VA Chief: Shutdown Could Hit Millions of Vets

[pinboy3niner]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON October 9, 2013 (AP)
By KEVIN FREKING Associated Press

About 3.8 million veterans will not receive disability compensation next month if the partial government shutdown continues into late October, Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki says. Some 315,000 veterans and 202,000 surviving spouses and dependents will see pension payments stopped.

...


The House has passed legislation that would provide veterans disability, pension and other benefits in the event of a prolonged shutdown. But the White House has urged lawmakers not to take a piecemeal approach to continuing government services.

Shinseki plans to make that case as well, saying it's not the best solution for veterans. He'll note that even if the VA were fully funded, some services to veterans would suffer.

His written testimony (prepared for his scheduled appearance Wednesday before the House Committee on Veterans Affairs) says the Labor Department has largely shut down its VETS program, which provides employment and counseling services to veterans. The Small Business Administration has closed 10 centers focused on helping veterans create and operate businesses. And the Housing and Urban Development Department is not issuing new vouchers to homeless vets, though those relying on vouchers to pay rent will be able to continue using them.

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Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/va-secretary-shutdown-hit-millions-

[4bucksagallon]

1. When the VA is shuttered and the Social Security checks stop, the Republican Party is doomed.

[pinboy3niner]

2. From your lips to God's ears, brother. nt

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Only if they fail in their efforts to pin it on Obama.

Unfortunately, a lot of vets are still emotionally invested in the ideology that sent them to war, and are vulnerable to Tea Party propaganda. I'm afraid that, with their years of practice at denial, theymay buy the line that the shutdown is due to Obama's failure to "compromise."

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Almost all Departments interlink services

between each other - and these are specified in the appropriations legislation. For example, HHS normally has funding set aside to assist Military families and Vets - http://www.hhs.gov/children/supportmilitaryfamilies.html

You can't fucking cherry-pick the funding every time people complain. It is too damn complex. A HUGE support infrastructure has been built-up over the decades that is encompassed into the various appropriations bills that are thousands of pages long. A Paulson-like 1-page bullshit document like the Crudzites keep drafting, ain't gonna do it.

[pinboy3niner]

4. And all it would take is a House signoff on a 16-page clean CR to end the madness

I posted this OP because it's the first story I've seen that addresses the interlinked, multiple agency roles in serving the needs of of one group. It shows why the GOP's self-serving piecemeal bills are a total sham, designed only to give them cover and not to solve the very real problems they created.

[Lasher]

5. A clean CR would only briefly postpone the madness.

The debt ceiling deadline is just a week away, on October 17.