He cites two major problems. This facility located in Bay Pines, near St. Petersburg, processes all benefits requests from veterans, their spouses and families. He notes that other states with large numbers of veterans have two processing centers. If this were a company serving the general public, they would either be out of business or investigated by the government for failure to live up to standard and reasonable business practices. A private company could not survive with that kind of a record of poor service.
Veterans can only complain to the VA and their congressional representatives.
That will help veterans here, but the problem spans the nation. No veteran should be forced to wait half a year or more to have a request for benefits processed. While it may seem appropriate to blame the VA for allowing the backlog to reach unreasonable levels, it is the agency that provided the statistics and offered commentary on the effects it has on the people the agency serves. The VA anticipates workload will increase by more than 20 percent this year. Vietnam veterans, as well as elderly veterans, require more services.