Kathleen Rice on Homeland Security

Invest in new veterans; clear backlog of benefits

• Ending Veteran Homelessness--More than 57,000 veterans are homeless on any given night. Kathleen will work to pass legislation that would allow taxpayers to earmark a portion of their taxes to be used to help house homeless veterans.
• Investing in New Veterans--Kathleen believes that one of Congress' top priorities must be providing proactive support for new veterans as they transition to civilian life. In addition to expanding access to quality education, skills training and professional development programs, Kathleen will push Congress to fully invest in new veterans by permanently extending the Vow to Hire Heroes tax credits, which incentivize companies to hire unemployed veterans and veterans who were wounded or disabled during military service.
• Clearing the backlog of benefits claims--We must take immediate action to give the VA the resources they need to clear the staggering backlog of more than 275,000 unprocessed benefits claims.

Exempt Veterans Affairs from federal hiring freeze.

Excerpts from Letter from 53 Senators to President Trump We are deeply troubled that your freeze on the hiring of federal civilian employees will have a negative and disproportionate impact on our nation's veterans. As such, we urge you to take stock of this hiring freeze's effect on our nation's veterans and exempt the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) from your Hiring Freeze.

• Have you considered how this hiring freeze will affect VA's ability to provide veterans with access to health care?
• How it will affect VA's ability to decide on appeals for disability compensation?
• How it will impact those veterans who apply to federal jobs?

Opposing argument: (Heritage Foundation, "Eliminate Redundant Government Hiring," May 9, 2017): It's not hard to find federal programs that are duplicative or ineffective. The president's executive order requires all agency heads to submit plans for reorganizing their operations. Their proposals are to "include recommendations to eliminate unnecessary agencies and programs." That all sounds great, but what does it actually mean?

Well, for starters, it means the previous federal hiring freeze is no more. But it doesn't mean programs and departments are free to hire willy-nilly. Instead, they've been instructed to follow a smart-hiring plan, consistent with the President's America First Budget Blueprint.

A few agencies, like the Defense Department and Veterans Affairs, will beef up staff. Most, however, will have to pare down employment. All federal employees can expect to see resources shift to higher-priority ones. Many may be asked to do something new or different with the goal of optimizing employees' skills and time.