Sequestration and Defense Spending

[norm]

A quick note to anyone who wants to be angry about how sequestration hurts government funding for veterans - it doesn't. The Department of Veterans Affairs is not under the Department of Defense Budget, and is exempt from the effects of sequestration.

Just pointing that out for the (sadly) many people I've seen post something about it on facebook in the last few days, for some reason.

[brite]

It's not under the DoD budget but it is not exempt. There are segments of the VA that are subject to the sequester.


AND the VA is SO broken that in some places, vets are waiting up to 600+ days for benefits.

AND while the financial part of the VA is federal, the medical part (VA hospitals and clinics) is not. And they don't share records on a national scale. It's almost impossible for a vet who moves around (like I do) to keep their records moving with them, unless they hand carry them. Do you know what 20+ years of just VA medical records looks like? I have a partial set, and it weighs about 5 pounds... (that's just part of Texas (1994) and part of St Petersburg (1994, 2000-2003) )

[norm]

It's not under the DoD budget but it is not exempt. There are segments of the VA that are subject to the sequester.

Which segments? According to the Congressional Research Center report, "All programs administered by the VA, and special benefits for certain World War II veterans" are exempt. This also includes medical care.

AND the VA is SO broken that in some places, vets are waiting up to 600+ days for benefits.

I know, I've been waiting nearly 300.

AND while the financial part of the VA is federal, the medical part (VA hospitals and clinics) is not. And they don't share records on a national scale. It's almost impossible for a vet who moves around (like I do) to keep their records moving with them, unless they hand carry them. Do you know what 20+ years of just VA medical records looks like? I have a partial set, and it weighs about 5 pounds... (that's just part of Texas (1994) and part of St Petersburg (1994, 2000-2003) )

I'm not talking about how well they function (totally separate issue), I'm only saying that a person complaining about the effects of "sequestration" can't claim, as I've seen quite a few try, that "Obama is hurting veterans." Even the defense budget is an interesting and much more complicated discussion than most critics bother to acknowledge.

[brite]

Most definitely... the medical side of the VA isn't affected. It's the admin side, as far as I can tell, talking to friends that I have who work in the VA system. They work the admin side of things. One is the AA to the director of the VA in Chicago... she is getting n extra day a week off... without pay. NOT a happy woman...

[norm]

Yeah, I can imagine. I've heard lots of horror stories about people going to the VA office and the employees being flat rude to them. I mean, come on. It's ridiculous.

[SciFiFisher]

Part of the difficulty sorting it out is there are actually three different divisions(?) or broadly speaking proponents to the VA. There is VBA, VHA, and the NCA. AKA Veterans Benefits Administration, Veterans Health Administration, and the National Cemetery Administration. That's right boys and girls. The same organization that provides veteran's healthcare also is in charge of burying them and maintaining 131 national cemeteries.

So, while the VHA is not feeling much of an impact the VBA and the NCA might. There are also adminstrative divisions within the VHA that may or may not be part of the protected entities. Although the VBA was just mandated to use overtime to catch up on the backlog of claims so that should be interesting. My guess is that we are going furlough some people and pay them less.... and then pay others overtime. At first glance the logical thing to do would be to take the ones you are going to furlough and task them to help the ones who need OT to catch up. Oh, if only it were that easy.