Obama’s 2009 stimulus gave millions to Filipino Vets

Recall the pork machine dreamed up in 2009 that was supposed to build road and bridges, the stimulus bill otherwise known as Porkulus? To the tune of $757 Billion bucks? It turns out that buried in the bill many Filipinos hit the jackpot. Go back 75 years and figure out who was fighting alongside us in the Philippines. Pay them bucks. That will get the U.S. economy moving won’t it. And just how do we figure out who really was with us and why now? This post follows yesterday’s post VA Outsources Vet Processing Benefits to Philippines.

….But hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the program went instead to elderly Filipinos, much of it virtually guaranteed never to make its way back to the U.S. economy.

Tucked away in the stimulus was a provision to pay $9,000 each to residents of the Philippines who fought alongside the U.S. in World War II. Those who had become U.S. citizens since the war got $15,000.

The stimulus payments — called Filipino Veterans Equity Compensation — started in April 2009. More than $225 million has since been paid to more than 18,000 Filipino vets. Slightly less than half of those now have U.S. citizenship, but may still live in the Philippines. The program was originally slated to spend $198 million.

Administering a program that writes checks to people for actions performed 75 years ago in a third-world country is not easy. Some Filipinos actually fought on the Japanese side. The VA tries to avoid rewarding enemy soldiers by checking names against lists confiscated from the Japanese army, but fraud is not uncommon.

“In order to combat high levels of fraud the office staff use a variety of methods, including using photographs and interviews to determine identity, verifying claims using forensic analysis, and using WWII Japanese records to determine whether a Filipino WWII veteran collaborated with the enemy during the war,” the Government Accountability Office wrote of VA operations in the Philippines.
Read more: Daily Caller

Filed under: Government, Military Tagged: Dept. of Veterans affairs, Obama, Philippines, Stimulus nill, VA, Veterans affairs