During confirmation hearing, Shinseki promises to speed disability benefits approval process for veterans

From USA Today:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama's choice to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs promised Wednesday to slash wait times for disability claims, make educational benefits under the new GI Bill available on time and seek out for treatment Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffering hidden psychological or brain-damage wounds.

Retired general Eric Shinseki (pictured) was warmly greeted by the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, whose members promised he would be confirmed next week as VA secretary.

There are currently about 24 million living veterans, and about 8 million are enrolled in VA health care programs. Shinseki promised a dramatic transformation of the department that is the second-largest federal agency next to the Department of Defense. He said he would make it more "people-centric, results-driven, forward-looking."

A former Army chief of staff, Shinseki achieved notoriety in 2003 when he told Congress that "several hundred thousand" troops would be needed to achieve stability after the invasion of Iraq, contradicting the Bush administration's claims that the war could be won with fewer forces. President Bush ultimately ordered an increase in troops in 2007 to quell violence in Iraq.

Key VA concerns Shinseki vowed to address include:

• Reducing the backlog of disability payment claims. "I don't know why six months (of processing time) is what we live with. I need to get inside of this," he said.

• Implementing a long-promised "seamless transition" for service members leaving active duty. Shinseki said leadership had failed to implement an electronic data system that provides the VA with the health and service record of a veteran. He promised to work directly with Defense Secretary Robert Gates to fix this.

• Working toward re-opening VA health care enrollments to some moderate-income veterans who do not have service-connected disabilities. Much of this group was cut from the VA rolls in 2003 as a cost-savings measure. "I need to understand the size of the population," he said.

Shinseki also promised to find and treat veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who are suffering mild traumatic brain injury or psychological injuries from war, such as post-traumatic stress disorder. However, he offered no details on how this would be done.

He sometimes passed on committee questions, conceding he needed to learn more about how the VA operates.

Veterans groups were generally positive about his testimony. Bob Wallace, executive director of the 1.6 million-member Veterans of Foreign Wars, the largest combat veterans group, says he was encouraged by Shinseki's promise to finally achieve seamless transition of veterans records.

"I think if he gets the right people around him, with his leadership ability and his years of experience and years of being honest and truthful — I think it will be very good for the department," Wallace says.

"He's got a lot of learning to do," says Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "He's got to really focus on bringing in those types of people who can break a bureaucracy down and really re-organize it."