The White House said Friday it is proposing a 13.6 percent increase in funding for the handling of veterans benefits, an effort to reduce the Veterans Affairs Department’s massive backlog of disability claims. ~snip~ The number of pending claims filed by veterans seeking compensation stood this month at 885,000, 70 percent of which have been pending for more than 125 days. Veterans can wait a year or more for a decision at particularly overloaded regional offices, among them Baltimore...