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War of words heats up over vets bill blockage

The chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee remains hopeful that a roadblock holding up consideration of an omnibus veterans’ health care bill can be cleared early next week.

Speaking Friday on the Senate floor about a procedural hold that is blocking passage of S. 1963, the Veterans’ Caregiver and Omnibus Health Benefits Act, Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, said “it would be truly disgraceful” if the bill didn’t clear the Senate by Veterans’ Day.

Akaka said the bill represents a bipartisan collection of veterans’ committee proposals packaged into one bill so it could quickly pass. Consideration of the measure is being blocked by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who doesn’t want the measure brought up unless he is given an opportunity to offer amendments.

“This single senator is denying veterans many benefits and services,” Akaka said, including a new caregiver assistant program at families of the “most seriously wounded veterans.”

Akaka said the veterans’ committee “continues to hear about family members who quit their jobs, go through their savings and lose their health insurance as they stayed home to care for their wounded family members.”

The bill would provide a monthly living stipend for a family member who becomes certified to provide assistance to a severely wounded veteran, in addition to providing VA health benefits, mental health counseling and other assistance to the caregiver. VA should be doing this, Akaka said, because the caregiver is taking on an obligation that “ultimately belongs to the government.”

Coburn was unmoved by Akaka’s remarks, said spokesman John Hart.

“Senator Akaka should direct his staff to respond to our requests for an agreement to bring the bill to the floor instead of delivering stilted, partisan speeches,” Hart said. “Dr. Coburn is interesting in facilitating the delivery of care for veterans, not in helping politicians produce self-aggrandizing press releases before Veterans Day.”

Objection explained

Posted on Coburn’s Senate Web site is statement that explains why he objects to the bill. The $3.9 billion price tag over five years for all of the veterans’ health and benefits initiatives in the bill is part of the reason. “If we do not start paying for new programs, we are not going to have a country left to defend,” Coburn said in the statement.

On the caregiver benefits, the statement says Coburn objects because it duplicates an existing program, known as aid and attendance, that pays up to $2,900 a month for the most severely wounded veterans and because the caregiver benefits would be limited to caregivers of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, excluding families of severely disabled veterans from earlier conflicts.

Caregiver benefits under the bill are expected to average $2,300 a month, but would not necessarily go to people who could otherwise receive aid and attendance pay, a program in which eligibility is linked to a veteran’s ability to do specific daily tasks unassisted, such as eating, bathing and dressing. Caregiver benefits would be provided to those doing medical-related tasks that might otherwise require home nursing care or institutionalized care, Senate aides said.

Coburn has been taking heat from veterans groups for holding up the bill. In just one day, the group VoteVets.Org, a Democratic-leaning political action committee, collected more than 10,000 signatures for an online petition demanding that Coburn allow the bill to pass.

The letter asking for signatures, signed by Iraq War veteran Miranda Norman, notes that one of the important provisions in the delayed bill is an expansion of benefits for female veterans. “Now is not the time to play petty political games with our veterans,” Norman said. “What Senator Coburn is doing is shameful, and he deserves to know that those of us who are veterans and support veterans will not stand for it.”

Coburn’s paper listing objections does not mention the women’s issues. It says, however, that he “is NOT opposing the veterans caregiver bill, he merely wants to debate and amend the legislation to improve it.”

The memo also says Coburn believes it is wrong to spend money on new benefits when VA is “failing to keep its promises to current veterans,” such as delays in paying disability and education benefits claims.