UPDATE: the automatic publisher thingy caught me flatfooted. Sorry about that. Will be responding to comments. Be sure to read jimstaro's comments.
There are a lot of black clouds hovering over the Veterans Administration right now. A psychiatrist, just back from a Regional preview of next year's budget, told me that while nation-wide 1,900 more mental health positions will be added, those jobs will come out of the existing cap on the VA employee census.
Currently, if an employee notifies the VA that they are leaving - for whatever reason - the VA cannot begin the process of replacing that employee until he or she has officially left. It gets worse. Many employees have accrued vacation time and may stop working months before their accrued time expires. Even if there is a line of fully qualified people for a given vacant job, the VA cannot fill that position until it has gone through their entire 4 to 6 month-long process.
The result: the VA has lost approximately 14,900 people this year.
The effect of that is something I experienced Saturday night. I went to the Emergency Room for a rash that I never had before. The emergency room staff was short of 2 nurses and 1 doctor according to a clerk or nurse. I waited 5 hours while much more seriously ill people were seen. When 2 more came in just as I was about to be called, I left. I had an appointment with my primary care doctor on Monday and decided to tough it out.
The Future For The VA is no Mystery - It's a Horror Story
It's all spelled out in black and white. It's the Ryan budget. Clic on the links below and search on the word Veteran.
[hint: it's not there]
The Congressional Budget Office's Summary of the Ryan Budget.
The pdf of Ryan's Budget
Under Bush II the Democrats caught the Republican Secretary of Veterans Affairs with a secret staff assigned to figure out a way to privatize - or, for bonus brownie points - eliminate the VA.
But since [Ryan's] opposed to further defense cuts — he in fact raises spending on defense in the next 10 years — it seems inevitable that the non-defense side of “everything else” would have to shrink considerably, and that means cutting quite a bit from income supports and veterans’ benefits and infrastructure. .
[Posted by Ezra Klein at the Washington Post, 03/21/2012]
Because the House and Senate are both controlled by the Republicans [
thanks to the Senate's unique use of the filabuster] neither party are our friends right now. "For starters, Obama and Democrats agreed to the following cuts over the next decade:"
According to the military and foreign affairs journal, Veterans Today. [snip] "$400 billion from military-related spending from unneeded weapons,
as well as healthcare and other benefits for active service members and veterans."
United State Department of Veterans Affairs
February 13, 2012
WASHINGTON – With more than 1 million active-duty personnel scheduled to join the ranks of America’s 22 million Veterans during the next five years, the President has proposed a $140.3 billion budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
The Budget Control Act required that the deficit be reduced an additional $1.2 trillion dollars or automatic cuts (a sequester) would take place in January 2013. Because Congress was unable to agree on how to reach that goal, the sequester looms in the future unless new legislation is passed to avoid it.
The American Psycological Association, Federal Budget Blog, March 19, 2013
FY10 Appropriations FY11 Appropriations FY12 Appropriations
VA: $127.0B VA: $125.5B VA: $127B
VHA: $47.9B VHA: $51.5B VHA: $54B
VBA-GOE: $1.69B VBA-GOE: $2.13B VBA-GOE: $2.01B