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The silence is deafing.

CrashNash

You are right LouF--and also you do not have to deal with the 800,000 back log that you inherited or the two wars worth of new applicants, or the tidal wave of new applicants that will be submitted in regards to the addition of the three new presumptives that VA SEC SHINSEKI helped champion. In addition, GEN SHINSEKI had to implement the new, Post-9/11 G.I. Bill, the largest student aid package of its kind since the original G.I. Bill of 1944. The VA has had over 328,000 Veterans and family members enrolled in college, working towards their degrees. When you include the Montgomery G.I. Bill and Chapter 30 and 35 programs, that number goes up to nearly 600,000 Veterans and family members in classrooms preparing for the next phases of their lives. These 600,000, I am sure think that GEN SHINSEKI is doing a good job.

Also under the leadership of GEN SHINSEKI, the VA fielded a new disability rating system for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), to greatly improve how VA evaluates claims. The VA made enormous advances in treating those Veterans with the most serious head injuries—those who arrive at the Polytrauma Centers comatose, with injuries that, only a few years ago, were thought to be irreversible. I am sure a few vets that visit this site were benefactors of the new TBI rating.

For those Vets in here interested in the backlog of claims at VA--here are some facts:

1. In 2009, the VA received, for the first time ever, over one million new claims. Disability claims have increased 75 percent from 2000 to 2009 [578,773 to 1,013,712]. As a result, the VA now averages over 97,000 new disability claims each month. In my opinion, this is some mountain of claims to attack every month.

2. The VA has launched an aggressive campaign to attack the claims backlog problem on multiple fronts, and has set an ambitious objective: no claim over 125 days in processing and a 98-percent accuracy rate—not just faster, but also better and more accurate decisions.

3. In the last 18 months, the Veterans’ Benefits Administration (VBA) expanded its workforce by over 3,500 people, began accepting on-line applications for initial disability benefits (first time ever, thanks to GEN SHINSEKI), initiated an innovation competition, launched over 30 pilot programs and initiatives to identify best practices, and invested over $138 million in a paperless Veterans benefits management system that will be deployed in fiscal year 2012.

4. Additionally, VBA awarded a $9 million contract to fast track Agent Orange claims associated with our presumption decisions of last October. This is being PRO ACTIVE in my book.

These are the facts.

CrashNash