Hoover signs Veterans Administration Act, July 3, 1930

On July 3, 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed the Veterans Administration Act. From the article:

"Hoover signs Veterans Administration Act, July 3, 1930
By ANDREW GLASS

On this day in 1930, President Herbert Hoover signed a bill creating the Veterans Administration. The legislation authorized the president to “consolidate and coordinate government activities affecting war veterans.”

Accordingly, less than three weeks later, Hoover followed up by signing an executive order that consolidated under the newly formed Veterans Administration the prior functions of the U.S. Bureau of Pensions, the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Solders and the U.S. Veterans Bureau.

Hoover named Brig. Gen. Frank T. Hines (1879-1960), who had directed the Veterans Bureau for the prior seven years, as the first administrator of the Veterans Administration. (During World War I, Hines organized and administered the U.S. Army’s Embarkation Service, which dispatched millions of newly minted soldiers and officers on ships to fight in France without losing a single vessel to marauding German submarines.)

Hoover invited Hines and key members of his staff to the White House to witness the July 21 signing of the executive order. Hines held the top veterans post until 1945, when President Harry S. Truman replaced him with Gen. Omar Bradley — naming Hines as the U.S. ambassador to Panama.

In 1789, the newly formed Congress had passed legislation providing pensions for disabled veterans of the Revolutionary War. In 1833, the lawmakers established the Bureau of Pensions to assist veterans.

In 1862, during the Civil War, Congress passed a bill allowing President Abraham Lincoln to purchase land for national cemeteries. From 1865 to 1870, 70 such national cemeteries opened to provide for burials of Union soldiers. When the war ended in 1865, there were 1.9 million Union veterans. At that time, Congress authorized the National Asylum of Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, a system of residences to house disabled and indigent U.S. veterans.

In 1912, Congress passed the Sherwood Act, guaranteeing pensions for Union veterans of the Civil War and veterans of the Mexican-American War, regardless of their health. (In 1958, Congress extended posthumous pardons to members of the Confederate military and extended benefits to the then sole remaining survivors of that war.)

On March 15, 1989, President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that elevated the Veterans Administration to full Cabinet status, and renamed it as the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The most recent census data show that there are 18.5 million veterans living in the United States. Some 9 million of them are served each year by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The VA currently maintains 1,061 outpatient health care sites and 170 medical centers.

Since May 29, 2018, Peter O’Rourke has been serving as acting secretary of the department while Robert Wilkie, the current undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, awaits Senate confirmation to serve in the position.

President Donald Trump has asked Congress to appropriate $198.6 billion for the department in the government’s 2019 fiscal year budget, which, if approved, would mark a $12.1 billion increase over 2018."