Almost 43 years ago while serving in the United States Marine Corps, I dove into a river and fractured my neck at the sixth cervical vertebrae. I was face down in the water unable to move anything for what seemed like an eternity. Then, buddies from my platoon pulled me up the river bank to safety.

After a total of 19 months of acute care at a military hospital and rehab at a VA Spinal Cord Injury Center, I was discharged to my parent’s home as a “quadriplegic work-in-progress.” I had some self-care skills, enough to return to the local university to work on a degree that was paid in full through the VA Vocational Rehabilitation program. It was, as it turns out, a great investment since I worked from 1972 through 2008.

I started working the same year I was married. I remember thinking many times long before the wedding, “where will we live?” Again, I turned to the VA and gathered information about their Specially Adapted Housing grant. It was determined that I was eligible for this program and my options, to me anyway, were either to build a wheelchair-accessible home from scratch or to purchase an existing accessible home that was up for sale.

I found that existing wheelchair-accessible home in an ad in United Spinal Association’s newsletter. It was located 15 minutes from my parent’s home. We purchased it using the Specially Adapted Housing grant as a more-than-adequate down payment. Our monthly mortgage payment was manageable, but this, too, was thanks in large part to the equity investment made in my behalf by the VA Specially Adapted Housing grant.

For most of my “wheelchair life,” I have lived in only two houses. I lived in my first home until 1980 when I moved to my brand new, somewhat larger current home. The real value to me has not been the appreciation of the value of these houses but having a home where I could function at my maximum ability, and from which I could come and go easily so that I was able to be a productive, employed disabled veteran for 36 years. Having a wheelchair-accessible home has played a large part in my life of fulfillment.

The VA Specially Adapted Housing grant helps many seriously disabled veterans obtain a suitable home so that they can complete their long road back to community and productivity.

This grant helped me immensely. Congress, grow this important benefit so that today’s newest seriously disabled veterans can own the home that they need to experience success in their lives.

Just the Facts:
As of October 1, 2009, the Specially Adapted Housing maximum allowable grant is $63,780. VetsFirst strongly supports H.R. 1169, which would provide a significant increase in not only this housing grant program but also the Special Home Adaptation grant program and the grant to purchase an automobile. Under this proposed legislation, the maximum allowable Specially Adapted Housing grant would be increased to $180,000. The legislation is currently being considered by the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

For fiscal year 2011, which begins on October 1, 2010, the President is seeking $125 billion for the VA. Specifically, the President is requesting $60.3 billion for discretionary spending for the VA, which is nearly on par with the $61.5 billion called for by veterans service organizations in the Independent Budget (IB). Discretionary funding is mainly used for health care for veterans. The President’s budget request also includes $64.7 billion in mandatory funding, which is spending mainly for disability compensation and pensions for veterans.

One of VetsFirst’s top public policy priorities is to reform the VA’s benefit claims process to reduce the backlog. The President’s budget requests $2.149 billion for the Veterans Benefits Administration’s (VBA) operating budget, which is one of the few categories for which more was requested than was suggested by the IB. The 27 percent increase over the last fiscal year is intended to help reduce the claims backlog. In 2011, the VA estimates that veterans will submit 1,319,000 claims, which would be a 30 percent increase from 2009. The VA believes that hiring additional staff members and better business practices will help decrease claims processing times. The budget request also includes $145 million for the creation of a paperless claims processing system.

Unfortunately, increases in funding and staffing levels for the VBA have not yet been effective in reducing the backlog of claims and appeals. According to the Government Accountability Office, the VA has made only limited progress in recent years toward decreasing average claims processing times. Although VetsFirst believes that VBA must have the resources necessary to meet the current challenges, the VA claims process and substantive regulations and adjudicative principles must also be reformed.

As the budget process continues to move forward, VetsFirst will continue to advocate for the level of funding the VA needs and the strategies that must be adopted to efficiently and effectively address the challenges facing today’s VA. Both the Senate and House Budget Committees will create budget resolutions that must be voted on by their respective bodies. Once a concurrent resolution is agreed to that reconciles any differences between the House and Senate passed resolutions, each body will vote on the concurrent resolution. Although not law, the concurrent resolution provides broad spending guidelines for the appropriations process.

Click here for more information about the President’s fiscal year 2011 budget.

Heather Ansley
The VetsFirst Team

VetsFirst’s 2010 public policy priorities work toward systemic changes that must be realized to ensure the continued health and welfare of all veterans with disabilities to allow greater self-sufficiency. In order to accomplish these changes, VetsFirst has developed a robust public policy agenda to address the main areas of concern for veterans from all eras and their families.

Our top five legislative priorities include access to health care services, reform of the VA claims adjudication process, increased employment opportunities for veterans with disabilities, housing and homelessness, and support for families and survivors. Other areas of concern include access to community-based services for veterans with disabilities, cross-generational research on the effects of exposure to hazardous substances, streamlining the transition from solider to veteran, and enhancing education opportunity and benefit programs.

Click here for more information on VetsFirst 2010 Public Policy Priorities.

The first of ODEP’s six listening sessions will be held on January 21 in Dallas. The second session will be held on January 27 in Philadelphia. The registration and comment period for both of these sessions is now open. Other sessions will be held in Chicago, San Francisco, Atlanta and Boston.

ODEP needs to hear your ideas. More information about the listening sessions is available at www.disabilitylisteningtour.com.

The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies appropriations bill was part of an multi-agency funding bill that included five other appropriations bills for fiscal year 2010. Fiscal year 2010 began on October 1. Through continuing resolutions, Congress continued the funding for the VA at fiscal year 2009 levels, while attempting to pass the fiscal year 2010 budget.

The fiscal year 2010 VA funding bill provides a needed increase in funding of $15.3 billion over the previous spending year. Mandatory veterans benefit programs, such as VA disability compensation, are funded at $56.6 billion. Discretionary spending, which includes the VA health care system, is funded at $53 billion.

In an important victory, the fiscal year 2010 budget includes advance appropriations of $48.2 billion for fiscal year 2011. Advance appropriations represent a significant shift in the VA funding process that will allow the VA to ensure that health care for veterans is not disrupted due to delays in passing new funding legislation. It will also provide a level of certainty concerning future funding levels that will allow the VA to plan for long-term funding needs. VetsFirst has been a strong advocate for advance appropriations because it will ensure that the VAs will be able to meet the needs of veterans from all eras.

Just the Facts:
H.R. 3288 is the omnibus appropriations bill that includes six of the 13 appropriations bills that must be passed each year, including the bill that funds the VA. The House passed the omnibus on December 10, 221-202 and the Senate on December 13, 57-35. The President signed the bill on December 16, 2009.

Heather Ansley
The VetsFirst Team

That day arrived recently, and because I have a spouse and a few children, I immediately jumped forward to the section on benefits for dependents and survivors. I learned a bunch of stuff that I thought I knew, so what I really learned was that I “assumed” stupidly that I knew about these benefits.

I assumed the VA might help with education costs for children only. I learned that, depending on disability rating and other factors, it might be possible to apply for education benefits for my spouse, too. I also found out that such education benefits might be used not just for college, but for a wide variety of educational pursuits, including business, technical and vocational schools; on the job training programs; and, even work-study programs at VA facilities.

There’s more. The period of eligibility for educational benefits was extended by a 2008 law for spouses of certain service-connected veterans. And such benefits for dependent children might be available until they reach the age of 26, and even longer under certain circumstances.

Actually, there is very much more-too much to try to cover in this brief piece. This little academic exercise truly reinforced in my mind why VetsFirst has opened its membership to dependents and survivors of veterans with disabilities. The VA administers a big and a complex system of benefits. Each must be applied for, and here’s where VetsFirst membership works for you.

VetsFirst has the benefits service officers who can both tell you what benefits you should apply for, and then go to work to help you obtain them, including benefits for your dependents. Feel free to contact your VetsFirst benefits service officer, or contact us through the Ask VetsFirst feature.

Seeing to it that VetsFirst members and their dependents and survivors receive the VA benefits that they are entitled to is and will remain our highest priority.

Terence Moakley
VetsFirst Board of Directors chair

In Porter v. McCollum (No. 08-10537. Nov. 30, 2009), the Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of a Korean War combat veteran who plead guilty to the 1986 murders of his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend.

George Porter, Jr., was convicted of the murders following trials and appeals in the Florida and federal courts. A jury ultimately imposed a death sentence. However, during the trial and sentencing phases, Porter’s defense attorney failed to introduce evidence that Porter had experienced intense combat-related trauma and that he suffered from PTSD. A federal district court judge ruled that such ineffective legal counsel violated the defendant’s constitutional right to an attorney, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit disagreed and reinstated the death sentence.

Porter had been wounded in two violent enemy encounters during his Army service in Korea. Hand-to-hand combat and a rain of machine gun and mortar fire in freezing weather raged for days. On appeal of the jury’s death sentence, Porter’s commanding officer testified as to the horrific nature of the two battles. A psychiatrist also testified as to Porter’s PTSD.

“Our Nation has a long tradition of according leniency to veterans in recognition of their service, especially for those who fought on the front lines as Porter did,” said the Supreme Court in its opinion. “The relevance of Porter’s extensive combat experience is not only that he served honorably under extreme hardship and gruesome conditions, but also that the jury might find mitigating the intense stress and mental and emotional toll that combat took on Porter.”

In the end, the Court refused to overturn Porter’s conviction, but concluded that the jury and judge that imposed the death sentence, had it heard about Porter’s combat experiences and PTSD, might well have refused to invoke the death penalty. Therefore, the Eleventh Circuit’s decision that he was not prejudiced by his defense lawyer’s failure to raise these circumstances as mitigating factors was, in the Court’s opinion, unreasonable.

Ultimately, the Court sent the case back to the Eleventh Circuit and ordered it to start a new sentencing proceeding.

So, what does this case mean for veterans who suffer from PTSD and who commit violent crimes? Does combat service equal a get-out-of-jail-free card? Of course it doesn’t. What it does suggest is that at a time when our nation is fighting two wars, when we are going to escalate troop levels in Afghanistan, when more than a third of service members returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have reported symptoms of PTSD, our system of justice must affirmatively take into account the mental and emotional toll that combat can take on even the best of us. While military service cannot justify or excuse violent crime, knowledge about the circumstances surrounding a defendant’s military service can, as the Supreme Court recognized, “humanize” a criminal defendant so that a judge and jury can make an informed decision about the appropriate punishment.

Lawyers with clients in similar cases can point to the Supreme Court’s reference to the prevalence of PTSD in combat veterans and its favorable view of state laws, such as those in California and Minnesota that provide special legal protection for criminally accused veterans who suffer from PTSD, to argue that the Supreme Court intended the Porter decision to apply more broadly than just to the specific facts surrounding his case.

Over the years, a major focus for our veteran members with spinal cord injuries, diseases or disorders is to make certain that they are receiving the benefits that they are entitled to by law from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

As someone who has been a member of our organization for just about 42 years now, I know that VetsFirst is one of the best among veterans service organizations in helping our members obtain their VA benefits. Our highly-trained service officers are experts on the benefits which our veteran members have earned through their service and sacrifice.

Now, we seek to deliver the same caliber of service to veterans with any type of disabling condition, their spouses and their depenedents. While our focus has always been on SCI veterans and those with related conditions, in reality we never turn a veteran away who seeks our help with a VA benefits claim.

One reason for growing our mission is our experienced service officer staff. I haven’t added up the combined number of years of experience represented by our veterans benefits staff, but most of these employees have been with us for many years precisely because they know what they are doing.

We truly need our current members help, too, if our mission change is to be successful.

Many of us know other veterans in our families, in our communities, in our places of worship or in our workplaces who may have a disability. If so, please tell them about the recent expansion of VetsFirst to serve all disabled veterans, or encourage them to spend some time on this website. In either case, I don’t think that they will regret checking out VetsFirst.

Terence Moakley
VetsFirst Board of Directors Chair

First, I have to say that this gathering brought me back to the time when I returned to school in 1969 with the VA’s help. It took me six years to get my degree because there was no way I was going to start without finishing. But it also reminded me how I “stood out” moving around a somewhat-accessible campus in my wheelchair.

Fitting in on a college campus wasn’t so easy then. From a short interview we saw of a post 9/11 vet currently enrolled at a university, it seems like nothing much has changed. So, one aspect of this event was sharing with the university veterans counselors ways to make their campus more “veteran friendly.”

These solutions included creating a physical or virtual gathering space for veterans, involving veteran-friendly faculty advisers, and encouraging returning veterans to use skills honed in the military to become student leaders. In New York State alone, some 80,000 men and women have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let’s hope that all colleges and universities here and around our nation become veteran friendly as soon as possible.

Where the rubber truly hits the road is the benefits-the most sizeable increase in veterans education benefits since World War II. The maximum basic benefit under the Post-9/11 GI Bill is earned by serving an aggregate of 36 months of active duty service, or after 30 days of continuous service for those who were discharged for a service-connected disability. And vets who served between 90 days and 36 months are eligible for between 40% and 90% of the basic benefit, depending on the length of their time of service.

The maximum basic benefit includes the cost of tuition and fees, but not higher than the most expensive in-state undergraduate tuition at a public institution of higher learning within the state that the veteran is attending school; a monthly housing allowance equal to the basic allowance for housing payable to an E-5 with dependents, in the same zip code as the school; and, yearly books and supplies of up to $1,000 per year.

If the above sounds like a good deal, it is! And there is much more, like the VA Work Study Program and the Yellow Ribbon Program, through which the VA can enter into agreements with institutions of higher learning with tuition costs above the highest in-state undergraduate rate.

Don’t forget to check VetsFirst’s “Guide To State Veterans Benefits” also, right here on our Home page, because many states offer great education and other benefits for their resident veterans. Or, contact a highly-trained VetsFirst benefits service representative in your area from the list posted on this page for assistance in applying for education benefits under the Post-911 GI Bill. Continue your education to improve your life!

Terence Moakley
Chair, VetsFirst Board of Directors

VetsFirst membership will embrace all generations of veterans, including those living with post-traumatic stress disorders, traumatic brain injuries, toxic exposures and those who are at increased risk of diseases (e.g., multiple sclerosis, ALS). It also supplies the veterans’ community with guidance on education and employment. In conjunction with United Spinal Association, VetsFirst provides legal representation in VA claims and appeals.

“VetsFirst will offer the same high level of service and personal approach it has become known for, while expanding to provide for the needs of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” said Paul J. Tobin, president and CEO of United Spinal Association.

VetsFirst recognizes older era veterans are aging and their health and benefits needs are changing. Advocating and assisting women veterans and their particular health concerns are high priorities of VetsFirst.

“We’re serving a very large membership with our holistic approach. When their families are taken care of veterans recover faster. Extending membership to veterans’ families and others involved in their lives and well-being, distinguishes VetsFirst from other veterans organizations,” said Leonard Selfon, VetsFirst senior vice president.

One of the organization’s most unique offerings is ‘Ask VetsFirst’ (http://helpdesk.vetsfirst.org), a Web-based service that gives veterans an opportunity to get assistance with benefits-related inquiries on-line. Ask VetsFirst allows visitors to submit questions using an online submission form. A VetsFirst trained national service officer or attorney will then respond with information and resources to help resolve the inquiry.

Click here to join.

About VetsFirst – In partnership with United Spinal Association (www.unitedspinal.org), VetsFirst (www.vetsfirst.org) is a national 501(c)(3) non-profit membership organization. VetsFirst’s network of national veterans service officers and attorneys provide assistance and representation in securing health care, disability compensation, rehabilitation, education and other benefits for its members before the Department of Veterans Affairs’ and in the federal courts. Membership in VetsFirst is free.