Disabled Veterans Deserve Better
With the threat of yet another government shutdown finally behind us – at least for the remainder of this fiscal year, Congress can now focus on other important issues that have been set aside pending the resolution of the funding impasse. One of those issues is the perennial challenge of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) implementing policy to provide our nation’s disabled veterans with easy and timely access to the benefits they deserve.
The unfortunate situation with disabled veterans is another case of the federal government making big promises but failing to deliver. According to the VA, in 2023 it “delivered more care and more benefits to more Veterans than ever before,” providing “$163 billion in earned benefits, including $150 billion in compensation and pension benefits, to 1,535,685 Veterans and survivors – all of which are all-time records.” This all sounds great, but it masks the fact that the VA is being overwhelmed by the requests for help from veterans and the agency is in a state of disarray.
An NBC News report in September depicted the current disfunction at the VA, noting that “thousands of workers [are leaving] the VA amid a flood of new cases and quota demands.” The NBC report further revealed that VA personnel are not being properly trained, that mistakes on veteran disability ratings are common and that staff morale is “on the floor.” One VA employee admitted that “confusion fills much of” their time at work and stated: “You didn’t know if you were processing [claims] correctly. No one really knew what to do.”
This is happening at a time when the VA needs more help than ever before to process a flood of new claims. The agency currently faces a claims inventory of almost one million and a case backlog of over 300,000, the highest level in more than 10 years. The result is many veterans are being denied benefits they have honorably earned or are waiting far too long to receive the help they need and deserve.
Given the sad state of the VA, you would think Congress would be proactively working to address the issue and make it as easy as possible for veterans to get help in filing their claims and navigating the VA’s bureaucratic morass. But amazingly, the opposite is happening. Members of Congress, led by Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) in the Senate and Representative Chris Pappas (D-NH) in the House, have introduced legislation, the GUARD VA Benefits Act, that would make it illegal for private sector services to help veterans.
This makes no sense and further complicates the problem. These private services – many run by veterans and former VA employees – are helping to ensure their veteran clients file accurate and thorough claims with the VA. This reduces the wait time for veterans to get their benefits, avoids the need for veterans to hire expensive attorneys to handle an appeal, and cuts down on paperwork and processing time for VA staff, which in turn reduces the case backlog.
Proponents of the GUARD bill argue that it is needed to protect veterans from “claims sharks,” fraudsters that try to take advantage of veterans. Their cause may be noble, but their legislation is far too broad, banning veterans from seeking help from any private service, instead of just blocking the bad actors.
Proponents further claim that veterans can get all the help they need for free from government-supported Veteran Service Organizations (VSOs), like the American Legion, Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars. But these VSOs are underfunded and understaffed and often fail to provide veterans with the necessary level of service.
Fortunately, alternative bipartisan legislation has been introduced, the PLUS for Veterans Act, sponsored by Representatives Jack Bergman (R-MI), a former Lt. General in the Marines, Lou Correa (D-CA) and Nancy Mace (R-SC). Their bill would require private services to become accredited with the VA, which would protect veterans by screening out the fraudsters and other bad actors. But once accredited, these companies would be allowed to continue serving veterans who choose to hire them. That seems like an obvious compromise which even our polarized Congress should be able to embrace.
Ultimately, we need to fix the broken VA and make it easier for our nation’s veterans to get the benefits they have earned without having to seek outside help, whether from a VSO or private service. But until that happens, we should be doing everything we can to ensure veterans have access to the help they need.
Peter Mihalick is former legislative director and counsel to former Reps. Barbara Comstock, Virginia Republican, and Rodney Blum, Iowa Republican
