The United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA for short) is the second largest Government department. The United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs who has cabinet status runs the VA. The VA’s job is to effectively ensure that the welfare of all the men and women who have served their country, in any sort of military capacity, are well served afterwards. To receive VA benefits or assistance, it is not necessary to have been in a combat zone; time spent in any branch of the military is the sole qualifying requirement.
History
The idea of compensating veterans for their service goes all the way back to the times of the Continental Congress of 1776 when promises of pensions were made to those who enlisted and were wounded in the American Revolutionary War. Initially, care provided to veterans was under the wing of individual states and/or communities; Federal Government involvement was proposed in 1811 but not implemented until 1834 (back then, widows and dependents were not included).
This sort of ad-hoc system of veteran care continued throughout the period covering the Civil War, the Indian Wars and the Spanish-American War. It wasn’t until 1917, when the US entered the First World War, that a more formalized system of care was introduced. This included provisions for Veterans Disability Compensation, insurance and vocational rehabilitation for the disabled.
At the War’s end and into the 1920’s, three separate federal agencies were involved with veterans’ benefits: the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, the Bureau of Pensions within the Interior Department and the Veterans Bureau. The birth of today’s VA came 1930, when the president was authorized by Congress to “consolidate and coordinate Government activities affecting war veterans.” The three, now combined, Bureaus were administered entirely out of Washington, DC, despite bottlenecks and delays caused by such bureaucratic centralization.
However, the addition of some 15 million new veterans following the end of World War II (on top of at least some four million, still surviving World War I veterans) caused the VA to undertake steps to decentralize and grant more authority to its field offices throughout the country. Various other pieces of “nuts and bolts” legislation have been introduced since, but the decentralized model is still the current basis of the VA.
All genuine US veterans who have suffered any sort of disability that can be attributed to their time in military service are entitled to Veterans Disability Compensation. However, the application process can be somewhat daunting and applicants would be well advised to browse the free advice given at the following website.
