House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller (R-Fla.) last May signaled through a committee spokesman that he doesn’t favor expansion of the caregiver program until a rash of problems with the current program, documented by congressional auditors, have been addressed.
On Tuesday a House committee spokesman also noted pointedly that 30 separate House-passed veterans bills still await Senate consideration. The tone suggests the two chambers are far apart on how to tackle veteran reform initiatives issues, particularly with a long summer recess and elections this fall shrinking the number of days Congress will be in session.
Senate leaders allowed all of June to pass without a floor vote on the Veterans First Act and then adjourn until September. That leaves a lot less time for House and Senate conferees to reconcile very different approaches taken this year on more critical veteran issues. Time will tell if the honorary veteran status language survives to be included in a final veterans omnibus bill or if it gets ignore again during tough negotiations on a lot of other matters, including this year the caregiver expansion favored by the Senate and tougher accountability rules for VA executives sought by the House.
Reserve and Guard Veterans Preference
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) has introduced a bill, HR 5526, to improve VA hiring procedures that includes language to extend veterans preference for federal jobs to more Reserve and National Guard members who have been called to active duty. The vet preference initiative was conceived by Reserve Officers Association to better recognize the wartime contributions of today’s “operational” reserve components in contrast to the largely standby role for reserve forces during the Cold War era.
The bill, introduced last month, would confer veteran status for the purpose of federal hiring on any reserve component member who has 180 “cumulative” days on active duty under call-up orders. That would relax a current requirement of 180 “consecutive” days for Reserve and Guard to gain veterans preference.
Many of the 900,000 Reserve and Guard members activated for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and of the 250,000 reservists activated for the first Gulf War of 1990-91 were called up for periods well short of 180 days.
In urging leaders on the veterans affairs committees to support the measure, Jeffrey Phillips, executive director of ROA, noted in a letter that Congress has extended veterans’ preference for federal jobs to parents of veterans who died or became severely disabled while serving their country.
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Commending that development, Phillips argued that the change now sought would recognize the recent pattern of operational support provided by Reserve and Guard, with many serving multiple tours of less than six months, too short to qualify for veterans preference under current law.
“They should not be penalized for the nature of their service,” he said. “By being available for shorter durations, Guard and Reserve members demonstrate the flexibility the nation needs, in a cost-effective manner.”
He noted that these same members could serve 20 years or more and not accrue the 180 consecutive days of active service needed under current law to qualify for veterans’ preference. Phillips described the initiative as a “virtually cost-free” to “correct this situation and to facilitate employment among our reserve components even as they support the nation.”
In a phone interview Phillips and Susan Lukas, director of legislative policy for ROA, said no lawmaker has so far objected to the initiative, a promising sign for inclusion in any omnibus veterans package passed by year’s end. Passage as a standalone bill would be more difficult because HR 5526 has 14 other provisions, some of which do have costs.
Indeed a House committee spokesman said “the future of HR 5526 is uncertain because Democrats oppose any offset that would pay for the bill, and have put forth no viable alternatives for offsetting the bill’s cost.”
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