During a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) spoke about the Veterans Readiness Employment Program.
00:00Ms. Devlin, what happened over the last insert months where this seemed to kind of spiral out of control?
00:14Can you give me the reader's digest on that one?
00:17Well, the main thing is the ballooning of the workload because of the PACT Act making more veterans eligible to apply.
00:23And those veterans are predominantly in certain states have a higher veteran population so those stations got impacted more.
00:30I wasn't here. Were you here for the PACT Act, Chris?
00:33So was that thought of? I mean, was this predicted in the PACT Act, by the way, we're going to have more guys and gals and therefore we're going to have to have more counselors for VR&E?
00:45Sure.
00:47Okay. So then we're just failing somewhere along those lines.
00:51I want to talk to you for a second. You said you need 387 additional counselors on top of what's in the president's budget?
00:58Yes, sir. That would be to get us to the 1 to 125 ratio.
01:01Okay. So you're saying you need roughly 800 counselors. Is that right?
01:06We currently have 1,056 performing this work.
01:10So you need 1,400 or 1,500 total? Okay.
01:15How many vets have been in this program for longer than 48 months?
01:23I don't have that number off the top of my head, sir.
01:26So it's big. So this is, I mean, I can, Chris can't read this, by the way. I can. I mean, it's really small.
01:39I had to take my glasses off to read it.
01:41But we've got some people here that have been receiving these benefits for like 82 months in a row.
01:48461,000 bucks. We got $895,000.
01:53I mean, this goes on and on and on and on and on.
01:56And I'm just wondering, you know, has anyone been held accountable, to your knowledge, and I know you just got there, for this?
02:03I mean, imagine how much medical benefits we could give to folks or how many more of these people we could hire if we weren't spending $900,000 for an individual to get 72 months of training doing I don't know what.
02:18So to your knowledge, has anyone been held accountable for this?
02:22We've increased oversight over the last couple of months in looking into those cases to make sure that the right things are being done.
02:28Either the veteran needs to be reengaged and finish their program, or...
02:32Ma'am, I understand. I'm talking about, at the Veterans Affairs Administration, to your knowledge, has anyone been held accountable for this absolute buffoonery?
02:40We have to look at the individual cases. It's not necessarily incorrect for that veteran to be in the program that long.
02:46Ms. Devlin, where do you go to college where you spend $900,000 for a degree?
02:53One of those cases that I looked at in my oversight capacity was actually an independent living case where the veteran needed adaptation to their home to be able to navigate their home effectively.
03:02Okay, now this is what we talked about previously, and we're talking about splitting pools of money. But is that the case with this guy? We don't know. It's interrupted.
03:12So, we need to really get into this, because this committee is also responsible for adaptive housing. So, we need to have very clear funding lines.
03:24So, there's another thing. How do you establish the BAH rate for a student? What is it based on?
03:32The BAH rate is established in the Chapter 33 guidelines, and VR&E simply uses those tables.
03:39Okay. So, if a person's home of record is in Michigan, and they fly to San Diego to take a single class, they get San Diego per diem?
03:51They would get the rate.
03:52Or BAH?
03:53Yes, sir. They would get the rate based on the facility they are attending in person.
03:57Okay. See, this is an issue. Because that's $4,000. And BAH, having been in the military for a long time, is based on where you live or your duty station.
04:09So, this is something that Chris and I have to work on, because that's fraudulent, in my opinion.
04:15You know, you're living in a place where the cost of living is so small, and then you fly in for a single class to do something, and you're making three times the BAH.
04:25So, that's something we need to look at from an oversight perspective, because that's legislative.
04:29That is legislative. That's correct, sir.
04:31And that is why we need to do our job.
04:37I'm telling you, it is frustrating a little bit. What do you think, like right now, you have a magic wand. What do you do to fix this program?
04:45We've got 19 seconds.
04:49I don't have a magic wand, but what we are doing is increasing internal controls to make sure that we can more closely monitor these things and hold our leaders accountable for monitoring the program.
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