The 30-second Web video has the edgy quality of a campaign-season attack ad, including ominous music, grainy photos and a closing demand: “It’s time for new leadership.”
But the target is not an elected official, or a politician at all. It is President Obama’s secretary of veterans affairs, Eric Shinseki, the man being held accountable for his overwhelmed agency’s problems.
WASHINGTON (AP) — More than 10,000 workers who handle disability claims at the Department of Veterans Affairs will be required to work at least 20 hours of overtime each month in an effort reduce a sizable backlog, the department announced Wednesday.
The overtime requirement will last through September and comes as many federal workers face furloughs because of mandatory budget cuts. The VA was exempt from those spending reductions.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, buried in disability claims and appeals, plans to push through by slashing its high rate of processing errors and using technology.
Yet critics contend the overdue reforms likely won't drastically cut by 2015 the glut of nearly 1 million initial claims filed by honorably discharged GIs, much less speed up an appellate process that makes veterans wait years for decisions.
WASHINGTON — After two tours of duty with the Marines in Iraq, Anthony Pike returned home with hearing loss, a ringing in his ears and what he says is profound stress.
And now there's the galling, added stress he's guaranteed in filing for disability payments with the New York office of the Veterans Administration. Having endured many firefights in Iraq, the former sergeant will have to exhibit the patience of Job.
The jobs of the nation's citizen soldiers are supposed to be safe while they are serving their country: Federal law does not allow employers to penalize service members because of their military duties.
Yet every year, thousands of National Guard and Reserve troops coming home from Afghanistan and elsewhere find they have been replaced, demoted, denied benefits or seniority.
