According to military.com, the VA paid out $400 million dollars in bonuses last year. What would happen if that money went to homeless Vets instead?
While the VA reports that they have reduced homelessness by 12%, I remain skeptical because the VA has a tendency to manipulate the numbers, like this.
But, let’s assume for a moment, that the VA is correct that 75,000 Veterans are homeless on a given night.
Let’s make a further assumption. Let’s assume the VA has a change of heart, and decides to award benefits to these 75,000 homeless Vets, instead of paying that money out to VA executives for great performance, and also used the other $ 100 million they committed to help homeless Vets.
Instead of paying out $400 million in bonuses, and another $100 million to “communities that help Vets” The VA could award each of 74,400 homeless Veterans a 40% disability rating, and still have money left over from the 500 million. This would not cost taxpayers a cent, but instead VA executives would not get a bonus and “communities that help Vets” would not get any money to help Vets. Maybe these communities would not need money to help Vets if 99.2 percent of homeless Vets had an income to help themselves.
For those of you who like math, thats 74,400 Veterans times $ 560 per month for a 40% disabled Veteran, times 12 months in a year equals 499.9 million dollars.
Professor Linda Bilmes suggested something very similar in her 2007 testimony to congress. That is, she pretty much suggested simply immediately paying Veterans their disability and then auditing some to ensure accuracy, rather than have the Veterans wait in a million man long line for benefits.
asknod
Bethanie Spangenberg
kcraveiro
robinhoodesqvetsatty
Wesley McCauley
Veterans Claims Help 
I think it is the right thing to do and the ONLY way to end veteran homelessness. That is if our gov’t is really serious about doing anything for Veterans. The public has stink eye over what they are doing now. I think the solution should entail a “pension” based on need at the poverty level which is around 1,200 per month. This would be temporary until the Vet does gets the disability compensation (might give the vA the incentive to speed up the claims for the needy) or can earn more than the poverty rated pension. $540 a month isn’t enough to pay rent, keep the lights on, or have an internet connection. But the pension It will never happen though because each state is dependent on the kick-backs they get for doling out the money to local businessses (which is just corporate welfare anyway).
I wholeheartedly agree with your thoughts. If we were spitting out 8-10 kids with no obvious way of supporting them the government would make sure we received a check and none of these people ever set foot in a military situation or even made it through bootcamp. Really gets under my skin.
I like Professor Bilme’s ideas–especially simplifying the disability categories and paying claims with audits to catch fraud. Using electronic records etc..
I would also expand the HUD-VASH housing program and rehabilitate housing on closed bases to allow veterans and their families to live there, retrain at a community college, etc..
The following link is to a story from Portland Oregon which deals with rural veterans difficulties in getting care. Two are Hep C victims, one deceased now. It relates to this post because of efficiency and cost-effectiveness issues. VA clinics cannot deal with major health problems; local hospital care is essential to preserve lives to far from VAs in major cities.
http://blog.oregonlive.com/oregonatwar/2012/06/the_va_and_rural_veterans_alli.html
Bonuses for what exactly? Doing your job (so to speak), showing up for work on time, making sure that your pencil vs pen ratio is correct, making sure that your seat cushion is properly sprayed with Fabreeze perhaps. The bonus system should be baed on actual performance, ie getting the Vets taken care of and less about the mouthpieces who stomp around and pat each others hinneys.
Why, I’m sure there are attendance bonuses, most expensive men’s cologne bonuses, most congenial personality bonuses, best suggestion of the month bonuses, politeness awards (with bonus), most denials in a month bonuses, most creative denial language bonuses…(add yours here)