Veterans Assistance Commission of Lake County

09/14/2026

Efforts to modernize a Department of Veterans Affairs system that supports the processing of veterans’ benefits claims have been hampered by “insufficient oversight and weak program management,” according to the agency’s Office of Inspector General.

The watchdog warned in an audit released on Tuesday that VA’s Office of Information and Technology has not taken all of the necessary steps to keep the revamp of the agency’s Benefits Enterprise Platform on track, which could potentially affect the processing of veterans’ benefits and other modernization efforts.

The BEP platform — one of 85 legacy systems that VA has identified as needing to be modernized or decommissioned to “improve overall efficiency of claims processing” — helps facilitate the sharing of information between the Veterans Benefits Administration and other “business line systems” that include pension, vocational rehabilitation and employment benefits.

An audit found gaps in planning, cost estimates and oversight that could put the modernization effort further behind schedule.

09/13/2026

An Arizona lawmaker introduced a bill Thursday that would prevent veterans from being surprised when the Department of Veterans Affairs docks their disability payments to recoup military separation pay they received at the end of active duty.

Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., has proposed barring the VA from collecting voluntary or involuntary separation pay from veterans who are approved to receive disability compensation.

An Arizona senator introduced a bill that would prevent veterans from being surprised when the VA docks their disability payments to recoup separation pay.

09/11/2026

The fall lasted only seconds, but the consequences would span a lifetime.

Under the cover of darkness in Balad, Iraq, Army Sgt. Will Fisher was moving into position for an overnight mission. He fell roughly 40 feet and landed on his feet while wearing about 100 pounds of gear. The force of the fall crushed the talus bone in his right ankle and broke his back. He was medically evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.

That fall eventually cost him his leg and his career—the latter more than a decade earlier than he had hoped, and five critical years short of his qualifying for a full military pension.

“I wasn’t planning to leave the Army,” he said. “The injuries made that decision for me, and that was it. The retirement I’d spent almost 15 years working towards was gone.”

The Richard Star Act would pay combat-injured veterans their full pension and disability, but the cost could reach $78 billion

09/11/2026

Twenty-five years ago today, many of us were just young adults and kids watching the world change on a television screen. Like so many others in the GWOT generation, the horror of September 11 didn’t just break our hearts—it drew a line in the sand. It was the exact moment we knew what we had to do. We traded civilian life for a uniform, and like thousands of our brothers and sisters, we spent the next two decades deploying to the dust and heat of Iraq and Afghanistan.

We came home, but many didn't come back whole. We carry the physical scars of injuries that remind us every single day of where we’ve been. But the heaviest weight isn't the shrapnel or the broken bones—it’s the names. The friends who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us in the sandbox but never made it back to American soil.

On this milestone anniversary, our hearts are with their families, and our minds are flooded with their faces. We honor the nearly 3,000 citizens we lost twenty-five years ago, but as a post-9/11 veteran, we also carry the quiet, crushing duty of honoring the thousands of heroes who died fighting the war that followed.

To our fellow veterans: the war is not over.

It isn't over for the families living with an empty chair at the dinner table. It isn't over for the warriors fighting invisible battles against PTSD, traumatic brain injuries, or the toxic aftermath of burn pits. And it isn't over for the next generation who will inevitably be called to hold the line against terror.

We will never stop advocating for the men and women who gave everything, for those who are still struggling to find peace at home, and for the future service members who will stand up when the nation calls.

Twenty-five years later, we remember. We honor the fallen. And we keep fighting for the living.🇺🇸



National Association of County Veterans Service Officers

09/10/2026

Paul Rushing had a stroke at age 54 and a pulmonary embolism without any of the typical underlying issues. He has a hard time walking 100 yards without having to rest.

In Rushing’s estimation, the issues stem back to his time in the Army when he was exposed to toxic chemicals while serving at Fort Polk in Louisiana, later found to have unsafe levels of “forever chemicals” in its groundwater.

Earlier this year, the Department of Veterans Affairs denied Rushing’s claim. The department’s justification confounded him; it said a doctor had found that his illness was not connected to his service, something his doctor had never even evaluated. The denial letter mentioned medical issues entirely unrelated to his situation.

A trail of denials, inaccurate decisions and prolonged appeals processes have left veterans without benefits.

09/08/2026

A senior official at the General Services Administration recently posted on his personal social media that veterans’ preference in federal hiring is preventing his team from bringing on qualified tech-focused employees.

“Veterans preference is brutally unfair when taken to the extreme of blocking any consideration of non-veterans, but we're seeing that everywhere these days,” wrote Pete Waterman, the director of FedRAMP, a governmentwide program that sets security and risk standards for cloud products. “Even Tech Force wouldn't let us look at normal folks until we made offers to all the veterans first.”

A government workforce expert told Government Executive that many hiring rules, including veterans’ preference, have become “procedural hurdles rather than achieving the intended outcome” because they haven’t been updated in decades.

09/07/2026

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced this year that overall trust in the department had reached an all-time high. According to the department’s quarterly Veteran Trust survey, 82% of veterans who used VA services during the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 — October through December 2025 — reported that they trusted VA to fulfill the nation's commitment to them. That was the highest figure recorded since the survey began in 2016, when the baseline trust score was 55 percent.

Trust in VA outpatient health care specifically was even higher in that same survey period, with 93.6% of veterans reporting they trust VA for their health care needs.

"Veterans First isn't a slogan, it's a promise — and it starts with listening," said VA Secretary Doug Collins in the April 2026 news release announcing the survey results.

A VA survey found that 82% of veterans reported trust in the department.

09/05/2026

It’s easy for Ron Brown to remember when his health problems first began. It was early March 1991, and Brown’s Army unit was in Khamisiyah, where Iraqi forces had been storing chemical weapons in a bunker and an excavated area known as “the pit.” As U.S. forces demolished the bunker and the weapons in the pit, plumes of smoke rose into the sky.

Ron Brown deployed twice during active duty, the second time during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. (Photo courtesy of Ron Brown)
“Within 15 minutes of the first demolitions, I was sweating profusely,” said Brown, a specialist in the 82nd Airborne Division at the time. “My nose was running like a faucet, and I had a headache that felt like somebody hit me with a baseball bat.”

What he didn’t know at the time: the explosion had released a cloud of chemical weapons, including the nerve agents sarin and cyclosarin.

Research on Gulf War Illness had advanced in the past few years. But Congress's cuts to research funding concern scientists and advocates.

09/04/2026

A veteran who fills his prescriptions through the VA may have seen the headlines this week about Medicare drug premiums going up in 2027 and possibly felt worried.

For most veterans, there’s no need to get anxious, but for some, there might be. Basically, it all comes down to where you get your medication.

"Saving money at the pharmacy often leads to much higher costs elsewhere in the healthcare system."

09/03/2026

You can help our nation's Veterans by simply checking the petition link to see if your Representative has signed on. If they have not, please reach out to your Representative to get them to sign on.

Link for petition signatories: https://clerk.house.gov/DischargePetition/2026052122?Page=3

This is an important milestone. After months of work by NACVSO Members, the VSO community and veterans are now closer than ever to finally securing a floor vote. Securing that final signature this week would start the procedural clock on the discharge petition and put us on a path to passing MRSA in the House before Veterans Day.

The Major Richard Star Act is a bipartisan legislative proposal designed to permit combat-injured military retirees with fewer than 20 years of service to concurrently receive both their full Department of Defense retirement pay and their VA disability compensation without any offsets. Under current federal law, these veterans suffer a "dollar-for-dollar" drawdown, meaning their military retirement pay is reduced by the exact amount they receive in disability benefits—a policy advocates call the "wounded warrior tax"