Congress played shell game with veterans

Members of Congress can play the shell game all they want and hope that we don't notice which cup is in what hand, but they can't change history. They can pretend this is all new to them but they can't change reality. They cannot pretend they had nothing to do with any of this and get away with it. Sooner or later someone notices the ball has been removed and all the cups are empty.
Annual Report to Congress on Combating Terrorism 2001

While it seemed as if the government was focused on defending this nation against terrorists, they were not really focused on taking care of the men and women putting their lives on the line to do it.

Table 1. Historical Budget Authority for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in Current and Constant (FY2011) Dollars, FY1940-FY2012 (dollars in millions)

Just an example, when adjusted for inflation to 2011 values, in 1976 the VA budget was $76,940.2 million. The Vietnam War was over. By 1977 funding started to drop from $69,992.9 million to a low of $51,849.3 million in 1990. In 2004, with two wars producing more disabled veterans, the VA budget was still less than it was in 1977 at $75,827.4 million.

But that wasn't the worst of all. The American Federation of Government Employees issued this statement in a report to the Washington Post.

According to John Gage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the VA is calling for a reduction of 540 full-time jobs in the Veterans Benefits Administration, which handles disability, pension and other claims by veterans.

In the same post, there are other comments and claims made.

Dr. Jonathan B. Perlin, acting under secretary of veterans affairs, said the medical staff of the department would be reduced by 3,700 employees under the president's budget. About 194,000 employees now provide medical care.

Representative Steve Buyer, Republican of Indiana, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, indicated he was open to the ideas. Laura J. Zuckerman, a spokeswoman for Mr. Buyer, said he saw the proposals as a way to "bring balance, fairness and equity into the system."

The president's budget would save $293 million by reducing federal payments for state-run homes that provide veterans with long-term care. It would also save more than $100 million with a one-year hiatus in federal spending for construction and renovation of such homes.

As for "privatizing care" politicians like John Boehner and John McCain have been pushing for, they have been at it for a very long time.

Their answer at a time when the needs of our veterans was growing, was to cut.

The crisis in veterans' healthcare
Honolulu Advisor
By Tom Philpott
March 14, 2005

Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., new chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, says the medical and rehabilitation needs of a new generation of war veterans leave him more certain than ever that Congress erred in 1996 when it opened VA healthcare to any veteran willing to pay modest fees.

"While some veterans organizations like to create a theme, that 'a veteran is a veteran (and) there is no difference,' I disagree," Buyer said.

A decade ago, in the wake of a Persian Gulf War that saw relatively few U.S. casualties, the Department of Veterans Affairs went back to worrying about an aging patient population and underused VA clinics and hospitals, Buyer said.

Those concerns, along with wishful thinking about the VA billing employer-provided insurance plans for the cost of care, led Congress to open VA facilities to veterans neither poor nor disabled.

Time has shown that to be a mistake, Buyer said. Today, the VA has $3 billion in uncollected healthcare debts for services that insurance companies have not paid.

"And we find ourselves now in protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the war on terror all over the world. So the sense from 1996 that we could open up the VA to protect the bricks and mortar because of a declining population of veterans," Buyer said, is replaced by "the reality that we have more veterans now that have to come into the system."

His comments came in an interview for this column days after his committee voted to impose an enrollment fee of $230 to $500 a year on 2.4 million veterans in priority categories 7 and 8, those who are not poor and have no service-connected disability.

• Develop a "seamless transition" process for veterans moving from active duty to VA care. So far, more than 10,000 have been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as many as 100,000 could have post-traumatic stress disorder, Buyer said.

They cut more and outsourced more.

AFGE strongly opposes the 15% privatization quota at the VA. It is divorced from the needs of veterans, ties the hands of VA medical directors, and will adversely impact on the quality of veterans’ health care. The quotas prevent the VA from using other tools to make their operations more efficient. The VA has no system in place to the track costs or quality of performance from service contractors. Federal employees, unlike VA contractors, have no rights to appeal bad service contracting decisions to the Court of Federal Claims or the General Accounting Office. The administration’s privatization quotas only subject current government work to contracting out review. No VA contractor’s work will be reviewed for consideration to be performed by VA staff.

And now the ultimate shell game was and still is, ignoring what caused most of the damage to our veterans. Each year the list increased and so did calls from veterans to their members of congress complaining about the lack of care. Each year members of congress were pretending they had nothing to do with any of it as actors on a stage showing their shocked faces as yet one more report surfaced.

Article in Today’s Congressional Quarterly:
CQ TODAY
Nov. 14, 2005 - 10:48 p.m.
American Legion to Chairman: We Will Not Be Talked Down to or Lectured
By Tim Starks, CQ Staff

The tense relationship between House Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Steve Buyer and veterans’ groups is deteriorating rapidly - to the point of nastiness - in the wake of a revamped hearing schedule the Indiana Republican unveiled recently.

The latest row: The American Legion’s national commander, Thomas Bock, fired off an angry response Monday to a Buyer letter about a Nov. 7 summit at which the chairman announced the new schedule.

“You begin your letter by stating in an almost condescending manner that, ‘it is unfortunate that the American Legion chose not to send a representative,’” wrote Bock. “I might say to you that it is unfortunate that your staff chose not to send an invitation to the National Commander of The American Legion.” By the time Buyer’s staff “deigned” to contact the group, Bock said, it was too late.

“I must tell you, sir, to a person, we find your letter and your implications to be insulting and patronizing,” Bock fumed, adding that the group would not be treated as if it were “superfluous.”

Buyer said that while he strongly disagrees with “much of the letter’s accusations and rhetoric,” he still wants to work with it and other groups “for the good of our nation’s veterans.”

There is a very long list of issues covering three years beginning with this,

Timeline on Veterans’ Health Care – 3 Years of Facts
2003

January 2003 Bush Administration cuts off veterans’ health care for 164,000. In January, the Administration cut off VA health care for 164,000 veterans without service-connected disabilities, who make as little as $25,000 a year. Through 2005 this has denied health care to more than 522,000 veterans. [68 Fed. Reg. 2670, 2671, January 17, 2003]

March 2003 Republicans vote to slash veterans’ health care. House Republicans voted in their budget to cut $14 billion from veterans’ health care. The GOP budget also included the President’s proposal to impose a $250 fee for enrollment in VA health care for low and moderate income veterans, along with a doubling of the drug co-payment for those veterans. [H Con. Res 95, Vote #82, 3/21/03]

July 2003 Republicans break promise on veterans’ health care. After agreeing to reduce some of their budget cuts, the House GOP reneged on their promise to increase funding for VA health care and passed an appropriations bill providing $1.8 billion less than their FY 2004 Budget. [H. Res. 338, Vote #450, 7/25/03]

October 2003 Democrats seek an additional $1.3 billion for veterans health care, but Republicans reject it. The Bush Administration opposed and House Republicans rejected a Democratic motion to include $1.3 billion for veterans’ health care in the Iraqi Supplemental. [H.R. 3289, Vote #600,10/31/03]