From: "Proffet, William A." <WProffet@legion.org>
Date: February 3, 2022 at 6:25:38 AM MST
To: National Commander <NationalCommander@legion.org>
Subject: American Legion News Clips 2.3.22
Good morning, Legionnaires and veterans’ advocates, it’s Thursday, February 3, 2022, which is Four Chaplains Memorial Day, Doggy Date Night, National Missing Persons Day, and National Women Physicians Day.
Today in American Legion history:
Feb. 3, 1943: The USAT Dorchester is struck by a German torpedo and sinks in the north Atlantic Ocean. Onboard are four Army chaplains – Methodist Church minister George L. Fox; Reform Rabbi Alexander D. Goode; Reformed Church in America minister Rev. Clark V. Poling and Roman Catholic priest Father John P. Washington – who give up their own life jackets to others. They drown after helping dozens of soldiers onto lifeboats. Their final act is a prayer together, arms locked. Of the 904 onboard, 675 perish. The bravery of the four chaplains leads The American Legion to call for their Medal of Honor recognition. American Legion posts worldwide continue to conduct annual Four Chaplains Day ceremonies in early February to honor them.
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
- Stars & Stripes | Republicans attempt to end VA vaccine mandate by challenging legislation that would give pay raises to health care workers
- Military Times | $400M VA program to help COVID-unemployed vets has produced few new jobs
- Stars & Stripes | US service members balk at some duty posts over racism fears, survey finds
- Military.com | Army to Begin Booting Soldiers Who Refuse to Comply with Vaccine Mandate
- Stars & Stripes | House lawmaker seeks to rename Fort Benning in honor of soldier who received Medal of Honor
- Military Times | Military kids face delays, inequities in getting special education services
- Associated Press | Biden signs bill to honor WWII Ghost Army soldiers
- Associated Press | Biden orders forces to Europe amid stalled Ukraine talks
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Stars & Stripes | Republicans attempt to end VA vaccine mandate by challenging legislation that would give pay raises to health care workers
BY NIKKI WENTLING • STARS AND STRIPES • FEBRUARY 2, 2022
WASHINGTON — Republicans on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs attempted Wednesday to derail legislation that would give pay raises to Department of Veterans Affairs health care workers, arguing the agency shouldn’t receive more funds to recruit or retain employees until it scraps its vaccine mandate.
The House committee approved the VA RAISE Act, voting along party lines to increase the salary limitations on VA nurses and physician assistants. VA Secretary Denis McDonough has urged Congress to approve the bill to help the department retain health care staff and recruit candidates for thousands of vacancies.
Before the vote, Republican members argued against the legislation and tried to add an amendment that would force the VA to do away with its mandate that employees be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The committee opposed the amendment, with Democrats voting to throw it out.
Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., the chairman of the committee, accused Republicans of attempting to undermine the bill with partisan gamesmanship and disinformation.
“This amendment is a political stunt that injects extreme ideological views into the very serious work of this committee,” he said. “We are here today dealing with serious legislation. … I have no patience for this type of stunt.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, introduced the amendment to end the VA’s vaccine mandate. He claimed the VA wouldn’t need more funding to hire workers if it wasn’t planning to fire those employees who refused to be vaccinated.
“Why is the VA going to proceed with continuing to have these vaccine mandates that would require a lot of our health care workers be removed, and then come back and say we need a lot more money to hire more people?” Roy asked.
As of Wednesday, the VA had not fired any employees because of the vaccine mandate. About 10% of VA employees have requested exemptions to the mandate, and McDonough has said the department would accept those requests without question in most cases.
The VA might only deny exemption requests in instances where there aren’t enough vaccinated health care workers to treat veterans in areas such as spinal cord injury facilities or community living centers, McDonough said.
Roy and Rep. Mike Bost of Illinois, the ranking Republican on the committee, also speculated about the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines. Bost insisted the amendment wasn’t a political move.
“I am concerned about how the employees will be treated in the VA based on their personal choices and about the science,” Bost said.
Takano accused Roy and Bost of using the issue of personal choice to disguise anti-vaccination sentiments.
“I’ll just say how unfortunate it is that the ranking member and Representative Roy have chosen to waste precious time indulging in extreme libertarian fantasies and vaccine skepticism couched as an attempt to protect individual rights,” he said.
The bill, which passed through the committee after the debate Wednesday, will next go to the House floor.
Military Times | $400M VA program to help COVID-unemployed vets has produced few new jobs
By Leo Shane III • Feb 2, 02:53 PM
Only a few dozen veterans have landed jobs through the Department of Veterans Affairs’ nearly $400 million pandemic employment assistance program, despite significant backing from lawmakers and initial interest among eligible individuals.
The Veteran Rapid Retraining Assistance Program (VRRAP) was included by Congress in its coronavirus-related emergency measures last year. The department began accepting applicants in May, and was capped by law at no more than 17,250 participants.
However, eight months into the program, only about 3,400 veterans have taken part in the program, and only about 700 have graduated from the training, according to Ricardo Da Silva, program integration officer at VA’s Education Service.
Of that group, just 70 have found new jobs through the program.
For comparison, VA’s Veteran Employment Through Technology Education Courses (VETTEC) launched in 2019 with a significantly smaller budget (about $100 million over three years) but has seen more success in getting veterans into in-demand careers.
Nearly 1,700 graduates have found new employment, earning an average salary of $60,000, Da Silva said. Roughly another 900 are less than six months out from finishing the program and are currently seeking work.
VETTEC was designed as a limited five-year pilot program, but multiple lawmakers have lobbied in recent months to expand the effort and make it a permanent fixture within VA.
Meanwhile, VA officials and members of Congress said they are confused by the lack of success with VRRAP, especially given the large number of veterans forced out of work in the early days of the pandemic.
“This committee worked closely with VA to develop [the program] and set the funding based off of anticipated veteran demand for the program,” said Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee’s economic opportunity panel.
Instead, Levin noted, participation has been “lacking.”
Da Silva said about 5,000 eligible individuals who received initial approval to take part opted against completing the program. VA leaders are surveying them now to find out what the problems are and whether changes could make the program more appealing.
VRRAP is only open to veterans who have already exhausted other job-training benefits — such as the GI Bill — but still find themselves without stable employment because of coronavirus closures, layoffs or health complications.
Veterans who qualify can receive education benefits equal to the Post-9/11 GI Bill (including tuition costs and housing stipends) for up to 12 months, with the goal of learning a new skill or completing a certificate program in that time frame.
But Da Silva said eligibility limits may have played a factor in participation. Similarly, concerns from participating schools about the new program rules and payments may have encouraged administrators to prioritize other options for veterans above the VVRAP program.
Only about $100 million of the program’s total funding has been committed to students. If the rest is not spent or assigned by the end of the year, the money will be returned to the U.S. Treasury.
Levin said he is hopeful changes can be made before then to reach and assist more veterans.
In December, the unemployment rate among U.S. veterans fell to 3.2 percent, its lowest level in more than two years, before the start of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Stars & Stripes | US service members balk at some duty posts over racism fears, survey finds
BY J.P. LAWRENCE • STARS AND STRIPES • FEBRUARY 2, 2022
Military personnel who are minorities or have family members of color can face an agonizing decision when they receive assignments to places where they think they will face racial discrimination, a study commissioned by a military family advocacy group found.
And numerous respondents said that turning down a duty assignment over concerns of how they would be treated had harmed their military careers.
The results of the survey, which polled 2,731 respondents who identified as nonwhite, were published Wednesday. It was designed by Blue Star Families and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families.
The sample included 303 active-duty troops as well as veterans and military family members who identified as Black, Asian, Latino or Hispanic.
Some 42% of active-duty troops of color said concerns about racism at certain bases and surrounding communities led them to reject assignments there, the report said.
“We have had good people across all branches leave because of negative experiences with either being sent somewhere where they were not safe or did not feel safe, or where they were harassed,” Tonya Murphy, a fellow with Blue Star Families who participated in the study, told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday.
Murphy, who is Black, said she and her husband Scotty, who is white and a Navy submariner, balked at an assignment to Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Georgia and a stint at Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Tennessee out of concern for the safety of their sons, ages 15, 13 and 9.
Other troops and their families made similar decisions knowing that their career advancement could be adversely affected, the report said.
Approximately two-thirds of troops of color who turned down orders said they were given a less attractive assignment, saw less opportunity for promotion, received a poorer evaluation or had their careers ended, the Blue Star Families report said.
Troops and their families specifically expressed concerns about discrimination and racial profiling by police in much of the U.S., including the Midwest, South and West.
More than half of surveyed active-duty personnel or their family members living in these regions said they feared for their safety at least once since the start of 2020 because of their race or ethnicity, the poll said. In the Northeast, 43% of respondents said the same.
One in three Black family members of active-duty personnel reported being racially profiled by police, the report said. Respondents reported higher levels of trust in military law enforcement than for civilian police.
Nearly 70% of the surveyed active-duty troops of color agreed that they were regarded as valued members of their military community, and 79% said the military positively influenced their professional growth. But 41% also said they had experienced racial or ethnic discrimination or harassment by their peers at some point in their career.
"Are we all in this together, or are we not?" said Steven Price, who now runs The Voices of Our Veterans outreach group in San Antonio.
Price, a Panamanian-American who said he faced racism and slurs while in the Army in the 1980s, fears that extremism is on the rise.
"You would think because we wore the same uniform, that we would be classified as a soldier, not based on our race," Price said.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a Black former Army general, has vowed to rid racists and extremists from the ranks.
Some of Austin’s efforts have drawn criticism from U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton, a former Army officer who said diversity campaigns are creating mistrust and not “something that our military needs to constantly obsess about.”
But not talking about the experiences of troops of color and their families won’t make the issues affecting them go away, Murphy said.
“We have to take the conversations from being whispered about in small circles and quiet talks, and they need to be had out loud,” Murphy said. “How are we a more ready force if our service members are worrying about the safety of their families at home?”
Military.com | Army to Begin Booting Soldiers Who Refuse to Comply with Vaccine Mandate
2 Feb 2022 • Military.com • By Steve Beynon
Soldiers who still refuse to comply with mandatory vaccination against COVID-19 will be forced out of the Army, the service announced Wednesday.
As of last week, 96% of the active-duty Army was fully vaccinated — far outpacing the general civilian population, in which 74% of adults are inoculated against the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Army Reserve reports that 75% of its members are fully vaccinated, but units have had a difficult time tracking the vaccination status of part-time troops.
Any soldier with an outstanding exemption request will be shielded from discharge until a decision is made, the service said. The only broad exception the Army is making is if soldiers are set to complete their current contract before July 2. Those troops will be allowed to fulfill their obligations to the force while unvaccinated, according to the announcement.
Troops refusing the vaccine have been relatively rare across all the services, but exemptions have been even rarer. Of the 709 soldiers who requested medical exemptions, only six have been granted.
Some service members have sought medical exemptions based on conspiracy theories or misinformation about the vaccines, a likely reason the bulk of requests have been denied. However, a small minority of soldiers have medical conditions that preclude them from receiving the vaccine or have suffered through rare vaccination side effects, such as myocarditis.
The Army has granted none of the 2,910 requests for religious exemptions from the COVID-19 vaccine it has received. Soldiers are also mandated to receive at least a dozen other vaccines against ailments including the flu, hepatitis and smallpox. Troops who did not object to those vaccines on religious grounds likely face an uphill battle making their case against the COVID-19 vaccines.
"Army readiness depends on soldiers who are prepared to train, deploy, fight and win our nation’s wars," Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement. "Unvaccinated Soldiers present risk to the force and jeopardize readiness. We will begin involuntary separation proceedings for soldiers who refuse the vaccine order and are not pending a final decision on an exemption."
The Army’s new policy follows a recent law passed by Congress that directed the Defense Department to allow any service member who is discharged for refusing a vaccine to receive either an honorable or general discharge under honorable conditions.
That means troops who are booted will retain their benefits, for the most part. However, being removed with a general discharge terminates eligibility for GI Bill benefits — largely seen as veterans’ most powerful benefit.
The new policy also directs that soldiers who receive the boot will lose out on any involuntary separation pay, and they are potentially subject to having their bonuses recouped
