A local center that assists U.S. veterans who are entrepreneurs will remain open at least another year, thanks to appropriations secured last week from the U.S. Senate.
Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee passed an amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations bill to provide an additional $600,000 in funding for veterans business resource centers in St. Louis, Boston, Mass., and Flint, Mich., which had been on the brink of closing due to insufficient funding.
“This isn’t about big R’s or big D’s, it’s about the obligation of our country to people who defend it,” Patrick Heavey, executive director of the St. Louis Veterans Business Resource Center, said of the bipartisan push to secure the funding.
Heavey said Democrats U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay and U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, as well as Republicans U.S. Rep. Todd Aiken and U.S. Sen. Kit Bond, all put their full weight behind the legislation.
He said Bond, a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, “engineered this thing” and offered the amendment.
Bond said, “We have a responsibility to help our troops transition back into society when they return from the battlefield, and our vets centers are an important part of that transition.”
In fiscal years 2006 and 2007, Heavey said, the St. Louis center created 161 new businesses that employ, on average, three people each. Many of the entrepreneurs assisted by the local center are African-American.
For 2008, the center in St. Louis has received $75,500, the center in Flint has received $67,500, and the Boston center has received nothing.
“It’s almost a miracle for this amount of money to get this amount of attention,” Heavey said.
The money is needed badly, because veterans are disappearing from the labor force, according to a national report.
A recent Department of Veterans Affairs report found that the percentage of veterans not in the labor force jumped to 23 percent in 2005, a sharp increase from 10 percent in 2000.
According to the report, 18 percent of discharged vets were unemployed for one to three years after leaving the military, and of those who found employment, a quarter earned less than $22,000.
“Iraq is a horrible boondoggle, screwed up beyond belief, but I support those troops who have to fight there,” Heavey said. He said the entrepeneurship among veterans fostered by these resource centers offers “financial freedom” that is “part of the American dream.”
Before being signed into law, the Emergency Supplemental must be passed by the full Senate and reconciled with the House of Representatives version of the bill.
Heavey said the long-range forecast for the centers will be improved by final passage of the appropriation, additional appropriations from the U.S. House, and proposed legislation to reform the parent organization for the resource centers, the National Veterans Business Development Corporation.
A Senate investigation into the management of the Veterans Corporation had much to do with the national attention that the small amount of funding for the centers has received.