VA: Veterans’ Benefits Will Be Suspended in Prolonged Shutdown

Military veterans will lose many of their veterans’ benefits in “late October” if the government shutdown persists, according to newly-released U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs documents.

The VA has been continuing to make payments to veterans in the days since the Oct. 1 government shutdown, but agency officials say the pool of available money is dwindling.

“Claims processing and payments in the compensation, pension, education and vocational rehabilitation programs are anticipated to continue through late October. However, in the event of a prolonged shutdown, claims processing and payments in these programs would be suspended when available funding is exhausted,” said a statement from the agency’s public affairs office.

The impasse also threatens to further slow the VA’s backlog of overdue claims for benefits from needy veterans....

I hope somebody sets the comments straight. The House funded this last THURSDAY and Reed is letting it set and won’t bring it to a vote. “Approved by a 259-157 vote”.

Let’s find the 157 and bring them into glaring light. That will be easy.

I believe I have enough confidence in the Marine Corps Times to take this as a truthful article setting the record straight.

http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/article/20131003/NEWS05/310030032/House-passes-shutdown-exemption-VA

The government shutdown exemption for the Veterans’ Affairs Department passed Thursday by the House of Representative does not resolve all of VA’s potential problems.

Approved by a 259-157 vote, the measure comes in response to a warning from VA that it could run out money to pay veterans benefits by late October if a government shutdown continues. Not only are Nov. 1 payments at risk, but VA officials said claims processing could also slow.

The House measure, HJ Res 72, would provide funds for disability compensation, survivors’ benefits and monthly GI Bill checks.

But the resolution would not fix everything. It includes no funds for medical and prosthetic research, information technology, the National Cemetery Administration, or the VA inspector general, and does not provide grants for state cemeteries and state veterans homes, according to an analysis provided to Congress by veterans groups.

Additionally, the funding resolution would provide about $6 billion less for benefits than the House approved in June when it passed its version of VA’s full-year appropriations bill for 2014.

In thw long run, none of that likely matters, because the Senate has no plans to take up the bill and the White House has warned it would be vetoed by President Obama.

While Obama did sign on Monday a bill that exempts military pay from being interrupted in the shutdown, the administration has since taken a hard line as the House of Representatives has come up with pile of single-issue measures to appropriate money for popular programs while leaving the overall federal shutdown in place.

In addition to money for veterans benefits, the House has bills to open national parks and national landmarks, to fund medical research programs at the National Institutes of Health, to fund parts of the budget of the District of Columbia and to expand on the number of federal civilians exempt from shutdown-related furloughs.

All of the votes against the House resolution came from Democrats.

Rep. Michael Michaud of Maine, ranking Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said the funding exemption “is nothing more than a political ploy.”

If Republicans “were really serious about helping veterans,” they would vote for a full government funding bill, he said. “Passing that bill will make sure that veterans are no longer used — like they’re being used today — as a pawn in a political party’s scheme.”

However, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the resolution was part of a “good-faith efforts to keep key parts of the government running, including important veterans’ programs.”

“With the backlog of disability claims continuing to pile up and veterans being forced to wait longer and longer to receive their benefits, it is critical that the White House and Congress work together to support our veterans,” Boehner said, noting President Clinton and Congress worked together during the last government shutdown in 1996 to protect veterans programs and benefits.

VA spokeswoman Victoria Dillon said processing of veterans’ claims is hurt by the shutdown.

“VA will not be able to continue overtime for claims processors,” she said. Overtime is a key part of VA’s strategy for eliminating the claims backlog by the end of 2015.

Claims workers had been on mandatory overtime for months, and VA intended to continue mandatory overtime through early November and then switch to voluntary overtime for the remainder of the calendar year, Dillion said.

VA blamed Congress for the possibility that it won’t get the backlog eliminated on schedule, although House Veterans’ Affairs Committee aides said they were never informed that VA had any plans to extend mandatory overtime beyond Sept. 30, the last day of the fiscal year.

Time to bring this up

CITIZENS OF THE REPUBLIC IT IS TIME TO DO A RECALL

Two rebuttals the GOPES (gop Elite Snobs) running things should be using when the demo-coms,(( the DC’s, (they’ill never call the democrats either, they can’t even call them socialist) as the DC’s begin propagandizing dire results for a government shutdown and racism where they could articluate the individual media alphabet soups so called news reporting contriubuting to the racial strife which they created . But this bunch of GOPES won’t because it doesn’t fit their mode of “bi-partisanship”

Government Shutdowns

The four passenger helicopter already overloaded with eight just barely lifting off its roof top heli-pad. Attached to its steel tube runner type landing gear below the fuselage were about a dozen more desperate people clinging to the gear . As the craft struggles to get airborne. it lurches skyward as one of those clinging to the steel tubes used as landing gear lets go. Falling to a death some 35 feet down to the refugee crowded lamding pad atop the Saigon American Embassy roof..

They were fleeing South Viet Nam through its closed US embassy because American support was withdrawn and denied .Leaving its army running out of ammo and conviction. Sold out by an American congress controled ironically by Democrats that.decided to shed its support for a democratic form of government to what became a US ward for a socialist/communist replacement . It was a harbinger of what that political party will bring to the US 50 years later.

Because of Obamacare most recalling of defunding\ governemnt shutdowns simply goes back to Gingrich’s time when he was Speaker. This earlier defunding/ government shutdown had profound implications where hundreds of thousands died because of it. Like the constitutional constrains on central government. That abandonment of Viet Nam is hardly if ever mentioned or discussed in classrooms despite American humiliation could be demonstrated in that film clip described in this articles lead paragraph.. Because it was created by the Democrat party responding to the socialist/communist radicals that had taken over the “liberal arts eduicational industry” and were slowly taking that party over as well..

Not only did we lose a war because of it. But those same university socialist educators which encouraged this defunding , and dis-honoring the of the 58,000 deaths of our military. Also encouraged their charges to use humiliation such as calling retuning servicemen “baby killers” (only later to kill their own) and spitting in their faces. Their educational products are now on their own, borrowing a military term, R&R . Running and Ruining destroying this country . For this time the same group are now in control of that political party.

Changing it so much that in their 2012 convention booed any reference to “The Creator” ,God.. Demonstrating that any connection to the political party of JFK is gone. They are Democrat in name only and really Demo-Coms.. A term their present political opposition would choke on repeating . For the Republicans are.unable even to use the milder epithet “socialist”. The DCs are now demanding funding for a cherished socialist concept replete with 2000 pages of controls for the health collective. Controls which includes newly created bureaucracies for enforcement some under the direct control of the President .

Controls that:; Put thousands out of a 40 work week and reduced them to part time employees, Shut down physician hospitals, confiscated union health plans. prohibited private contracts with individual doctors, replaced medical specialists with socialist bureaucrats (death panels) Shut down medical insurance companies, or doubled the cost of health plans for starters...Yet not a word of this will be mentioned.by the complicit media apararatzicks running major visual media outlets.

Racism

For there is another example of the damage the aparatzicks do and will continue to do until challanged. Expect a continuing of the racism charge. OK ! Let’s see who started that ? It really began with the President of The United States implying an attacker was a “victim”. of a security guard doing his job when shot and killed by the guard defending himself..There seems to be a number of socialist agendas cited as Obama’s reasoning for doing this. One of which is living in collectives. However on Obama’s “That could have been me” cue the propaganda arm swung into action with drastic results..

Pick on some security guard who’s doing his job and make him expendable. Time to employ propaganda devices. Emphasize that white jews last name! . Call that surveilance “stalking”!, The area he’s patrolling “public access” area not gated “owned by rich whitieys”,never mention the guard is part african and dark skinned.. Depict that person he’s watching a 10 year old black kid (show picture) a “victim” and a saint. Not a six foot 160 pound 16 year old, “who was killed in cold blood” and not who was killed fighting over a gun..The episode was given the full hyperbolic treatment which lasted for months and the results are clear..

You will never see a true or false poll conducted in black districts asking if they beleive the Zimmerman attacker a Travon Martin was the following : a “victim”,” in a white neighborhood”,” ill-legally stopped” ,”accosted”, and “shot in cold blood” . My guess is 80 % would respond “true”. Since this barrage of propaganda black youths have been using these devices as their excuse even citing the “victims” first name

Innocent whites, hispanics and asiains being murdered because of the inflamatory rhetoric composed of lies and missconceptions being driven by the regime and its supporters in the media begun by the President of the United States.. Obama never disassociated himself from it, nor discouraged it.and the reasoning behind it ?

Well, he can’t. He was using lies and fabrications painting a target on that security guards back when he geared up his black base .Ain’t that neat ? What better way to discourage any investigation into malfeasance and corruption by organizing the base for riots in the streets ? Think it’s too far fetched ? Think it’s not working ? Look again http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3051558/posts

To date the political opposition known as Republican has yet to mention or comment on these examples of how this regime operates. Time to demand that they behave like political opposition or leave the rostrum !
Now is the time not to ask but demand...FIGHT BACK

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