Progress Illinois

Calling it "a national disgrace" that veterans still constitute such a large share of Illinois' homeless population, Sen. Dick Durbin and members of the state's congressional delegation met with Veterans Affairs Assistant Secretary Tammy Duckworth yesterday to come up with a plan to address this issue. Last year alone, veterans filled an estimated 18,000 shelter beds in the Chicago area. After meeting with Reps. Bill Foster, Debbie Halvorson, Mike Quigley, and Dan Lipinski, Durbin noted that it's going to require some creative thinking to stretch federal resources and begin solving the problem. The AP reports:

"A possibility might be to turn foreclosed homes into opportunities for training and employment for veterans — maybe even ultimately a residence that they can live in," said Sen. Dick Durbin, the delegation's chairman and the Senate's second-highest ranking Democrat.

"Some homeless veterans are struggling with addictive issues and issues of mental illness, and they need counseling, and that has to be part of it."

Encouragingly, the Obama administration increased spending on homeless veterans programs by $3.2 billion this year. A majority of the funding ($2.7 billion) will be used to fill gaps in medical care and counseling services across the nation. The remaining $500 million is earmarked specifically for homelessness initiatives. Because Illinois and the Chicago area in particular have been struggling with an affordable housing crisis for years, the state's share of the funding will only go so far. To mitigate the impact on veterans, Durbin is co-sponsoring the Zero Tolerance for Veterans Homelessness Act (S. 1547), which would extend 30,000 federal housing vouchers to veterans in 2010 and phase in up to 60,000 vouchers by 2013.

A day after Tammy Duckworth's relatively smooth confirmation hearing before the Veterans Affairs Committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) inexplicably decided to delay a scheduled April 2 vote on her nomination as assistant secretary for the federal V.A., citing his pursuit of "answers to some questions".  Burr's action came among numerous other instances of GOP senators slow-pedalling Obama administration nominees.  The fact that he provided no rationale for the delay only amplified the outrage among veterans groups.  

Then, as MSNBC's Rachel Maddow reported on her program last night, Burr mysteriously green-lighted the nomination yesterday:

Once again, Burr's office has only said that his questions related "to confidential questionnaires Duckworth submitted to the committee."  His spokesman also confirmed that the inquiries did not pertain to former Gov. Blagojevich, who appointed her director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs in 2006.

Gotta love the U.S. Senate.

This morning, we wrote that Tammy Duckworth had "all but seal[ed] up her nomination to serve as an assistant secretary for the federal V.A.," after her confirmation hearing before the Senate Veterans Affairs Commmittee yesterday.  Duckworth had been expecting a committee vote today, followed by a swearing-in ceremony tomorrow at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in D.C., where she recovered in 2004 after losing both of her legs as an IL National Guard major serving in Iraq.  

But Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) scuttled that plan by blocking the committee vote this morning.  Army Times has the details:

Burr aides said the senator is not blocking her nomination. They described the delay as a matter of paperwork and timing. [...]

Duckworth’s nomination won’t come to a vote until Burr gets answers to some questions, Senate sources said, without specifying exactly what Burr wanted to know. [...]

The Senate will be wrapping up its work on Thursday or Friday and will then take a two-week Easter recess, which means the veterans committee won’t be prepared for another vote before April 21.

Hmmm.  Jon Soltz, Iraq War veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org, released the following statement in response:

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Rep. Phil Hare knows a thing or two about service. The former factory worker spent six years in the U.S. Army Reserve and has served ably on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee since joining Congress in 2006.  In that capacity, he has sponsored legislation that would make VA health care a mandatory spending item within the federal budget and improve veterans' access to mental health care. 

To commemorate Veteran's Day, Hare published a thoughtful op-ed in the State Journal-Register, detailing the significant legislation Congress has recently passed to care for returning soldiers and what still needs to be done. Here's an excerpt, but read the whole thing:

George Washington once said, “The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their country.”

Our first president had it exactly right. On this Veterans Day, as we continue to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is more important than ever to honor our nation’s heroes by providing them the care and benefits they deserve.

Here's a ringing endorsement for the ongoing war in Iraq. Despite describing itself as the "largest Iraq and Afghanistan veterans organization in America," Vets For Freedom (VFF) had some trouble scaring up like-minded folks to rally at the vice presidential candidates debate in St. Louis tomorrow night. So they decided to offer some local frat boys money to pose as war supporters.

The Huffington Post reports:

In an email obtained by the Huffington Post, Vets for Freedom field staffer Laura Meyer offered a fraternity at St. Louis University a "sizable donation" -- plus free lunch -- if it could use their pledges to demonstrate outside the VP debate.

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The U.S. Veterans Affairs Administration released the first portion of a three-part report on its Marion, Illinois VA hospital yesterday and found the facility was in desperate need of leadership and oversight.

In the last two years, there have been 19 deaths caused by substandard care at the hospital. Of those, nine have been at least partially linked to one surgeon, Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez, who administrators knew was not properly credentialed. The report also found that a former medical center director ignored troubling patient incident reports, failed to establish a follow-up process for patient deaths, and allowed financial considerations to predominate quality-of-care issues.

This follows a VA Inspector General's report that came to similar conclusions earlier this year. Both of Illinois' senators have continually pressured the VA to stop dragging its feet on the investigations into the tragedies of 2006-07 and the failed management-labor relationship at Marion. "This report confirms," Barack Obama said yesterday, "that a failure in leadership and a breakdown of safeguards allowed these tragedies to occur at the Marion VA." Democratic Rep. Jerry Costello and GOP Rep. John Shimkus joined the chorus as well.

Marion is a bad seed in an otherwise well-run system, so privatization is certainly not the answer. But to provide the care wounded soldiers deserve, the VA needs to send better bureaucrats to Southern Illinois.

Late last night, we reported that 11th District GOP congressional candidate Marty Ozinga put out a robocall attacking his Democratic opponent Debbie Halvorson at the same time she was visiting her stepson, Jay Bush, at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.  Bush was flown there after being seriously injured while serving in Afghanistan.

Today, VoteVets.org -- a political advocacy organization headed by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- put out the following response:

“This is one of the most tactless moves I’ve ever seen in politics,” said Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran and Chairman of VoteVets.org.  “The pain and anxiousness that family members feel when their loved one is injured, wounded, or lost in combat cannot be overstated.  At times like these, military families deserve some time and space, even if they are candidates for office.  It wouldn’t kill Ozinga to show some class by wishing Ms. Halvorson and her stepson well, and laying off the attacks for a couple of days.  It’s just a simple sign of respect to do so when your opponent is going through a time like this.” [...]

“We obviously wish Captain Bush a speedy recovery, and we thank him for his sacrifice to our nation and for our security.  And, our thoughts are with Ms. Halvorson and her husband as they tend to their son,” added Soltz.  “I only wish Marty Ozinga would have some class and show the same respect to our troops and military families.”

Over the weekend, Chicago Public Radio's Chip Mitchell caught up with Jason, a 33-year-old former Marine from Wisconsin who served in Iraq. During the past four years, the veteran has lived on the streets in and around Chicago's Greektown, a life he thought unimaginable when he signed up to fight. After his discharge, he wasn’t mentally prepared to work and because his parents were gone and his marriage had fallen apart, he had no safety net:

JASON: I’m on food stamps, man. I have to live out of soup kitchens. I have to panhandle. I have to ask people for leftovers to eat.

Homelessness among veterans is not a new phenomenon. According to Mitchell's report, the VA estimates that on any given night 154,000 U.S. veterans lack shelter, most of whom served in Vietnam. And while a New York Times article from November 2007 found that just over 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, that number will undoubtedly grow as more soldiers return from the battlefield:

Experts who work with veterans say it often takes several years after leaving military service for veterans’ accumulating problems to push them into the streets. But some aid workers say the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans appear to be turning up sooner than the Vietnam veterans did.

“We’re beginning to see, across the country, the first trickle of this generation of warriors in homeless shelters,” said Phil Landis, chairman of Veterans Village of San Diego, a residence and counseling center. “But we anticipate that it’s going to be a tsunami.”

So how is possible that someone who risked their live to serve their country could simply fall through the cracks?

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Today the Sun-Times' editorial board came out in support of Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) legislation to modernize the G.I. Bill. The proposal (which passed the Senate last week) would offer increased benefits to U.S. soldiers returning from today's battlefields. Specifically, It would finance their education at a four-year college and provide them with a $1,000 bonus for every three years served. The measure is now pending in the House as part of the larger war funding bill. Meanwhile, President Bush has threatened to veto Webb's legislation, citing his preference for a separate, GOP-sponsored measure that features more restrictive education benefits.

The argument for Webb's G.I. Bill is essentially a moral one: our country owes a greater debt to veterans than is it currently paying. There are also practical considerations: our armed forces are increasingly stretched thin and the proposal would create better incentives for enlistment. Furthermore, the Sun-Times points to the potential economic benefit of supporting the legislation:

The original GI Bill, in the years after World War II, helped veterans forge careers and made our nation stronger.

For every dollar spent on those veterans, the government recouped $5 to $12 in taxes paid by college graduates with higher incomes, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Assuming such results could be replicated, the estimated $2 billion cost of modernizing the G.I. Bill should be though as a long-term stimulus plan -- not simply a one-time pay-off to returning soldiers.

A Rand Corporation study released in April found that a startling 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan — 300,000 in all — report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment. As soldiers complete multiple tours, the rate of stress-induced illnesses grows even higher. The director of the National Institute of Mental Health went so far as to predict that by the end of the war, the number of suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan vets may exceed the combat death toll thanks to inadequate care.

Such devastating figures highlight the importance of veteran care, an issue that Tammy Duckworth has been focusing on since losing her congressional race in 2006. (She was appointed director of the Illinois Veterans' Affairs Department shortly after the election.) Be sure to check out her Memorial Day interview with the Chicago Tribune's Judith Graham in which she discusses the needs of Illinois veterans, the recently-launched Illinois Warrior Assistance Program, and her own personal bout with PTSD:

I think I probably do [have PTSD]. Recently, the other pilot in my aircraft sent me an e-mail and said he was deploying back to Iraq. And that night, I closed my eyes and (in my dream) I was in Iraq. It’s a dream I have over and over. I’m living an entire day in Iraq. I fly missions. I’m working. There’s nothing scary that happens. I’m not reliving getting shot down. It’s actually very mundane. But I’m working hard (in the dream) and when I wake up, I’m usually exhausted because I’ve just spent eight hours on the job in my sleep. And I actually have a little bit of joy and sadness right away. Because in my dreams I still have my legs and I’m flying still, something I love to do. And then, of course, I experience the sadness that it wasn’t real.

Our service members need to know these are combat wounds. The same as if you’d been shot or had your legs blown off. I just hope they don’t wait to come forward and get help before it’s too late.