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considered income for pension purposes. Id. Those amendments
survive in section 1718.
4. Discussion
Our examination of the history of section 1718 convinces us
that, while the VA expects a participant in the CWT program to
work, and in exchange for that work agrees to pay him a sum of
money, the point of the exchange is not to effect a market-driven
exchange of labor for value. Indeed, a VA staff manual
describing the CWT program describes it as providing assistance
to veterans unable to work and support themselves. The manual
further states that many of the veterans in the program have
histories of one or more conditions such as psychiatric illness,
substance abuse, and homelessness. We need no authority for the
proposition that an employer does not normally engage an
individual to work in order to provide him with therapy or to
rehabilitate him. That, however, is the point of the VA’s work
therapy programs, as the VA Administrator, J.S. Gleason, Jr., is
quoted above as stating: “[T]he basic concept of the member-
employment program [is] as a means toward the medical,
psychological, and social rehabilitation of the veteran”. S.
Rept. 1693, supra. That point was understood in 1976 by the
Committee on Veterans Affairs, which, as set forth above, in
reporting favorably on S. 2908 (which established a statutory
basis for the CWT program), stated: “VA patients perform work on
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