Virginia’s many veteran-friendly policies and services are no surprise. From the very founding of our nation, the men and women who call Virginia home — and the families that support and sustain them — have borne more than their share of sacrifice in military service. Today, while fewer than seven percent of all Americans have served, nearly one in 10 Virginians is a veteran, and Virginia is home to six of the 10 places in America with the highest concentrations of veterans. Unfortunately, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan draw down, even in Virginia, far too many veterans return from fighting overseas and struggle to find work that will support their families.
While Virginia’s unemployment rate is about 6.5 percent, the unemployment rate among post-9/11 era veterans here is 10.6 percent. Nationally, similar figures hold true, and the Obama Administration has made addressing unemployment among veterans a priority. President Obama has used his executive authority to enact some helpful new services, but his major proposals will require action from a dysfunctional Congress. As a veteran myself, I’m not willing to wait for Congress to do its job. That’s why I will propose legislation during the upcoming General Assembly session to create jobs for our unemployed veterans.
Veterans have a harder time finding work in part because prospective employers don’t understand how military training and experience can relate to civilian jobs. To bridge that gap, the Obama Administration recently launched My Next Move for Veterans and the Veterans Job Bank. My Next Move for Veterans (www.MyNextMove.org/vets) is an online tool that quickly and easily translates the codes that define various military occupational specialties into their closest civilian job equivalents. The National Resource Directory’s Veterans Job Bank (www.nationalresourcedirectory.gov) goes one step further and actually lists civilian job openings relevant to a veteran’s military experience.
In addition to these helpful services, as part of the American Jobs Act, President Obama is urging Congress to pass a Returning Heroes Tax Credit for firms that hire unemployed veterans and a more generous Wounded Warriors Tax Credit for firms that hire veterans with service-connected disabilities. While these ideas are mired in debate in Washington, I propose adapting them to the state level and moving forward with them here in Virginia.
The Virginia Returning Heroes Tax Credit would be modeled on the Green Jobs Creation Tax Credit, which passed in 2010 and is the final version of legislation I first authored the year before. The law would grant employers a $500 income tax credit for each new job filled by a post-9/11-era veteran, as long as the job pays a salary of more than $50,000 per year. The Virginia Wounded Warriors Tax Credit would operate along the same lines, but it would grant double the credit — $1,000 per employee — and apply to employers who hire veterans with service-connected disabilities who have been unemployed for more than six months. In both cases, the jobs must be filled for a year before the employers can claim the credit, so the income tax revenue from each job can defray the cost of the credits.
Communities throughout Virginia are stronger for the presence of men and women who have been willing to go into harm’s way for our country. Our communities will be stronger still if the General Assembly does its part to help ensure Virginia’s post-9/11 veterans can find jobs and continue to contribute their talents to our Commonwealth. Let’s not wait for Congress to act.
– David