The bill, the Andrew Connolly Veterans’ Housing Act, extends the authority of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to provide specially adapted housing assistance to individuals residing temporarily in house owned by a family member for a period of five years, ending in 2016. Without the reauthorization, the program will end this year.

Braley named the bill after Dubuque veteran Andrew Connolly, who traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to provide testimony on why the program should be extended.

“Today I am praying for all soldiers and veterans, that they may have the support and dignity they deserve, without having to jump through hoops, or have a friend in politics,” Connolly said during his testimony.

During a conference call with reporters on Wednesday, Braley said that Connolly’s personal story struck a major nerve with everyone participating in the subcommittee hearing.

“There were representatives at the table testifying with Andrew from AmVets, the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans associations. These are people who testify regularly in front of Congressional hearings. You should have seen the looks on their faces as they listened and reacted to Andrew’s testimony,” Braley told The Iowa Independent.

“Based on my observations, there was widespread support for extending the program, based on his compelling testimony.”

There is currently no cost estimate associated with the extension of the veterans’ housing program.

“Based on my own personal observations of the impact of this program on deserving families like Andrew and Jenny Connolly,” Braley said, “this is one cost that American taxpayers should never be afraid of incurring.”

Federal law dictates that the education department forgive borrowers of their loan obligations if they develop severe and lasting disabilities after they took out federal student loans. The law is intended to spare disabled borrowers –- some of whom cannot and never will be able to work, and thus never be able to pay off their debt.

But currently, the process is tedious: Borrowers have to fill out endless forms and obtain medical records their doctors, and there is no written medical standard for determining a disability, and no formal appeals process for denial.

An internal report, first published in the Propublica/CPI investigation, uncovered internal documents from the federal student-aid ombudsman to the Education Department excoriating the department’s review process and recommending it be contract the decisions out to the other government agencies to determine disability.

The irony is that the department does contract out its loan-discharge decisions –- to private companies, who are also hired to manage other programs. And that’s part of the problem -– when decisions get back to the federal department, they often don’t make it back to the borrower who is still waiting for a response and meanwhile racking up interest on top of their piling debt. The ProPublica/CPI investigation pointed out cases of borrowers applying and reapplying to have their loans discharged for five years or longer and having to pay with their dismal Social Security checks.

The Office of the Inspector General has been criticizing the department’s practices for years, and internal review led to a switch in contractors last year.

Federal reforms have been made to ease the process for people who become disabled: In 2008, Congress passed a law that relaxed the discharge standard from terminal and indefinite to five full years and made it easier for veterans to be discharged immediately. Two years later, the Education Department implemented these changes, among others to improve communication with borrowers.

Reforms are nice, if they are actually practiced. But if the government can’t control its own departments, who can?

Applications to the program soared by 21 percent, to 2.8 million, from 2008 to 2009, as the economy was seriously faltering. The growth is the sharpest in the 54-year history of the program. It threatens the program’s fiscal stability and adds to an administrative backlog that is slowing the flow of benefits to those who need them most. Moreover, about 8 million workers were receiving disability benefits in June, an increase of 12.6 percent since the recession began in 2007, according to Social Security Administration statistics.

The program accepts about half of applicants, and only one percent of recipients return to work, the Congressional Budget Office says. James Ledbetter, writing in Slate, takes a look at the political and fiscal policy implications:

With the annual commitments now at about $180 billion, SSDI represents, as the authors of a 2006 economics journal paper put it, a “fiscal crisis.” Equally distressing, it also represents public policy run amok. Over the last few decades, a program that was designed to help a relatively small group of people who were fatally sick or permanently unable to work has evolved into a backdoor welfare program in which a huge number of people are paid not to get jobs. [...]

Granted, no one gets rich off SSDI — the average monthly check is about $1,000. But unlike unemployment insurance or the TANF program that replaced welfare in the 1990s, SSDI benefits are open-ended. Once you qualify for SSDI, you keep getting it until one of three things happens: You die; you reach retirement age (at which point your medical expenses are paid by Medicare); or you stop being eligible, either by getting a job or by getting better. That last criterion accounts for only about 12 percent of those who leave the program in any given year.

I don’t doubt that many of the jobless workers applying for the program exaggerate their conditions and could go back to work. (The link between unemployment and disability is well-established — so much so that some economists suggest expanding unemployment benefits to make sure workers don’t take the more expensive disability benefits.) But joblessness does cause worse health outcomes: Losing your job makes you sick. And the longer the duration of employment, the higher the risk of declining health, especially mental health.

So, I would love to see more data on the causal and correlative links between long-term unemployment, poor health and disability programs. It is not coincidence that 500,000 more Americans have taken SSDI due to a recession where 6.6 million Americans have been out of work for more than six months, and millions more have simply dropped out of the labor force.

And, as an aside, this chart on disability applications seems good grist for the “lost decade” phenomenon — after 2000, applications start growing much more quickly.

Here’s how the pregnant reader learned that her fetus had a likely fatal brain deformity, just one day after the time limit beyond which most doctors will no longer perform an abortion:

Our appointment began jovially. The perinatologist and nurse joked about names, and at one point, the doctor called the baby a “little rascal.” As the ultrasound continued, the room grew quiet. The perinatologist scanned the baby’s head again and again. He finally announced, in a solemn voice, “I’m seeing some things in the baby’s brain that concern me.” Time stopped, and everything in the universe shifted. Holding my partner’s hand, I struggled to listen despite the thick blanket of grief that settled over the room.

The doctor continued, “The baby has holoprosencephaly. It’s a brain malformation in which the forebrain fails to divide. Most of these babies die before term. Those that are born have severe disabilities.” He finally took a deep sigh and started to deliver the especially delicate part: “I don’t know what your beliefs are but some people would terminate a pregnancy of this nature. Since you are 22 weeks along, you would have to go to Wichita for the procedure.” Everyone in the room knew this was shorthand for, “You would have to see George Tiller, the infamous late-term abortion doctor. No one else will help you at this point.” Numb, I asked to know the baby’s gender. He placed the ultrasound wand back on my stomach and read the grainy image: “It’s a girl.” We walked out of the clinic with blank stares and wept in the car.

Read the rest of the excerpt here.