Senate panel backs bills to expand veterans' benefits
The Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee approved four bills Tuesday aimed at improving pay and benefits for veterans.
The bills, each of which was passed on a voice vote, include a measure (S. 1131) that increases compensation for disabled veterans and their dependents effective Dec. 1, 2003, and another bill (S. 1156) that expands long-term healthcare services for veterans. S. 1156 also would authorize funding for several health care facilities.
S. 1131 directs the secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department to provide a standard cost of living adjustment for pension funding, as well as dependents' indemnity compensation for spouses of veterans with service-related disabilities.
S. 1156 reauthorizes the 1999 Millennium Health Care Act, extending its benefits through Dec. 31, 2008. While the original law provided institutional health care strictly on a space-available basis for veterans with service-connected disabilities rated at 70 percent or more, the new legislation requires the VA secretary to provide health care to all veterans in need of such care who are at least 70 percent disabled. This would mean that all eligible veterans could not be denied services because of a lack of space.
The reauthorization bill also allows the VA secretary to award contracts to private facilities to provide nursing home and adult day health care to eligible veterans. In addition, the bill expands benefits by including non-institutional extended care and such services as rehabilitation and hospice care.
The Veterans' Affairs Committee also voted Tuesday to approve a bill (S. 1132) to increase education benefits provided to surviving spouses and dependents of veterans and extend burial benefits to widowed spouses. In addition, the bill would broaden health benefits to children of Korean War veterans who were born with spina bifida.
A separate bill (S. 1136) approved by the committee modernizes a 1930s-era law that protects service members from civil action while on active duty. For instance, many service members end apartment leases or car leases when they are called to duty for an undetermined period of time. The legislation would prohibit agents from collecting civil penalties from service members and their families while they are on active duty, and it would put a hold on any civil action until they return from their service.
The legislation's protections apply to reserve military members who are called to active duty, as well as to members called overseas.