House Committee on Veterans' Affairs

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Washington, D.C. — Today, the Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity heard testimony regarding the independent living services the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides through its Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&E) program.

Independent living services are provided to VR&E participants who are too severely disabled to pursue a vocational goal. Such services are intended to enable disabled veterans to achieve maximum independence in daily living without the services of others or with a reduced level of those services.

John Boozman (R-Ark.), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee, said the VR&E program is, and should be, generous in its benefits for disabled veterans and that VR&E staff should have wide latitude to determine who qualifies for the program.

“VR&E should be the ‘crown jewel’ of programs for disabled veterans,” Boozman said. “It is important to note that employment is the goal of the VR&E and for the vast majority of those who participate in the program, a rewarding career is a reasonable and achievable goal. Unfortunately, for our most severely injured, employment is sometimes not an option so the VR&E program includes independent living services for those who cannot work because of their service-connected disability.”

“While I am impressed with the overall program, I believe we must find ways to make improvements in performance assessment methods so that VR&E can be certain it is meeting the needs of disabled veterans. Clearly, the inconsistency between the number of participants and the number of those rehabilitated does not give us a clear understanding of how the program is doing.”

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