“We’ve begun to set priorities and fight, fight for resources to turn the Department of Veteran’s Affairs into a 21st century institution,” the VA secretary told 200 attendees at the Army Historical Foundation’s Annual Members’ Meeting at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Fairfax County, Va.
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Eric K. Shinseki, secretary of veteran's affairs and a former Army
chief of staff, addresses the Army Historical Foundation's annual
meeting at Mount Vernon. |
Gen. Eric Shinseki, USA, Ret., a former Army chief of staff, said the department will be an advocate for veterans and its work force will be retrained to meet that goal.
“We’re going to find a way, if I have to hand-sign the checks myself” to get 200,000 veterans into the college of their choice and receiving their increased educational benefits in August when school opens.
Shinseki also pledged to assist in returning the more than 260,000 Priority 8 veterans into the VA health care system.
“I am committed to reducing the backlog of six months to a year before [veterans] receive their disability checks.”
Shinseki said the answer was not adding more workers to process the claims, but putting information technology to work instead. “This is the paperbound part of VA” that needs to be replaced.
Shinseki said he also was committed to using information technology to adjudicate 40-year-old Agent Orange claims from the Vietnam War and 20-year-old claims from Operations Desert Shield/Storm, so future VA secretaries are not weighing claims from current operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Her said, “It’s a 40-year process. We’re looking for a ways to change this. We’re going to find that better way.”
What the VA is handling now and will be handling in the future is providing services and benefits to a growing number of female veterans, who make up 15 percent of the potential beneficiaries now. “We are, for the most part, a male-structured institution.” He said there was about a 10-year window to make the adjustment.
Shinseki said that it was wrong that “veterans lead the nation in homelessness, mental health problems, depression, substance abuse and suicide.”
Saying, “I am not a clinician,” but, he added that it was important to tackle the homelessness issue first because it encompasses so many other issues. He said he wants to take the homeless rates of veterans to zero.
Shinseki said he took the secretary’s position because: “I wanted to give back to the people I went to war with,” and those who preceded his own service and those serving now.
Speaking on the Army’s 234th birthday, he recounted his own experience in traveling to Normandy with members of the “Band of Brothers” in early June and how they not only recalled their experiences on D-Day, but were holding on in the Battle of the Bulge six months later until they were rescued by Patton’s 3rd Army led by the tank crew of Cobra King.
Events such as that led him to commission a 2003 Warrior Ethos Study as Army chief of staff, culminated in the writing of the Soldier’s Creed.
Recalling the “conspicuous gallantry” and “the willingness to give everything” to soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor from the Civil War to today’s operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, he said the “Soldiers Creed “may sound like just words” to those outside the Army.
But Shinseki said the creed is truly a set of promises from one soldier to another, one unit to another, that they will be there when needed.
Shinseki said it is impossible to train to that exceptional courage, but the creed presents the promise and imbues trust.
“Cobra King didn’t fight herself,” he said. It was the crew’s courage and determination to break the German encirclement. “The American soldier remains virtue incarnate.”