issues and
many challenges. As I observed earlier, we are at a crossroads in veterans’
affairs. There is no reason why what is in front of us cannot be much better
than what is behind us. Our history of meeting our obligations to veterans
has fallen short not only of our highest ideals but also of our
capabilities. We simply have not always kept veterans at the top of the list
of national priorities. We can longer excuse our failure to provide veterans
the benefits and services they rightfully deserve by saying we cannot afford
to fully honor our promises. We have the means to meet our obligations. Now
we must demonstrate we have the will to do so.
With our prosperity and our projected budget surpluses, we cannot honorably
let veterans and their programs continue to suffer. At this turning point,
we should look over our shoulders at some of the bad things government did
to veterans in the past and say “never again.” Never again will we agree to
let other interests in Congress divert funding from veterans’ programs to
spending elsewhere. Never again will we eliminate or reduce veterans’
entitlements to reduce the budget in times of increased spending in other
areas of government. Never again will we tell veterans that the citizens of
our grateful Nation have generously provided them free benefits as repayment
for their honorable service, but the government has decided that they must
pay user fees and co-payments to obtain these veterans’ benefits.
As we then turn to look forward, we must revive that sense of something
higher in what we do for veterans. We must reaffirm our commitment to
veterans, and live up to it. The members of these committees must continue
to send a strong message by your own actions. You must set the example.
Before you do anything else, make sure you have taken care of veterans.
Remind your colleagues that veterans ask far less than what they have given.
Educate your colleagues on the higher merits of veterans’ programs. Those
disadvantaged by misfortune deserve assistance from the more fortunate, but
disabled veterans are more worthy because they are in their predicament by
reason of their conscious choice to put their lives and health on the line
for their country and fellow citizens.
In considering the message I have brought you today on behalf of disabled
veterans and in your work on veterans’ issues in the future, I ask that you,
as I do, remain mindful that our right to convene here in these stately
halls of government cost the lives and health of many brave Americans. You
are therefore entrusted with the most sacred and fundamental of government
responsibilities. As the architects and stewards of veterans’ policy, and to
further the legitimate ends of veterans’ programs, you must have the same
kind of noble motives that our veterans had in making that conscious choice
to render service to their country. For their invaluable service, you must
respond with benefits and services appropriate to their contributions and
sacrifices.
Our cause in the DAV is your cause, and that cause is a just one. For this
cause, we are then joined together in partnership. If we are on the same
team, we must pull in the same direction. If we have the same goals, and are
willing to work conscientiously to achieve them, we will have success this
year despite the height of the hurdles in our path. From this crossroads and
crucial point in the history of veterans’ programs, let us continue our
forward advance, and let us choose only the right course.
For all that you have done, for all that you will do, and for allowing me
the opportunity to appear before you on behalf of the Disabled American
Veterans today, thank you.
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