Lawmaker eyes subpoenas for Gates, Shinseki over disability system fielding problems

A frustrated House subcommittee chairman on Wednesday threatened to subpoena the Defense and Veterans Affairs secretaries, after midlevel officials from the departments could not tell lawmakers when they can expect improvements to a troubled new disability evaluation system for wounded troops.

Lawmakers repeatedly pressed both Lynn Simpson, acting principal deputy undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness, and John Medve, executive director for a VA-Defense collaboration, to identify problems with the new disability system, in development since March 2007, and the year the system will be fully deployed.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, chairman of the subcommittee, said he did not fault Simpson or Medve for the lack of specificity in their answers to questions raised by members of the panel, and said if necessary he would subpoena Defense Secretary Robert Gates and VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to address the issues raised at the hearing.

Despite repeated and sharp questioning by Chaffetz, Medve could not even provide the year the two departments planned to field the new system.

Although more than 43,000 troops have been injured in combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001, Randall Williamson, director of health care at the Government Accountability Office, told the hearing that Defense does not have a database that identifies seriously injured soldiers -- information that would be key to their retention or disability compensation from VA.

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said, "It is unacceptable that we do not have documentation on seriously wounded troops."

Dan Bertoni, director of education, workforce and income security at GAO, said in his prepared testimony that one of the problems with deployment of the new system was inadequate staffing levels at installations where it has been piloted, including Fort Carson, Colo. Simpson said the staffing problems at Fort Carson were exacerbated by multiple deployments.

This caused Rep. Mike Quigley, R-Ill., to wonder how Defense, in the midst of wars that have lasted for almost a decade, did not take into account multiple deployments as it started to field the new system.

Defense and VA started development of the new joint disability system to speed discharge of wounded soldiers in response to the 2007 scandal at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where soldiers were warehoused for more than a year awaiting processing and medical evaluations through separate VA and Defense disability systems.

Now, even though the new system has been installed at 27 Defense hospitals, problems with staffing, technology and slow medical evaluations mean wounded troops "are still on the disability hamster wheel," Bertoni said in his oral testimony.

Though Defense has a goal of reducing the disability process to 295 days for active-duty personnel and 305 days for reserve personnel, Bertoni reported they are far from reaching that goal. As of March, it took more than 394 days to complete a disability evaluation, he said.

Chaffetz found the situation "appalling," telling the hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations, that the problems reflected a lack of top-level leadership at both Defense and VA.