Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, I am. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'll be talking to you more about the vocational rehabilitation and employment program. The mission of our program is to provide the services needed to help service members and veterans with service-connected disabilities return to the workf

Veterans Affairs committee  Another way in which we perform outreach occurs when veterans are notified they have been awarded a service-connected disability rating by the VA. That notification is accompanied by an application for a vocational rehabilitation program, so veterans are immediately made aware of

Veterans Affairs committee  That is determined by the disability evaluation in the compensation service department of the Veterans Benefits Administration, which Cheryl Flohr was speaking about.

Veterans Affairs committee  If I may add something as well about the service-connected disability rating, when a service member is in the process of transitioning out or has transitioned out recently, they do not have to wait for the entire process to take place for their disability rating. If there is medi

Veterans Affairs committee  If the veteran has severe disabilities and is hospitalized, if we do the transition briefing at their bedside, the family members would be present. One of the issues we have found is that because the transition assistance program has not been mandatory for every transitioning se

Veterans Affairs committee  I think the climate currently is on enhancing benefits and ensuring that service members who are transitioning out are fully aware of their benefits. We're focusing a lot more on outreach and on ensuring that every veteran who is entitled to a benefit has access to that benefit.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'm not sure I understand the question. Is your question whether our budget is being impacted, or whether our budget can sustain the benefits that we administer?

Veterans Affairs committee  I'll address that. We do have different types of budgets. We have discretionary budgets and we have mandatory budgets. The mandatory budget is where the actual benefit payments to veterans are paid out. As far as my knowledge from the big-picture perspective, there is no plan to

Veterans Affairs committee  I don't think any of us came prepared with budgetary information. I think we can follow up with some information, if that's of interest to you, but unfortunately I don't know that anybody else came prepared with budgetary information. I apologize.

Veterans Affairs committee  Unfortunately, we did not bring budget information. We're not prepared to answer that. I apologize.

Veterans Affairs committee  I mentioned earlier there are two different budgetary categories: discretionary and mandatory. What you've just described falls into our mandatory expenditures. That is the same way we operate. We do not turn down a veteran based on budget. We budget according to our anticipated

Veterans Affairs committee  The benefits records are still in the process of migrating to the paperless environment. We still have paper records in the benefits we have.

Veterans Affairs committee  I think we all probably work on the homeless veterans issue, so I'll jump in there and address what I know. The Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs has stated that it's his goal to eliminate all veteran homelessness. I do not have the statistics, but I do know that

Veterans Affairs committee  For an admitting service member, it's 20% or higher. For an individual who is already a veteran, it is 10% or higher. That's the basic eligibility, and then there are requirements in addition if they have an employment handicap.

Veterans Affairs committee  Are you referring to public sector employment and employing the veterans in the federal government?