VFW Joins House Democrats for Veterans Roundtable

*UPDATE: The Office of Management and Budget announced this afternoon that all VA accounts and military personnel accounts would be exempt from budget sequestration. 

Yesterday the VFW joined House Democratic leadership and some of the nation’s other leading veterans’ advocates for a roundtable discussion on veterans’ issues. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has routinely hosted quarterly roundtables with the veterans’ community for the last few years, offering veterans’ advocates an opportunity to candidly discuss ways in which Congress could work to better serve our veterans.

 VFW Deputy Director Ryan Gallucci joined in the discussion, expressing the VFW’s frustration over looming sequestration cuts to the defense budget and administrative accounts for Veterans Affairs. Gallucci pointed out that while the Obama Administration had clarified that VA health care accounts were exempt from sequestration, experts had indicated that VA’s administrative accounts could be subject to cuts.

The veterans’ community has asked for clarification from Congress and the Administration as to what kinds of administrative accounts could be affected, pointing out that the timely delivery of other VA benefits, like disability compensation or the G.I. Bill, could be affected if the administrators of those benefits are forced to scale back their operations.

House Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., tackled the issue by explaining that the Administration was scheduled to deliver their analysis of how sequestration would affect each agency, but that he and his fellow committee members were still searching for ways to avoid the looming 2013 deadline when across-the-board cuts would have to take place.

Other issues raised during the roundtable were the absence of advance appropriations in the VA budget continuing resolution currently before Congress, daunting unemployment numbers among Iraq and Afghanistan-era veterans, and the persistent lack of mental health resources for veterans suffering from the invisible wounds of war.

Your VFW advocates have been working hard all week, asking the 112th Congress to “Finish Strong For Veterans.” In addition to the Democratic roundtable, VFW participated in a Republican veterans affairs roundtable on Tuesday, and members of the VFW National Legislative Committee hit the halls of Congress all week, pushing for solutions to issue related to the VA budget, employment and education, health care, and benefits delivery.

As Congress wraps up business leading into the election, check back regularly for updates.

We Were Supposed to do a Webinar Today…

This afternoon, the interagency committee tasked with implementing the president’s recent executive order on veterans’ education planned to host a webinar for veterans’ advocates and higher education stakeholders to outline how VA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Education planned to implement the new directive.

The VFW has played a lead role in building consensus among leaders in higher education and the veterans’ community, sparking decisive action from Congress and the White House on the issue. Unfortunately, when it came time to log on to the webinar, the VFW was locked out.

Military OneSource, the DoD service tasked with hosting the webinar, said in an email that they overbooked the system, locking out groups like the VFW who had registered to participate last week. The email went on to explain that a subsequent webinar would be hosted next Friday and the presentation would be available to the public in two weeks online.

“To the VFW, this course of action is unacceptable,” said VFW Executive Director Bob Wallace. “We’ve been persistent advocates on this issue and we deserve to know how VA, the Pentagon and higher education intend to implement the executive order in order to best represent our veterans’ needs. It’s highly unprofessional and completely unacceptable to ask the VFW and our partner organizations to wait another week to learn about this program.”

The VFW was one of the few veterans’ organizations invited to testify on the president’s executive order, Executive Order #13607, before the House VA Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity two weeks ago. To learn more about the hearing and the executive order, click here.

(Image: Screengrab of the VFW's lock-out screen from today's webinar on Executive Order #13607.)