Washington – The White House and Democrats, including Sen. Ken Salazar, offered duel ing proposals Wednesday to fund credit checks for veterans whose personal identification data was stolen.
President Bush proposed paying the $160.5 million tab for credit monitoring with money pulled from eight programs and departments, including funds intended for farmers, student loans and high-speed rail.
Salazar, D-Colo., co-sponsored legislation from Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., that would provide new government money to cover the cost.
The information breach is estimated to affect as many as 26.5 million veterans.
“The problem we face today was not created by the veterans,” Salazar said. “It was not created by the students. It was not created by the farmers. It was created by the VA.
“As such, it is imperative that the (Bush) administration find a way to pay for it without reducing the services for innocent veterans and innocent Americans,” he added.
An Office of Management and Budget report said funds are available for credit monitoring because they were left over in various programs in fiscal year 2006. In the case of the student loans, money was returned to the government as unneeded.
“These are excess or unused funds, and putting them to work protecting veterans and service members from identify theft is a better use than having them go unspent or sit idle,” said Scott Milburn, an OMB spokesman.
Salazar and the other Democrats also criticized the White House’s approach to helping veterans whose information was stolen.
VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, formerly of Colorado, needs to show Congress his plan for fixing the problem and ensuring it doesn’t happen again, Salazar said.
“It’s incumbent upon Secretary Nicholson to provide Congress with the long-term plan to do both,” said Salazar.
The stolen data was on a computer disc taken from the home of a VA employee.
Nicholson has been dealing with the crisis since it began, and has visited lawmakers and spoken at hearings numerous times, VA spokesman Matthew Burns said.
“This situation has highlighted for us the fact that we have not had the right policies, procedures, guidelines, regulations and directives in place – with the teeth to enforce them – to assure that those nominally responsible for security could effectively do their job,” Nicholson said at a House hearing Tuesday.
“I am committed to rectifying this situation.”
The VA does not comment on pending legislation, a spokesman said.
A court in Kentucky earlier this week barred the VA from publicizing its free credit-monitoring program because it might jeopardize the legal rights of veterans in class-action lawsuits against the VA.
Filed in Kentucky and Washington, those suits seek as much as $26.5 billion in damages from the VA as well as credit protection and monitoring services.
