U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

Dome Memo: The Wimpy budget?

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:52:18 -0400

GLADLY PAY TUESDAY? Call it the J. Wellington Wimpy budget. The N.C. Senate passed a $20 billion budget this week that doesn't say where $500 million in revenue would come from. Senate leaders said they'll work out the tax part later, much as the Popeye character promised to "gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

DUCKWORTH'S BACK ON: U.S. Sen. Richard Burr drew national attention for holding up the nomination of injured Iraq veteran Tammy Duckworth as Veterans Affairs secretary. He said he had questions about her financial disclosure forms, but declined to give details. By mid-week, he said he would allow the nomination to go forward.

EARMARK TRANSPARENCY: In the bad old days, members of Congress secretly inserted earmarks in the budget. Now, they post the requests on their Web sites. If you can find them. And they don't all call them earmarks. And their methods of tallying up the requests differ so much it's difficult to compare to them, apples to apples. But it's a start.

IN OTHER NEWS: A fix to the State Health Plan narrowly passed the state Senate. ... Former Board of Transportation member Louis Sewell got an invite to the Executive Mansion from Gov. Beverly Perdue. ... Vice President Joe Biden dropped by Fort Bragg to welcome home troops. North Carolina's been pretty popular for executive branch visits since the state went for President Obama in November. ... The Senate budget would take oversight of state testing away from schools Superintendent June Atkinson, the latest in a tug-of-war between her and Gov. Perdue over education.

Burr: I'll support Duckworth

ryanteaguebeckwith — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:12:21 -0400

Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina has agreed to allow the nomination of injured Iraq veteran Tammy Duckworth go forward for a top post in the Veterans Affairs administration.

"I will support her," Burr told a a group of editors and reporters at The News and Observer on Wednesday.

Burr, the ranking Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, last week held up the nomination of Duckworth because he had questions about a confidential financial questionnaire she had filled out, Rob Christensen reports.

The move angered some veterans groups because Duckworth is a National Guard major who lost both of her legs when the helicopter she was piloting was attacked in Iraq.

More after the jump.

Bill would help wounded soldiers

ryanteaguebeckwith — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:37:36 -0400

A bill would help soldiers with brain injuries.

Rep. Grier Martin, a Raleigh Democrat who served in Afghanistan, said he filed the bill to help veterans who fall through the cracks of the military health care system.

Currently, the state's Medicaid system pays for traumatic brain injuries suffered up to the age of 21, which are considered developmental disabilities.

But Martin said that leaves out a lot of veterans.

"For the most part, if you're a soldier and you get (traumatic brain injury) in combat, you're aged out of that," he said.

Though many get care while on active duty through the Department of Defense and later through the Veterans administration, some can't make it to those hospitals.

The bill would direct state government to apply for a waiver from Medicaid to help people 22 and older with brain injuries.

Burr bill would ease gun limits for vets

ryanteaguebeckwith — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 08:17:32 -0400

A bill by U.S. Sen. Richard Burr would prevent veterans from being declared mentally unfit to own a gun.

Since the Virginia Tech shootings last year, Congress and several states have sought to tighten rules on who can legally buy a gun, but Burr's bill would prevent the federal veterans agency from declaring veterans "mentally defective" on its own.

Instead, judges, magistrates or other judicial authorities would have to do it.

Burr said that some veterans were added to the list not because they were a risk but because the Department of Veterans Affairs assigned them guardians to oversee their finances.

"This is a constitutional issue," he said. The database is for criminals, "not for folks who have trouble handling their own affairs."

The National Rifle Association and several veterans groups back Burr, but gun control-organizations argue that veterans have higher rates of suicide than non-veterans and might be more at risk. (N&O)

Burr: Investigate Texas VA hospital

bkrueger — Fri, 16 May 2008 16:27:20 -0400

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr joined his Democratic colleague on the Senate Veteran Affairs committee today in calling for an independent investigation into a veterans hospital in Texas and its diagnoses of PTSD.

Burr, of Winston-Salem, is the top Republican on the committee. He and Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, the panel’s chairman, said the Inspector General for the Veteran Affairs department needs to look into diagnoses at the medical center in Temple, Texas, reports Barb Barrett.

There, an employee recently sent out an e-mail suggesting that workers not diagnose post-praumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, among patients.

“It is troubling if even one person at VA would encourage other employees to make anything other than a completely honest health assessment of our veterans,” Burr said. “These allegations are serious.”

Edwards v. O'Reilly on homeless vets

ryanteaguebeckwith — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:10:12 -0500

John Edwards and Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly are mixing it up again.

O’Reilly, host of "The O'Reilly Factor," questioned Edwards' assertion that 200,000 veterans "will go to sleep under and bridges and on grates" because they are homeless tonight, Rob Christensen reports.

"They may be out there, but there's not many of them out there. Okay," O'Reilly said. "If you know where's a veteran, sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it."

Edwards responded with a statement: "For someone who spends a lot of time shouting about patriotism, you would think he would be outraged by the treatment of our homeless veterans. How many more will it take before we wake up and solve this crisis?"

The Edwards campaign cited a November study by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. A spokeswoman for the alliance said they got their information from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the year 2006.

The VA report said "about one-third of the adult homeless population have served their country in the Armed Services. Current population estimates suggest that about 195,000 veterans are homeless on any given night and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year."

The report said about 45 percent of the homeless vets suffer from mental illness and slightly more than 70 percent suffer from alcohol or other drug abuse problems.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the year.