This is the page where we will put items of interest pertaining to all veterans.
The following article was taken from the FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM, Tuesday March 16, 1999.
"Certificate to honor Cold War Personnel"
ByFrank Perkins
Special to the Star-Telegram
"If you are one of the millions of armed forces members and government employees who served and worked during the Cold War and then walked away with nothing more thana handshake after Dec. 26, 1991, be of good
cheer."
"Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen has authorized the award of a Certificate of Recognition to all members of the armed forces and qualified government civilian personnel who "faithfully served" the United States during the 46-year Cold War era, which began on Sept. 2, 1945, and ended Dec. 26, 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved and the wall dividing East and West Berlin was pulled down, ending nearly a half-century of nuclear-missile-tipped tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union."
"The certificate simply reads: In recognition of your service during the period of the Cold War in promoting peace and stability for this Nation, the people of this Nation are forever grateful." It is signed by Cohen."
"If you qualify for one of the certificates, begin assembling the necessary copies of paperwork required to prove your service and be prepared to mail of fax them to the Defense Department beginning April 5, the first day such requests for the certificates will be accepted. A sample request letter will be posted that day on the Defense Department's www.defenselink.com web site."
"Armed forces members will need copies of either their DD Form 214 (Certificate of Release or Discharge from Active Duty); WD AGO Form 53-55, (War Department Separation document); DD Form 4 (Reenlistment Contract) or a Military Personnel Letter of Appointment and oath of office."
"Civilian employees will need copies of either a Standard Form 50 (Notification of Personnel Action); Standard Form 2809 (Health Benefits Registration Form), or retirement forms bearing the employee's name, service or agency and dates, or an award certificate bearing the same information."
"Where to get the required records also is posted on the DOD Web site along with answers to other questions you may have about the Cold War certificate. The e-mail address is [email protected] and the DOD public affairs phone number is (703) 697-5737."
Key Senator Backs18-Month Enlistment
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 18, 1999; Page A19
The head of the Senate Armed Services Committee urged the Pentagon yesterday to shorten some military enlistments from several years to 18 months in an effort to combat a falloff in recruits.
In a letter to the military chiefs, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) asked them for comment on the proposal to reduce the length of military service for some jobs, saying the plan deserves serious consideration.
"For a young person, four years is a lifetime," Warner said in an
interview. "Allowing them to serve for 18 months may be more expensive for the government, but it'll have other benefits."
The Army, Navy and Air Force have all missed recruiting goals over the past year. Compounded by a growing difficulty in retaining those already in uniform, the declining number of recruits has presented the military with one of its most critical personnel challenges since conscription was replaced by a volunteer force 25 years ago.
While military officials attribute much of the recruiting problem to a booming peacetime economy that has expanded civilian job opportunities, surveys point also to shifts in values and attitudes distancing young people from the armed forces. Turned off by the discipline, uniformity and long hours of military life, a growing number are opting for college over service in the armed forces.
Given scant public support for reinstituting the draft, some defense experts have begun to advocate shortening enlistment from standard four-year terms to make military service appear less of an interruption in young people's lives.
Warner, in his letter to the military heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, singled out one proposal by Charles Moskos, a Northwestern University sociologist. Writing in The Washington Post last week, Moskos outlined a 15-month enlistment term that would require recruits to attend regular basic training and learn some specialty skill, then spend one year or one sea-tour overseas helping with the growing number of peacekeeping missions.
Military officials generally prefer longer terms. They have worried that reducing enlistment periods would raise training costs.
They also have argued that today's high-tech weaponry and complicated peacekeeping assignments require soldiers with greater skills and professionalism than can be taught in abbreviated tours of duty.
But there is ample precedent for offering limited terms in at least some specialties.
The Army has been most open to the idea. It already allows two-year enlistments in 11 infantry, artillery, air defense and other combat arms specialties; 19 other support jobs qualify for two years of active duty, plus a two-year commitment in the reserves. The Army plans to open another 27 noncombat specialties to two-year enlistments this month.
But the Navy has made only a few hundred two-year slots available, and only a few thousand three-year ones. The Air Force and Marine Corps have continued to insist on a four-year minimum.
"We know two years is a much more popular enlistment option," said Lt. Col. Jamie Sullivan, an Army spokesman. "But the problem is, it's not cost-effective."
c Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
White House's Take on Long-Term Care
By Mike Causey
Friday, March 19, 1999; Page B09
Federal workers and retirees could expect to pay premiums ranging from $200 to $3,000 a year under the White House plan to set up a federal family long-term care insurance program. Premiums would be based on age at enrollment, with the government having a major role in negotiating both premiums and benefit levels.
At a Capitol Hill hearing yesterday on several long-term care proposals, Janice R. Lachance, director of the Office of Personnel Management, estimated that 300,000 people would buy coverage under such a federal program. Both the White House plan and competing GOP plans would allow all workers, retirees, spouses, parents and in-laws to get coverage at group
rates. Covered individuals would pay the entire premium.
Rep. Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.), chairman of the House civil service subcommittee, has his own long-term care insurance bill, which is favored by many Republicans. It would offer premiums and benefits that would be determined through competitive bidding by insurance providers eager to grab part of the potentially giant program.
Most unions opposed the GOP's free-market concept when it was proposed last year. They generally favor the administration plan. Robert M. Tobias, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, submitted a statement endorsing the White House proposal as "a start" but said the government should consider paying part of the premiums.
A third bill, by Rep. Constance A. Morella (R-Md.), would admit military personnel, military retirees and their family members to the federal long-term care insurance family plan. That concept is endorsed by the Retired Officers Association and the National Association of Retired Federal Employees. They believe it would create a bigger risk pool and help hold down premiums.
Additional hearings on long-term care insurance will be held in Baltimore and Pensacola, Fla.
Sellout Crowd
Meetings of the House civil service subcommittee rarely draw a big crowd. But there were so many representatives of insurance companies at yesterday's hearing on long-term care insurance that some sharp lobbyists hired or brought "line sitters" to ensure that they got into the hearing room.
Bulls, Bears and Pigs
"Bulls and bears can make money in the stock market, but pigs get
slaughtered," says financial planner Dennis Gurtz. Gurtz reminds 401(k) investors -- including the 2.4 million people in the federal thrift savings plan -- to invest for the long haul and not try to "time" the stock market, buying when they think it is headed up and selling when they think it is about to drop.
At 9 a.m. tomorrow on WUST radio (1120 AM), Gurtz will discuss long-term investment strategies and what federal 401(k) investors should do during the May-through-July open season, when they can reallocate their savings plan contributions.
Workplace Disputes
At 10 a.m. tomorrow on WUST, Carole Houk, the Navy's alternate dispute resolution counsel, will talk about what government agencies are doing to settle office battles before they become federal cases.
Managers Meet
The Federal Managers Association kicks off its 61st annual convention today at the Sheraton Premiere in Tysons Corner. The session runs through Tuesday. While they are in town, members will contact their representatives, senators and agency officials to lobby for a pay raise larger than the 4.4 percent proposed by President Clinton. FMA members also are concerned about a plan to "reform" the civil service and about additional government downsizing. Speakers will include OPM Director Lachance, Customs Service Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly and Reps. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and Tillie Fowler
(R-Fla.).
FAA Appeal Rights
The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has approved legislation that would restore the right of Federal Aviation Administration employees to appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board. The provision is part of wide-ranging legislation that includes a controversial proposal to add more long-distance flights at Reagan National Airport. The Senate is considering a somewhat similar proposal that includes the FAA-MSPB appeals language.
Friday, March 19, 1999
c Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
Is $44 Billion Enough?
By Bill McAllister
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 7, 1999; Page A19
At a party last month to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Department of Veterans Affairs as a Cabinet-level agency, VA Secretary Togo D. West Jr. was asked how his current job compared with being secretary of the Army, his first job in the Clinton administration.
"More fun. This is more fun," West quickly assured former representative G.V. "Sonny" Montgomery (D-Miss.), one of the lawmakers who had helped elevate the VA into the government's 14th department.
But these days, West, a Washington lawyer-lobbyist before joining the administration, is being pummeled for his defense of a VA budget that one Democrat has likened to "a house of cards." He may be quietly pining to be back in the Pentagon.
While West has been steadfast in his support of the dministration's $44 billion VA budget for fiscal 2000, some officials in his department have been retreating from their ambitious plans to open an additional 89 outpatient clinics to treat veterans. VA officials, asking not to be identified, have said the department may have to delay opening 11 of the
clinics next year because of anticipated financial shortfalls.
James Holley, a spokesman for West, said the secretary expects the clinics to open as planned. "A commitment was made and it will be kept," Holley said last week.
Because the new clinics have to be funded out of savings generated by individual VA hospitals, Holley said some VA regional medical directors may have been planning to delay opening the facilities. West, he said, has scotched any such plans.
The threatened clinics are supposed to open in Salem and North Coast, Ore.; Twin Falls, Idaho; Longview, Wash.; Torrington, Conn.; Arecibo, Puerto Rico; Sanford, Fla.; and Harrison, Fort Smith, Mena and Hot Springs, Ark. They represent the VA's effort to move away from its network of hospitals toward offering preventive, outpatient medical care to more of the nation's 25 million veterans.
Disclosure that VA officials have been squabbling over the clinics could undermine West's already rocky efforts to sell President Clinton's budget on Capitol Hill. Democrats and Republicans have been at odds over whether a $1 billion increase in the president's budget, which is what the House Budget Committee recently endorsed, is adequate. Democratic members want
upward of $3 billion more.
Some lawmakers and veterans groups have charged that West, who took office in May 1998, has failed to take advantage of the VA's Cabinet status to get more money for veterans. "VA's budget is a total disgrace," declared John Smart, senior vice commander in chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "We must declare war, and the first casualty must be the VA secretary."
Rhetoric that harsh has not been directed at a VA secretary since the Bush administration, when veterans groups savaged Edward J. Derwinski. A former member of Congress, Derwinski was attacked for offering a pilot plan that would have allowed some non-veterans to be treated in two of the VA's 172 hospitals. The Senate killed Derwinski's plan, and President George Bush later fired him for daring to raise the ire of the politically ifluential group in an election year.
Few in the veterans community think that Clinton is likely to replace West. After all, said one veterans' lobbyist, "He's just a companyman."
Experimenting on Patients
Even without the clinic issue, West and other top VA officials face another major problem on Capitol Hill. Two House VA subcommittees are holding a joint hearing April 21 into research activities at the VA's hospital in West Los Angeles. All research was suspended there last month over fears of patient abuse.
A top cardiologist is said to have undertaken high-risk experiments on four patients without their approval and mentally ill veterans allegedly were given medications without being fully warned of the drugs' consequences. The allegations prompted federal officials to halt all research and replace the facility's research director.
House VA oversight subcommittee Chairman Terry Everett (R-Ala.) called the issues "the most serious matter ever to confront VA medical research in years." Rep. Corrine Brown (Fla.), ranking Democrat on the panel, was more caustic. "Veterans check in the VA to be cared for, not to give scientists help with experiments," she said.
Helping Homeless Veterans
The General Accounting Office last week gave the VA something less than what it wanted in rating its programs for homeless veterans. It said the effectiveness of the VA's programs in Washington and five other cities remains "unclear."
Even so, VA officials expressed delight that the GAO had acknowledged the department had made "significant progress" addressing the issue and they endorsed the GAO's call for more studies into how the programs are working.
c Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company
