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House passes 8 veterans’ benefits bills

Veterans with disabilities clearly connected to military service, such as amputated limbs as a result of combat wounds, would get speedy approval of claims to receive veterans’ benefits under a bill approved Wednesday by the House.

The Disability Claims Modernization Act, sponsored by Rep. John Hall, D-N.Y., is one of eight veteran-related bills that the House of Representatives rushed to pass before leaving town for a summer break that will stretch into early September and feature a lot of campaigning by lawmakers seeking re-election as well as the Democratic and Republican presidential nominating conventions.

Another bill would expand financial and legal protections for deployed service members, to include allowing the cancellation or suspension of cell phone and landline contracts, utilities and cable or satellite television services. Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Pa., an Iraq war veteran, sponsored the bill, which would also levy $10,000 fines for violations of other financial protections provided by the law.

“Some financial institutions are slow or unwilling to reduce service members’ interest rates during deployments even though these creditors are already required to do so by law,” he said.

Another bill, HR 6580, would permit early discharge without penalty of a sole surviving child if a father, mother or one or more siblings is killed, captured or permanently disabled in the military. It is called the Hubbard Act, named for a California family that had two sons die in Iraq. When a third son left the military under existing sole-survivor rules, the government demanded he repay part of his enlistment bonuses and denied him GI Bill education benefits and transitional health care benefits.

Hall’s bill, HR 5892, is the culmination of 1½ years of work by the freshman lawmaker, who is chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee on disability assistance, to try to reduce the backlog of disability claims waiting to be processed.

One of his ideas is to stop wasting time processing clear-cut claims that don’t need review, such as severely wounded combat veterans who often wait six months or longer before receiving benefits.

Hall called the backlog a “national disgrace.”

“In today’s VA, a veterans’ claim is often held up until every medical condition is evaluated,” he said. “The average wait is over six months.”

Hall said that under his bill, a severe, undisputed injury, such as a lost arm or leg, would be immediately covered while less severe disabilities could continue to face a more thorough review.

The claims bill also would allow a surviving spouse or child of a veteran who dies before a disability claim is processed to complete the process. Current law requires a claim to be refiled from the beginning after a death.

The bills won’t become law unless the Senate also goes along. The Senate, working on its own package of veterans’ legislation, is unlikely to consider the bills until September, although some of the ideas in the House proposals are also in some bills pending before the Senate.