How many veterans have to commit suicide before Congress acts?

Parents lined up to tell congress about the suicides of their veterans. Heartbreaking for sure but what is worse is how many years others parents have done exactly the same thing. The years have added up to more and more veterans on the other side of life. They didn't need to go there. They didn't need to give up, lose hope or suffer instead of healing. Their families didn't need to endure the million questions flooding into their brain as they blame themselves for what they did, didn't do, words they didn't say or which words were said that came out wrong. None of it had to happen but year after year more and more parents had to travel to Washington DC to sit in front of a group of politicians listening to what they had to say, promising to take action and then walking away with little showing they even have a clue what to do.

Year after year they write bills, issue press releases and posts on their page written by some staffer with less of a clue but far more experience listening to veterans and families. After all, they get the calls.

They get them from veterans having to deal with the broken system making it whatever war did to them worse. They get to listen to frantic families wondering how to pay bills, feed the kids and pay the rent when there is no money coming in for what service did to someone they love. They get the calls from parents when yet one more veteran has died and they have no clue how to pay for the funeral. They get calls all the time so for any member of Congress to pretend they didn't know what was happening, that is the greatest sin of all. They all knew.

They knew in 2007 when everyone was asking why the congress and the press wasn't on suicide watch for veterans the same way they were when a person convicted of a crime was about to take their own life. They knew when Army suicides reached a 26 year record high when there were 99. They knew what Jeff Lucey's family had to sue because the VA didn't help their son and he committed suicide.

A recent study by the Veterans Affairs Department showed that since 2001, 430 combat veterans have committed suicide either while serving in Afghanistan or Iraq or after leaving the service. Others died after returning from combat but while still in uniform.

One of those veterans was Marine Lance Corporal Jeffrey Lucey, who died by his own hand in June 2004. His parents, Kevin and Joyce Lucey, are now suing both the government and the former Secretary of Veterans Affairs over their son's death. The Luceys are members of an anti-war group, Military Families Speak Out, and hope their lawsuit will help force an overhaul of the VA system.

Army Specialist Noah C. Pierce Spec. Chris Dana Sgt. Joe Lorek Lance Cpl. James Jenkins

In the wake of Jenkins's suicide, the Marine Corps attempted to deny death benefits to his mother by claiming he'd died a deserter; but in a report based on that eligibility investigation, Thomas Ferguson, a special agent from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, described the young man as a "salvageable marine" whose untreated PTSD had led to his suicide.

Their stories go on and on to the point where there was a lawsuit filed in 2008 because of veterans like Marine Jonathan Schultz

A class-action lawsuit filed by two national veterans organizations accusing the U.S. Veterans Administration of neglecting psychological fallout from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars cites the suicide of Minnesota Marine veteran Jonathan Schulze.

Schulze is one of several deceased veterans named in the suit, which a judge last month allowed to proceed and is headed for a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Francisco in March. Schulze, 25, committed suicide in January 2007 in New Prague, Minn., five days after he allegedly was turned away from the VA hospital in St. Cloud when seeking psychiatric help.

But hey, members of congress get to pretend they are doing something by making more and more families sit in front of them and share the heartbreaks no family should have had to endure. Year after year, more and more while congress keeps doing more of the same wrongs repeating maybe this time it will work.