Government Affairs On The Web

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012

VA Denies Veteran Small Businesses

BY RIC DAVIDGE, CHAIR, WITH GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS STAFF

We have all heard about the terrible backlog in the system of adjudicating claims in the VA’s Compensation and Pension system. Those in charge of the VA today are correct when they say they inherited a mess of a system with such a backlog and delays that even with many more resources it will take several years to make a significant dent in the backlog to make sure each applicant gets an accurate adjudication in a timely fashion.

There is no excuse, however, in the verification of veteran-owned small businesses and service-disabled, veteran-owned small businesses. The VA started this process just a few years ago, and managed to “overly complicate a one-car funeral,” in the words of one fed-up veteran.

Before the VA started this process, there were some 26,000 veterans listed in the VA database. Now there are 7,000. Every case we know of in which a business has been denied is a legitimate business in which a veteran owns and controls the business. Several we know have been put out of business for specious reasons that have no bearing on the legitimacy of that business.

Congress and the General Accountability Office are investigating this growing scandal at the VA, along with the VA ignoring the “Veterans’ First” law, and the push by many near the top of the VA to favor big business. The excuse given is that VA exceeds its minimum for contracts given to veteran- and service-disabled, veteran-owned businesses. Now it turns out that the VA has been inflating those numbers by not counting the cost of many of its acquisitions.

The VA is supposed to be helping veteran entrepreneurs create jobs and hire other veterans. Instead, in far too many instances, the Center for Verification and Evaluation at the VA has been putting veterans out of business. The only relief anyone is getting is by taking the VA to court.

This scandal at CVE – and the even bigger scandal in VA procurement – are so important that the White House must join with Congress and the courts to fix this mess at the earliest possible time. Surely this is something the Attorney General ought to set his sights on.


A NATIONAL TREASURE

There was a time here in the Nation’s Capital when legislators with clashing ideologies debated stridently during the day, then laid down their rhetorical swords to eat and drink and carouse in the night spots of Washington. They lived there when Congress was in session. Their families came to know each other. Those days are long gone. 

Today, many members of Congress spend a minimum amount of time in Washington. It is said some leaders on both sides forbid their rank and file from consorting with the “enemy” (i.e., the other party).   

This Us vs. Them mentality pervades much of the discourse today. It is reflective of the polar opposites that see no middle ground – except in one area: aid for veterans, although this is not exclusively so. When Chris Smith, a conservative Republican from New Jersey, took over as chair of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee from VVA life member Lane Evans (D-Ill.), he argued vociferously on behalf of the veterans he served. Then he was deposed.

Still, as VVA has argued, issues concerning veterans and our families are not a Democratic bailiwick. They do not reside in a Republican province. They are the concern of all Americans.

And thus far, despite the rancor in Washington over the deficit and the tax code, extending unemployment benefits and the payroll tax cut, and myriad other issues, programs for veterans have not been slashed. In part, this is a reflection of a quiet but real understanding, central to our national core, that those who stand guard for America deserve this consideration.

In fact, on one Monday in November, President Obama signed the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, a bipartisan bill originally sponsored by Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), chair of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and Patti Murray (D-Wash.), his counterpart in the Senate. Both Sen. Murray and Rep. Miller joined the President for the signing of this important legislation.

This “rare moment of bipartisanship,” as one CBS reporter called it, signified Obama’s first success in “pushing individual initiatives of his American Jobs Act through Congress piecemeal after its failure to pass earlier in the fall.”

“It’s up to us to fight for our troops and their families when they come home,” President Obama said. “And that’s why today is such a wonderful day – because today a deeply grateful nation is doing right by our military and paying back just a little bit of what we owe to our veterans.”

The bill offers businesses tax incentives for hiring unemployed veterans, of whom the Department of Labor estimates there are some 850,000 today. The VOW to Hire Heroes Act will provide tax credits of up to $2,400 for employers who hire veterans who have been unemployed at least four weeks; up to $5,600 for hiring veterans who have been unemployed longer than six months; and up to $9,600 for businesses that hire veterans who have service-connected disabilities and have been unemployed longer than six months.

“The legislation is also representative of our political parties coming together for a common cause,” Rep. Miller said. “There should be no dispute to support those who have served our country honorably and no argument that our veterans deserve the very best from their elected officials.

“Through the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, we will help hundreds of thousands of our unemployed veterans get back into the workforce. Our veterans are a national treasure and an asset to any company looking to hire someone of integrity, leadership, and character.”

As James Dao pointed out in The New York Times, however: “Though the unemployment rate among veterans of all ages is actually lower than the overall population, the rate is high among veterans of the current wars, standing at 12 percent, compared with about 9 percent for the population at large. The higher rate is driven largely by widespread joblessness among veterans under 25 years old, whose unemployment rate was 30 percent last month.”

On a White House blog, Dao reported, Marine Corps veteran Justin Constantine wrote that the tax credits were not “an overall panacea to our veterans’ unemployment problems,” but when combined with other measures, might at least make a dent in the unemployment rate.

“Unfortunately, our youngest veterans are entering the private workforce at a very challenging time,” Constantine wrote. “Many of them are likely to be employed in industries such as construction, manufacturing, and transportation, which have all struggled in the last few years. Further, many of these vets come from and return to rural parts of the country and do not have the benefit of a college degree.

“Another critical issue is that there currently does not exist a truly effective and cohesive transition assistance program for them. And on top of all that, a staggering number of our returning service members suffer from behavioral health issues, including post-traumatic stress, but these issues are not being adequately addressed.”

Now it’s time for each of our states to join this effort. Legislation is underway in Alaska, for example, that will provide a state corporate tax credit of $2,000 for each veteran hired and kept employed at no less than thirty hours a week for a year in that state. When added to the new federal tax credit, employers will have a significant economic incentive to hire veterans. Let’s hope other states step up to this challenge.


BLUE, BLUE WATER

Reps. Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.), Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.), and Tim Walz (D-Minn.) have introduced legislation to extend benefits for ailments associated with Agent Orange exposure suffered by “blue-water veterans” who served in waters off the coast of South Vietnam aboard Navy ships but did not set foot on land.

The bill, H.R. 3612, mirrors legislation introduced in the Senate earlier this year by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). The bill would move the position of the U.S. government back toward what it was in 1991 when the original Agent Orange legislation was passed. That law extended benefits to all veterans who served in Vietnam and were suffering from diseases determined by the VA to have been linked to Agent Orange exposure. In 2002 the government narrowed the law’s coverage by interpreting the phrase “served in the Republic of Vietnam” to mean only those who set foot on the ground in Vietnam.

Later, the interpretation was broadened to include veterans who sailed on the country’s inland waterways, but it still excluded those who sailed on the seas adjacent to Vietnam.

According to Rep. Gibson, some 33,000 blue-water veterans have been denied coverage. “We’re talking about a responsibility I think our country has, and we can do it without breaking the bank,” he said.

VVA backs this legislation, and believes that the latest Institute of Medicine report demonstrates the feasibility and likelihood of the exposure of blue-water sailors. The fact that the dosage cannot be determined for each veteran is irrelevant, as there is no such thing as a safe dosage of dioxin, which the chair of the IOM panel admitted in response to a question by VVA.

VVA still believes that under veterans’ law the Secretary has enough evidence to declare the blue-water sailors presumptively service connected in the same manner as their colleagues who served on land. In the meantime, VVA will push for early passage of this legislation.


DOD DOLLARS FOR RESEARCH

One of the very small, yet very key, items in Defense Authorization bill for FY’12 is $10 million for a Gulf War illness research program. This represents a 25 percent increase over last year – pretty remarkable in the current penny-pinching environment.

The hero here is Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), who sponsored an amendment last summer that increased the funding to $10 million. Friendly senators convinced their brethren to go along with the House in this matter. Well done.


DISTURBING STATISTICS

Some $10.2 million also funds a Peer-Reviewed Lung Cancer Research Program. Lung cancer among military personnel and veterans continues to be the most lethal of all cancers, taking more lives annually than the next four most prevalent cancers combined.

The five-year survival rate is only 15 percent. A major contributor to the low survival rate is the fact that more than 70 percent of lung cancer diagnoses occur at a late stage. Furthermore, military personnel have increased exposure to lung cancer carcinogens and are more susceptible to lung cancer than the general population.

VVA believes that use of CT scans to diagnose lung cancer at the VA would result in many more diagnoses at an earlier stage in the disease, and therefore extend the lives and productivity of so many veterans. The financial cost would likely be the same or less, as it costs a lot of money to have veterans die of cancer in VA care.