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Charity Helps Families of Fallen Troops; House Veterans Affairs Committee Talks Shutdown; Fallen Troops Death Benefits Unpaid; Tom Hanks: Captain Dismissed Hero Label

Aired October 09, 2013 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KEN FISHER, FISHER HOUSE FOUNDATION: Well I have to be honest. I haven't had a chance to speak with them directly as of yet. But I can tell you that the ones that I have spoken to, the Goldstar mothers and the Goldstar families and so forth, you know this is just a very, very obviously emotional time. They have sacrificed so much and then they lose a loved one in service to this nation. It's just a very, very difficult time for them, obviously.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Hey, Ken --

FISHER: But do have this kind of, you know, add to the -- you know to the frustration and to the -- and to the grieving, is just unconscionable to us.

COSTELLO: I think everybody would agree with that Mr. Fisher. If you could just stand by and listen to this veteran's affairs committee meeting.

Because they're talking about the very topic we're expressing right now. This is the chairman of that committee, Jeff Miller. Let's listen to his -- let's listen to his opening statement.

REP. JEFF MILLER (R), CHAIRMAN, VETERANS AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: They want to know if they're disability claims will be decided or further delayed. Families want to know if their loved ones will receive a timely burial at VA National Cemeteries. And many of VA employees themselves want to know whether they're be serving veterans on the job or whether they're going to be furloughed.

I understand that answers to some of these questions are entirely dependent on how long this shutdown lasts. And although I want to be sure that most of us agree that we want the shutdown over quickly, it's our responsibility to ensure that the public, especially veterans understand what the current state of play is.

First of all, Mr. Secretary, I want to say that in the last couple of weeks getting good information about your contingency plans and the effect of lapse and appropriations and its effect on veterans had been very difficult for us to get the information out of your office.

For example, the original feel guide that VA put out regarding the shutdown impact, it first spoke of no effect. No effect, on payments to veterans or processing of their benefits. But in a later version, VA stated that a prolonged shutdown would impact both, but didn't provide any details as to how it would be impacted.

Secondly, the Veterans Health Administration is not shut down at all because it has received a full year's appropriation for 2014 back in March. So hospitals, clinics and vet centers should all be open for business. Yet the President made a statement the day before the shutdown saying that veterans will find they're support centers unstaffed and implied that counseling services for veterans PTS would be affected.

Third, this committee has consistently been told by VVA's mandatory overtime effort towards the backlog would actually end on September 30th. Yet days into the shutdown, we're now informed that the shutdown prevented VA's planned continued payment of overtime.

Fourth, although a shutdown should have a relatively uniform affect across all regional offices, as suggested by your own field guide, my staff met with several representatives from VSOs last week who relayed that their members are hearing mixed messages out of different regional offices. And I think it goes without saying, none of this is ideal.

Some degree of confusion is to be expected, and we understand that. But VA employees should be worrying about VA's mission of service to veterans, not planning for furloughs or managing an agency on spare change remaining from last year.

However, what can never be expected is anything less than the full truth, as best as it is known at the time. This grave situation does not need to be assisted by misleading statements from anybody, statements designed to aid a political argument by any political party regardless of which one we may belong to. It's my hope that we can uphold the best traditions of this committee and rise above all of that today.

Mr. Secretary, I appreciate your willingness to join us in this effort. Since this hearing was called last Friday, we've had a little bit more clarity on some of the issues we've been asking your staff about for the last ten days. But, I thought the public should hear some of the same information.

Now, one last point before I conclude. Last July we held a hearing on a bill that the ranking member and I introduced that proposed to advance fund the entire VA discretionary budget. The administration declined to take a position on the bill, saying instead it needed to conduct a review first.

It's obvious that no review is necessary given where we are today. Mr. Secretary, I sincerely hope that you are making that case with the administration. And I'll follow up with you on that point during questioning.

And I now recognize the ranking member Mr. Michaud for his opening statement.

REP. MIKE MICHAUD (D), RANKING MEMBER, VETERANS AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: Thank you, very much Mr. Chairman for having this hearing today. And I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, for coming. Before we begin exploring how the government shutdown is affecting veterans and the VA, I want to acknowledge that the very real consequences in the lapse in appropriations has had on VA employees.

I know that VA employees do not work solely for a paycheck. They work because they believe in helping veterans. A lot of them are veterans. And they have done a phenomenal job. And now it's time for Congress to do its job.

We can do this in two ways. Number one, either the Senate take up the (inaudible) VA appropriation bill that was passed by the House about four months ago. Or, the House can take up a clean CR passed by the Senate. I don't care which one that we choose, as long as we get on with the re-opening of government and that we fully fund VA.

The VA contingency plan and field guide provide us with a rough idea of the consequences of a government shutdown. Last week, we saw the immediate shutdown when it had on some of the VA offices, such as the Inspector General. Yesterday we saw some VBA and IT accounts run dry and thousands of VA employees furloughed.

We know that the mandatory funds to pay compensation and pensioned benefits are scheduled to run out in a little over two weeks. We also know that furloughs and suspensions of programs in other agencies also affect veterans. Of the roughly 2.1 million federal employees, more than 600,000 are veterans. Many of them are already or expect to be furloughed.

Also as programs and services at other agencies are disrupted, it affects the VA's ability to receive the necessary information in support to deliver those services for our veterans.

We know we'll hear bad news today from you, Mr. Secretary. Important VA operations have or will be suspended. Some veterans will not get what they are expecting, what they deserve and most importantly, what they have earned. This may be a difficult conversation, but one that we must have, openly, frankly and honestly.

But amidst the bad news, there is some good news. With VA's medical accounts under advanced appropriation, the Veteran's Health Administration is largely unaffected by lapse in the physical year 2014 appropriation. All medical facilities are open as you heard from the Chairman and operation under normal status. This will continue regardless how long the current government is shut down.

It is clear now that in the mist of the shutdown that getting a vote on HR 813 as amended, the putting the Veteran's Funding First Act, is necessary in the critical step and assuring veterans benefits and services are not put at risk when there is a lapse in appropriation.

And Mr. Chairman I want to thank you for signing on a letter with me to the Speaker asking that HR 813 as amended be scheduled for floor action. I encourage all members of the committee to sign on to that letter and to send a message that veterans should not, and cannot and will not be disadvantaged by party politics in the future, regardless of which party is in control. Mr. Secretary, I look forward to your testimony and the questions to follow. Mr. Chairman, once again, I want to thank you very much for having this very important and timely hearing today. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

MILLER: Thank you Mr. Michaud. Thank you to all the members for your attendance today. As you might imagine, this is a critical time within our government and certainly for our veterans out there. And that's why I asked the secretary -- and I am so pleased and on very short notice he was able to come in and give us some indication of where we are now within the VA and where we will be going in the future depending on how long this shutdown does in fact continue.

I want to welcome to the table our first and only witness of this morning, the Honorable Eric Shinseki, Secretary for the U.S. Department of Veteran's Affairs. Your complete written statement, Mr. Secretary, will be entered into the record. And you are recognized now for five minutes.

GEN. ERIC SHINSEKI, VETERAN AFFAIRS SECRETARY: Great. Chairman Miller and Ranking Member Michaud and members of the committee -- thank you for entering my written statement.

Let me, Mr. Chairman, just recognize in the room here we have partners for all of us from our Veteran's Service Organizations. I will tell you, they've been quite directly helpful to me over the past four and a half years and trying to help us to understand how to better at our responsibilities of caring for veterans but also service members and families and survivors that we are responsible for.

Mr. Chairman, you called this hearing to examine the effect of government shutdown on VA benefits and services to veterans. And while my written testimony describes many effects on VA due to the ongoing lapse and appropriations, let me just say unequivocally that all the effects that I described and I'm going to describe of the shutdown are negative. It is an impediment to VA's ability to deliver services and benefits that veterans have earned through their service.

VA continues to invest significant resources and time and planning for this unique, infrequent, and avoidable situation. The ongoing shutdown presents myriad legal and programmatic challenges. The last time a shutdown occurred in 1996, as I am told, our nation was enjoying a sustained period of relative peace.

That's not true today. Today we're in the 13th year of the war in Afghanistan providing care and benefits to veterans of that war and the war in Iraq as well. Members of this latest generation of veterans are enrolling in VA at a higher rate than ever before. They along with the veterans of every preceding generation will be harmed if the shutdown continues.

In brief, in the last six months through 30 September, the Veteran's Benefits Administration VBA, reduced the backlog of compensation claims, something we've all been working on and prodding and encouraging them to do better. While they've begun that delivery 193,000 claims in the backlog reduced in the last 190 days -- roughly 190 days a 31.5 percent increase in about a little over six months.

Since the shutdown began on 1 October, the backlog has stalled. And in fact, it has increased by about 2,000 claims. VBA has already furloughed more than 7,800 of its employees, half of whom are veterans.

A shutdown directly threatens VA's ability to eliminate the backlog. We've lost ground we fought hard to take. Roughly 1,400 veterans a day are now not receiving decisions on their disability compensation claims due to the end of overtime. If the shutdown does not end in the coming weeks, VA will not be able to assure delivery of 1 November, checks to more than 5.18 million beneficiaries.

And that accounts for about $6.25 billion in payments that people are expecting and compensation and pensions and dependents and indemnity compensation, DIC, fiduciary, educational, vocational rehabilitation unemployment benefits. Including veterans who are 100 percent disabled, surviving spouses, eligible children, orphaned by the death of their military or veteran parent. Tuition and stipends for over 500,000 veteran service members and eligible family members and education programs will also stop.

These are some of the major issues veterans face if the shutdown continues. My written testimony includes details of other negative impacts to our IT initiatives. To our national cemetery administration whose employees lay to honor at rest to those who serve this nation. To VA's staff offices and to VA employees themselves especially those who are veterans.

While some have suggested a series of many continuing resolution, or many CRs, if you will, as an approach to meeting our FY 2014 budgetary responsibilities for funding the government, that's not a solution for veterans or for our nation.

The budget request submitted by President Obama nearly six months ago is a result of an extensive cooperative synchronized effort across all the departments and agencies to produce a budget request that coherently balanced priorities and risk. Picking and choosing parts of government to fund would ignore two key drumbeats that I've tried to deliver over the past four and a half years. The first is that very little of what we work on in VA originates in VA. Much of that originates in another department.

And then second, VA's care for veterans and by that I mean health care, education, employment, insurance, housing, for both the homeowner and the homeless, does not occur without significant coordination, with DOD, with Housing and Urban Development, HHS, Social Security, Treasury, Education, Labor, the IRS, Small Business Administration. And frankly, it is this collaboration among and across the government that allows us to be effective.

And I would add to that, we have a fourth mission, I think as the chairman recalls. Besides our three administrations, we have a fourth mission in the event of emergency or national disaster, humanitarian requirements that I must make available our capabilities where it is needed. So our work with FEMA and DHS, Homeland Security, is also part of our day to day responsibilities. These are not insignificant connections for this department. Without them, we are less effective in serving veterans, our service members, their families and our survivors.

So these are the facts that I present, Mr. Chairman. At a critical time for veterans, everyone at VA as you said should be focusing on how best to accomplish their missions. So I ask the committee and the rest of Congress to help us by resolving this fiscal impasse now so that VA and our federal partners on whom we have to rely to do our work can get back to work full-time fulfilling President Lincoln's call to care for those who are --

COSTELLO: All right. Let's step away from this right now.

I want to go back to Ken Fisher of the Fisher House. He deals with military families every day. He provides housing for those military families desperately in need. Has offered to give money to -- grant money to reimburse military families for death benefits and such.

So as you're listening to this hearing and the politicians talk, what's going through your mind?

FISHER: Well, a couple of things, actually. One, not once in all of this and, you know, I work very closely with Chairman Miller and obviously with Secretary Shinseki, not once did I hear anything about the death benefits and the resumption of that. That may be a DOD issue, it may be a congressional issue but not once did I hear it.

Two, it points out that, you know, the lack of the flow of the information is due to a bureaucratic system that quite frankly is just choking. You know, the entire veteran's health care and the way it's administered. This is something that, you know, I hope -- you know, as this shutdown, you know, comes to an end, hopefully in a timely fashion, that it's addressed.

You heard the secretary discuss the backlog in benefits and how that's being addressed. But, you know that the one compelling issue is that when a vet -- when a serviceman or woman raises their right hand and takes the oath to go into the military, to defend this nation, we as a people also take an oath. That is, one, if they're wounded we will take care of them, whether it's physical or mental; and two, if they don't make it home, we'll take care of their families.

The fact that the VA is going through this issue and it's going to impact the care and service, maybe not on a health base but in other benefits in other ways, it's just unacceptable given the sacrifices that these men and women have already made.

COSTELLO: I know. It's the very least we can do is to make sure that they're taken care of. You're absolutely right about that Mr. Fisher. And thank you for helping the military families, at least in the short-term. Hopefully you won't have to do that for much longer. We hope that lawmakers will come to an agreement. And the President will join in too.

And I know you have to get to a conference call so I'm going to let you go. Mr. Fisher, thank you so much for joining me this morning.

FISHER: Thank you. Appreciate it.

COSTELLO: You're welcome.

All right. Let's talk with Barbara Starr. She's our Pentagon reporter. Barbara -- you've been listening to this. Let's just cut to the chase because both the Democrats and the Republicans said there's a bill that's already passed the House that would fund this, that would pay for the death benefits, it just has to go to the Senate and the Senate has to pass it and the President has to sign it. Is it as simple as that?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, there's a lot of Washington politics getting caught up in all of this. The fact is the Pentagon says they do not have the authority right now to pay these bills and there are several families that clearly are going to need assistance.

The wonderful work being done by Fisher House, I can also tell you there is a major, major Wall Street firm that is offering very privately to help. They have asked their name not be use the. The Navy and Army Relief Society is offering to help these families.

Until this actually gets resolved by the politicians in Washington on all sides of the aisle, this is going to be a problem. And you know, you hear all this talk from these people. But we talk to these families. And I have spoken to a number of veterans this week on the issue of this VA problem -- of the veterans not getting their benefits and their checks.

I just want to offer two examples because these are wounded veterans that I know. I spoke to a young man I know this week. He was a veteran of Afghanistan. He lost both his legs in Afghanistan in an IED blast. He wears two prosthetic legs. He needed to go see his technician to get his legs worked on. He was told his technician was furloughed. Politics aside, this young man's technician for his prosthetic legs, he can't have the appointment.

There is another young veteran, 100 percent disabled. He lives just a few blocks from the courthouse. If he doesn't get his next VA disability check, he doesn't know how he's going to pay his rent, he tells me, because he's been unemployed for four months. These are the real people, Carol, these are the real stories.

COSTELLO: And we heard General Shinseki say if this government -- this partial government shutdown lasts for another two weeks that those benefit checks will not go out.

STARR: Right. I wrote it down. It's something like 5 million checks. And let's be clear who is involved here. It is, of course, the recent veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. It is those who served in Vietnam, in Korea and some of the most elderly and needy veterans in this country but elderly men mainly who served in World War II.

And many who are elderly, retired, of course, cannot work. May be ill who depend on these disability checks. And they earned them. You know, the government for decades and decades has made the solemn promise to the veterans, you serve, we will take care of you.

This disability check is in return for the income they could not earn because of being disabled having served in the military. Just think of this, this week the nation's oldest living Medal of Honor recipient, a man 96 years old, who served in World War II Mr. Oresko passed away this week. This is a young man in the middle of World War II who stormed some Nazi Fortifications. He had he not passed away this week, would not be getting his disability check.

COSTELLO: Barbara Starr, thanks so much for your insight. We'll continue to follow this part of the story, of course.

Got to take a break now. Be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COSTELLO: A House Veteran Affairs Committee meeting right now to talk about those military benefits that are not being paid because of the partial government shutdown. We'll continue to monitor this hearing, of course. We'll bring you the latest throughout the day.

Checking our other top stories at 55 minutes past the hour:

The Obama Administration is planning to cut some military aid to Egypt -- that's according to U.S. Officials. The move comes in the wake of the July military coup that ousted President Mohamed Morsi. The White House say san announcement will be made in the coming days. The U.S. provides Eypt more than $1 billion in aid every year.

Representative John Lewis and several other House Democrats have been charge with crowding and obstructing, following their arrest near the capital. They've been taking part of that rally for immigration reform. Some conservative groups criticize a rally which was given a permit by the National Parks Service despite the partial government shutdown.

The FBI now offering a $25,000 reward for information on a series of attacks on a central Arkansas power grid. Two power lines were cut down leaving 10,000 people without electricity. The FBI believed the incident may be linked to two others.

Police say the woman who tried to ram her car through a White House barrier last week did not have a gun in her car. Court papers show Miriam Carey did have a passport and foreign money though in a lunch box when we shot and killed her during the chase in which he heard two officers. Her small daughter was in the car but she was not hurt.

Tom Hanks tells CNN that the man he portrays in a new movie about a hijacking didn't want to be called a hero. "Captain Phillips" is a story about the 2009 takeover of the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates.

The real life captain of the ship is now a witness in the lawsuit filed by the crew against the ships owner. And they claim the film is flawed and Phillips is no hero. It's just that he ignored warnings to steer farther out to sea to avoid the pirates.

Hanks told CNN's Christiane Amanpour, he would not second guess the captain.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM HANKS, ACTOR: The primary motive was get these guys off this ship. But he would never -- he would -- he would never use the word "hero" in regard to himself. He said, I was waiting for the he heroes to show up.

The film "Captain Phillips" opens in theater nationwide on Friday. Let's get a quick check of the market. It gets a little better today. Alison Kosik is at the New York Stock Exchange -- what?

ALISON KOSIK, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Just when you look away the green arrows that we saw at the opening bell were very fleeting. We're seeing stocks fall yet again today. You turned only last -- just a short moment. This has really been the trend for the Dow. It's been falling for a while, down 11 of the past 14 session.

You know what Carol -- the Dow is off more than 350 points since the government shutdown started, since these worries about what's going to happen with the debt ceiling. She says Lorie flared.

So you're seeing right now a sort of watch and wait pattern for investors as to what Washington's next move is. And you're seeing investors get out instead of jumping in because there's so little certainty as to what's going to happen in Washington -- Carol.

COSTELLO: All right. Alison Kosik, I know you'll keep your eye on the market throughout the day. Thanks so much.

KOSIK: Yes, totally.

COSTELLO: And thank you for joining me today, I'm Carol Costello. "LEGAL VIEW" with Ashleigh Banfield after a break.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCAIN: Shouldn't we as a body, Republican, Democrat, no matter who we are, shouldn't we be embarrassed about this? Shouldn't we be ashamed?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ASHLEIGH BANFIELD, CNN HOST, LEGAL VIEW: Yes, Senator McCain, you should all be ashamed of the laughing stock that you and your colleagues have made of America's fiscal affairs. And of one particularly cruelly the government shutdown has afflicted on families already at their lowest.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCCAIN: What do the American people think when they see that death benefits for those who served and sacrificed in the most honorable way are not even -- their families are not even eligible for death benefits? I'm ashamed. I'm embarrassed. All of us should be.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BANFIELD: Hello, everyone. I'm Ashleigh Banfield. It is October the 9th. Welcome to "LEGAL VIEW".