THE CHOICE IN THIS ELECTION
This election offers the American people a chance to break the stalemate between two fundamentally different visions of how to
grow the economy, create middle-class jobs, and pay down the debt.
President Obama believes the economy grows not from the top down, but from the middle class out. His economic plan does
that by investing in education, energy, innovation and infrastructure, and by reforming the tax code—each of which will create
American jobs—and paying down our debt in a balanced way that ensures everyone pays their fair share.
Governor Romney and his allies in Congress believe that if you take away protections for consumers and workers and cut taxes
even more for the wealthiest Americans, the market will solve all our problems on its own. Their refusal to ask the wealthiest
Americans to pay even a nickel more in taxes is the biggest source of gridlock in Washington, and the reason we haven’t reached
a grand bargain to bring down our deficit and Congress hasn’t passed a jobs plan that would put a million people back to work.
President Obama’s Vision to Create an Eco nomy Built to Last
To create jobs, reduce our deficit, and build a stronger economy from the middle class out,
President Obama believes we need to:
• Invest in education to make sure we have the best-educated, best-trained workers in the world
• Control our energy future by ending taxpayer subsidies to oil companies and use the savings to become the global
leader in clean energy technology, including wind, solar, biofuels, clean coal, nuclear, and natural gas
• Invest in our most promising scientists, researchers, and entrepreneurs so the greatest innovations of this century
are made in America
• Rebuild our infrastructure to attract businesses to America and move our goods and information all over the world
• Reform our tax code to create jobs in America, pay down our deficit in a balanced way, and ensure everyone from
Wall Street to Main Street plays by the same rules and does their fair share
Mitt Romney Would Return to Failed Policies that
Crashed our Eco nomy and Hurt the Middle Class
Governor Romney and his allies in Congress believe that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down—the same
approach that benefited a few but crashed the economy and hurt the middle class.
According to independent economists, Romney’s economic plan would increase the deficit, fail to create new jobs in the
short term, and even make our economy worse. His plan would:
• Roll back financial reform and let Wall Street write its own rules again
• Repeal health reform, costing tens of millions of Americans their health coverage and allowing insurance companies
to discriminate based on preexisting conditions
• Provide a $5 trillion tax cut weighted to millionaires and billionaires, blowing a hole in the deficit
Thursday, June 14, 2012
THE CHOICE IN THIS ELECTION
Monday, June 11, 2012
VA Announces Aggressive National Recruitment Effort to Hire Mental Health Professionals
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 11, 2012
VA Announces Aggressive National Recruitment Effort to Hire Mental Health Professionals
WASHINGTON (June 11, 2012)- Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki recently announced the department would add approximately 1,600 mental health clinicians as well as nearly 300 support staff to its existing workforce to help meet the increased demand for mental health services. The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) has developed an aggressive national recruitment program to implement the hiring process quickly and efficiently.
“The mental health and well-being of our brave men and women who have served the Nation is the highest priority for this department,” said Secretary Shinseki. “We must ensure that all Veterans seeking mental health care have access to timely, responsive and high-quality care.”
VA has developed an aggressive national mental health hiring initiative to improve recruitment and hiring, marketing, education and training programs, and retention efforts for mental health professionals, to include targeted recruitment in rural and highly-rural markets. This will help VA to meet existing and future demands of mental health care services in an integrated collaborative team environment and continue to position VA as an exemplary workplace for mental health care professionals.
It is critical for VA to proactively engage psychiatrists and other mental health care providers about the vital mission to deliver high-quality mental health services, especially for returning combat Veterans.
“The VA mental health community is aggressively transforming the way mental health care services are provided to the Veteran population. As the mental health care workforce continues to increase, VA is committed to improving Veterans’ access to services, especially for at-risk Veterans,” said VA’s Under Secretary for Health Dr. Robert Petzel.
The national recruitment program provides VHA with an in-house team of highly skilled professional recruiters employing private sector best practices to fill the agency’s most mission critical clinical and executive positions. The recruitment team consists of 21 national, dedicated health care recruiters targeting physician and specialty health care occupations. These recruiters also understand the needs of Veterans because each member is a Veteran.
VHA has also established a hiring and tracking task force to provide oversight for this initiative to move the process forward expeditiously in a focused manner to ensure challenges, issues, or concerns are addressed and resolved. This task force is accountable for reporting progress in hiring of mental health professionals in these occupations: psychiatrists, psychologists, mental health nurses, social workers, mental health technicians, marriage and family therapists and licensed professional counselors.
VHA anticipates the majority of hires will be selected within approximately six months and the most “hard-to-fill” positions filled by the end of the second quarter of FY 2013. VA has an existing workforce of 20,590 mental health staff that includes nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers.
Interested mental health care providers can find additional information about VA careers and apply for jobs online at www.vacareers.va.gov. To locate the nearest VA facility or Vet Center for enrollment and to get scheduled for care, Veterans can visit VA’s website at www.va.gov. Immediate help is available at www.VeteransCrisisLine.net or by calling the Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255 (push 1) or texting 838255.
