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From Phil McCausland
There have been many problems over the last year when Veterans Affairs attempted to implement the Forever GI bill. These problems resulted in thousands of late or incorrect payments to former students who were dependent on the education allowance for housing, tuition, books, food, etc.
President Donald Trump promulgated the Bill Forever GI Bill in the summer of 2017. The legislation expands the benefits available to veterans and changed the method of calculating housing allowances, but this change posed computer problems at VA and triggered a huge backlog of claims for compensation for tuition. get cards, borrow money and borrow money from friends and family to make ends meet.
NBC News began documenting some of these issues in October and reported impacts on Capitol Hill and Washington, DC
In October, veteran students contacted NBC News through its online phone to complain about not receiving a GI Bill. On October 7, NBC News reported that many GI Bill beneficiaries have faced tremendous financial hardship because the VA did not pay them. It also appears that the VA failed to communicate the computer difficulties encountered during the reduction of veterans checks, and the long waiting times in the call centers frustrated many veterans and did not gave no appeal.
Officials in New York announced at the end of October. 12,000 veterans of the city have been affected and are at risk of deportation. Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city would provide financial assistance to those affected.
NBC News then reported on Veterans Day that computer problems continued to put veterans at risk of eviction and exposed some of the issues at stake, including system crashes. and the persistent appearance of "blue screen of death" in VA regional treatment centers.
Congress had scheduled a hearing to consider these issues a little less than a week later. But just before the hearing, it was discovered that a senior VA official to oversee some of these issues and to testify, General Robert Worley, had been reassigned to the post of director of a regional office in Houston.
During the day, while they were testifying before the Congress, VA representatives developed the ongoing issues, but they refused to commit to a timetable to solve the problem. However, they stated that VA employees and contractors worked overtime and weekends to solve the problem.
NBC News then reported that less than two days after the hearing, VA had had to cancel overtime over the weekend due to an internal update of the system.
Finally, on November 28, VA announced that it would take him more than a year to fully implement the Forever GI bill, delaying the deployment date to ensure correct housing. payments under the law until 1 December 2019.
But at a private briefing call, a few hours after that same announcement, VA representatives told congressional staff members that They did not intend to check their payments to make sure all student veterans were fully
Paul Lawrence, who oversees the Veterans Benefits Administration, described the report as of NBC News on the subject "misleading" before a congressional hearing the next day, adding that "nothi ng could be further from the truth." Later during the interrogation, however, he admitted that VA felt that "backtracking would be better spent energy in processing claims for compensation".
Another hour later, VA reversed this idea. VA Secretary General Robert Wilkie stated that "each beneficiary will receive retroactively the benefits to which he is entitled under [the Forever GI Bill]."
VA's answers seem rather bleak and likely to change for many members of the Congress, legislators demanded an investigation into the federal agency in order to understand the magnitude of the problem and ensure that all alumni fighters receive the money to which they are entitled. Questions were also asked as to who should be held responsible for these persistent problems.
This also prompted lawmakers to act in the last moments of the session by passing two bills to ensure that veterans receive all the money they are owed and to protect
the end of the year and when VA insists that it is unlikely that similar problems will reoccur, many advocates, veterans and lawmakers maintain a wait-and-see approach with fear that recipients of GI Bill will encounter difficulties similar in the next semester.
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