- Oct 17, 2011
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'A train wreck': Veterans haven't receive GI Bill benefits for months
The Department of Veterans Affairs is suffering from a series of information technology glitches that has caused GI Bill benefit payments covering education and housing to be delayed or — in the case of Roundtree — never be delivered.
While it is unclear how many GI Bill recipients were impacted by the delays, as of Nov. 8, more than 82,000 are still waiting for their housing payments with only weeks remaining in the school semester, according to VA. Hundreds of thousands are believed to have been affected.
"This is — to be kind — a train wreck," said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. "It's really frustrating the amount of money that Congress has appropriated for veterans, and this is the way VA has rolled it out. This discussion started over a year ago."
At the July 17, 2017, hearing in the House Committee on Veterans Affairs — before the bill was passed into law — Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity Curtis Coy highlighted this as his core worry in response to one of the few questions asked during the hearing.
"My biggest concern is two words: IT," said Coy at the time. "We have an IT system in much or almost all of these sections that requires some degree of changes."
After Coy retired earlier this year, VA cut his position and the Office of Economic Opportunity. Multiple Veteran Service Organizations said the loss of this role, as well as the office, meant that there was no one left at VA to communicate the issues to veterans or to lobby higher-ups about the GI Bill issues.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is suffering from a series of information technology glitches that has caused GI Bill benefit payments covering education and housing to be delayed or — in the case of Roundtree — never be delivered.
While it is unclear how many GI Bill recipients were impacted by the delays, as of Nov. 8, more than 82,000 are still waiting for their housing payments with only weeks remaining in the school semester, according to VA. Hundreds of thousands are believed to have been affected.
"This is — to be kind — a train wreck," said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. "It's really frustrating the amount of money that Congress has appropriated for veterans, and this is the way VA has rolled it out. This discussion started over a year ago."
At the July 17, 2017, hearing in the House Committee on Veterans Affairs — before the bill was passed into law — Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity Curtis Coy highlighted this as his core worry in response to one of the few questions asked during the hearing.
"My biggest concern is two words: IT," said Coy at the time. "We have an IT system in much or almost all of these sections that requires some degree of changes."
After Coy retired earlier this year, VA cut his position and the Office of Economic Opportunity. Multiple Veteran Service Organizations said the loss of this role, as well as the office, meant that there was no one left at VA to communicate the issues to veterans or to lobby higher-ups about the GI Bill issues.
The bone spurs were a ruse. He secretly served in the White Berets, a super really elite white ops unit stationed in the Me King Kong Delta.
