Free Republic

First, the good news. resident Joe Biden’s Veterans Administration (VA) budget request for Fiscal Year 2022 is $270 billion--a 10% increase over 2021 levels. Now, the bad news. Picking up where a failed Senate bill in 2019 left off, the budget’s language would amend Title 38 of the U.S. Code, a.k.a. Veterans’ Benefits, to limit veteran options on who may legally file disability and benefits claims on their behalf. It would hurt millions of veterans. Though well-intentioned, the last Congress introduced legislation which would criminalize providing such services without being accredited by the VA, thereby sharply reducing veteran claim options....

The Democrat habit of appointing “good Democrats” to positions without regard for the required administrative skills it calls for is hurting almost 900,000 disabled veterans. The incompetence of Barack Obama’s Veterans Affairs Department has created a bureaucratic nightmare in which more than 65% of its disability claims sit on someone’s desk for more than 125 days. More than this 16% of the cases that are brought to resolution are done so in error according to veterans’ advocate groups’ testimony to the House Veterans Affairs Committee last week. The V.A is totally underprepared for the predictable increase in disability claims stepped...