Good afternoon.  Madam Chairwoman, I think the first order of the day is to thank both members of our first panel for their service.  I believe both Mr. Lancaster and Mr. McCartney are service-disabled veterans of the Vietnam War and they honor us with their presence here today.

Madame Chair, I believe you and I would agree that VA’s Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment program should be the crown jewel of programs for disabled veterans.  The program is generous in its benefits and the law provides the VR&E staff with wide latitude in determining who qualifies for the program.  It is important to note that employment is the goal of the VR&E program and for the vast majority of those who participate in the program, a job is reasonable and achievable.

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.  Such a program is “designed to enable such veteran to achieve maximum independence in daily living” and VA may contract for these services with qualified providers.

Title 38 defines “independence in daily living” as, “the ability of a veteran, without the services of others or with a reduced level of the services of others, to live and function within such veteran’s family and community.”  That is a fairly broad definition and I would hope that Ms. Fanning would describe how her staff determines what fits within that definition.

I want to make a point about one way we judge the program’s performance.  As an example of the difficulty we face in using VA data to determine the program’s performance, I would call your attention to the latest VBA Annual Benefits Report.  On pages 77 and 84, the report shows 884 veterans receiving independent living services and on page 86 the data shows 949 participants and 2,957 veterans rehabilitated.  Clearly, the inconsistency between the number of participants and the number of those rehabilitated as well as the two different amounts of participants does not give us a clear understanding of how the program is doing.

Finally, I am glad to have Mr. Lancaster, Executive Director of the National Council on Independent Living with us today.  I understand that the National Council on Independent Living is not represented on the Secretary’s Advisory Council on Rehabilitation.  It seems to me that NCIL should be a member of the committee because of their broad experience in independent living and I urge Secretary Peake to invite NCIL to become an active member in his advisory committee.

I yield back