Here are key initiatives from President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night:

U.S. special forces rescue Somalia aid workers

U.S. special forces swooped into Somalia in a pair of helicopters in a daring overnight raid to rescue two kidnapped aid workers — an American and a Dane — and killed several gunmen, American officials said Wednesday.

Grant money to go toward educating former service members

National Louis University recently awarded $749,599 in grant money from the Robert R. McCormick Foundation for Education to Employment Initiative, which is aimed to helping former service members and other underserved students.

Conference Previews Coming DoD Budget Scuffles

SAN DIEGO — A high-ranking Pentagon officer expressed both muted concern and upbeat resolve about the Defense Department’s budget shortfalls during remarks kicking off a major naval warfare conference here Tuesday.

House Bills Promote Religion at War Memorials

WASHINGTON — The House on Tuesday passed two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials. One writes into law the propriety of displaying religious markers at war memorials while the other orders that the Interior Department add to the World War II Memorial in Washington a plaque with Franklin Roosevelt’s prayer to the nation on D-Day.

Report: Numbers of homeless female vets doubles

NAPLES, Italy — The number of homeless female veterans has more than doubled, and their numbers are likely to increase as servicemembers return from Iraq and Afghanistan if the Deparment of Veterans Affairs does not address the specific needs of women veterans, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.

Military mentions in Obama speech were carefully phrased

NPR’s “It’s All Politics” blog analyzed President Barack Obama’s references to U.S. military operations in Tuesday’s State of the Union address and concluded his words were carefully chosen.

Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, General Eric Shinseki, recently announced that homeless veterans and soldiers returning from war will soon have new options for housing.

The initiative will focus on the areas of Spokane and Vancouver, Washington.  The plan is to make vacant apartments in the two cities available to former servicemembers who need a place to live.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, working for the Evergreen State, recently thanked Shinseki and the VA publicly for making this opportunity possible in her state.

Senator Murray said, “I’m so pleased that veterans and their families in Spokane and Vancouver will have new opportunities to get off the streets and into safe and stable homes.”  She went on to say, “This is an important step forward in our effort to end veteran homelessness and will greatly assist veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan make a smoother transition home.”

Of the 75,000 homeless veterans living in the United State, 2,000 of them currently reside in the shelters or streets of Washington state. This is according to VA and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The VA offers a variety of veterans benefits to former and active duty military members of all walks of life. Many of the VA benefits packages are underused.  The government organization encourages everyone who thinks he or she may be eligible for military benefits to contact their local veteran’s office.

A new joint report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the VA confirms what many have suspected: More and more vets are at risk of becoming homeless.

Veterans are 50 percent more likely to fall into homelessness compared to the rest of the population. The impoverished and minority veterans are even more at risk. The study found that nearly 76,000 veterans were homeless on a given night in 2009, and almost 136,000 veterans spent at least one night in a homeless shelter during that year. New, younger veterans are at particularly high risk of becoming homeless.

There’s also a strong contrast between veterans who are homeless and the homeless of the general population. While 96 percent of homeless veterans are single adults, with only 4 percent with families; in the general homeless population, 66 percent are single, with many more with families. Furthermore about 10 percent of veterans who are living in poverty will become homeless at some point during the year. In contrast, only 5 percent of the general population living in poverty will find themselves homeless.

What is needed? The bottom line: No veteran should be homeless. VA and the community must provide the support services necessary to give our vets the training and jobs they need to be financially independent; the physical and mental healthcare they may require in order to work; and the financial assistance they may need to secure housing. A Veterans Homelessness Prevention Program is now being tested in five communities that are geographically adjacent to the boundaries of military installations. The aim of the program is to offer the necessary support to transitioning vets to prevent homelessness. This program must be expanded to reach all veterans.

Our veterans have earned the right to always have a roof over their head. For those who faced combat, that wasn’t always an option.

To read the complete report, go to: http://www.hudhre.info/documents/2009AHARVeteransReport.pdf

Peter S. Gaytan is the author of For Service To Your Country – Updated Edition: The Essential Guide to Getting the Veterans’ Benefits You’ve Earned (Citadel, 2011), available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other booksellers. He has served as an advocate in securing and protecting the earned benefits of America’s veterans for more than a decade. Gaytan is the Executive Director of the American Legion, the largest veterans service organization in America.

It is the beginning of silly season in America and it barely feels like the last one ever ended.  Only this time around, rather than looking at a wide field of candidates from both parties, the Republicans seeking the nomination for President have to sustain all the madness alone.  Students of political theater and shenanigans are watching this election cycle with a renewed vigor given the remarkable comeback that the Republican Party was able to make in just two years.  At the center of the debate – as is almost always the case – is the economy. 

After taking back the House of Representatives and weakening the Democratic hold on the Senate, the Republicans have placed at the forefront of their arguments reigning in the federal budget.  When the Obama administration put the spending towards the war effort “on the books,” it gave the Republicans the factual ammunition to say that President Obama has ballooned the deficit in a dangerous way.  Simultaneously, they also fought Democratic efforts to let the Bush tax cuts expire which would have cut the deficit.  Their argument:   that raising these taxes would ultimately hurt jobs.  Lately, the focus of the debate about the federal budget in the national media has focused on Planned Parenthood, the National Endowment for the Arts, and a $75 million cut to benefits for homeless veterans, including HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Vouchers.

This program provided federal money that veterans can apply to housing for a year.  However, given the cuts some 11,000 homeless vets could find that the lifeline they had been given in 2008 has been severed in 2011.  While this move in-and-of-itself is not exactly surprising, the irony of this action is that “taking care” of troops and veterans had been the main moral argument offered by both sides as to why a government shutdown was to be avoided.  Only now that it has been avoided, it seems that on both sides of the argument about the budget, this concern for the military and veteran community was only so much pandering.

The largest chunks of our budget are in Defense, Medicare, and Social Security.   Yet, for some reason, these portions of the budget are sacrosanct and untouchable when it comes to tightening the belt in the capital.  The amount of spending allocated to veterans is a mere three percent of the total budget, but everything done with that money has to be vigorously justified and accounted for.  Such was the argument for the cut to Veterans Homelessness programs.  Republicans say that the money cut were vouchers that would have gone unused.  Only the answer isn’t to take that money away, but make it more available to places like California, where there are more homeless veterans than their voucher-program can handle.

The Democrats themselves are not blameless.  They have mismanaged all of their high-minded initiatives and routinely fail to make a compelling argument to the American people.  They are Washington D.C.’s pushovers.  They allowed these cuts to fall, but made not a peep about the more than $7 million payment to NASCAR to reap the marketing benefits of sponsoring race cars.  The media spent the days following the deal discussing who were the “winners and losers.”  Yet, rather than turning their eye on the citizens affected by the cuts, the debate was usually centered on which political figures came out looking sexy and electable.  Only the Chicago Sun-Times made any mention of military and veteran families and that was to paint them as winners because somehow not protected under the same provision that keeps the lawmakers and the President in paychecks during the shutdown.   They’re winning all right, just like Charlie Sheen.