Mark Takano

These veterans need assistance navigating the education, training, and job opportunities available to them so they can reintegrate better into society.

So roughly 20 percent unemployment?

Six hundred thousand members of the National Guard and Reserve have been mobilized since the attacks on our country on September 11th.

We owe a great deal of gratitude to these veterans, and we should do everything we can to assist them.

So instead of their group plan, they would be able to pay the health care for that ex-servicemember, and that is generally a lower premium?

Are you suggesting that somehow we incentivize small businesses by actually covering the cost of that health insurance?

If you keep treating the NG&R like this, you are going to make them a subclass, I call it a third-class citizen.

The unemployment rate is higher for Guard and Reserve veterans than for active duty veterans.

Now, is it accurate that we spent about $250 million on this new system?

I mean, on the supplemental claims, can you give me an average number definitively?

Oh, I think one is too many, sir.

I applaud the VA for that decision.

Congratulations on being the new Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity Chairman. I look forward to working with you.

I want to express the desire of the minority to work with the majority on helping to serve our veterans better.

LTS must continue to evolve so it is able to process more complex claims and changes.

I am looking forward to a productive and bipartisan 113th Congress.

The advocates for the students and the student vets, are saying that they experience six to eight weeks.

I am having trouble understanding the discrepancy in what you say is the average turn-around time for processing a claim.

I remain very interested to hear from the VA the details of how the provisions that have been implemented are performing.

This was the promise of the act to them when it became law under Public Law 110-252 and it is our priority now as Members of this Subcommittee.

I am a new Member of Congress. I am having to get my arms around this issue.

We have spent $263 million on the long-term solution and many questions still remain regarding the system's effectiveness, its completion, and our return on investment.

I look forward to what the NAVPA has to say about how we can streamline payments to the colleges.

I do not see the anticipated gains that were visualized when the VA and SPAWAR came here to our Subcommittee and testified before us.

As our country begins to reduce operations in the Middle East and bring more of our troops home, we will need to have the right programs to address their needs.