Tom Hayes: Congress must extend VA benefits to all combat veterans
Mar 08, 2008 @ 11:35 PM
The Herald-Dispatch
American Legion Post 93 has been working on a bill in Congress (HR 1901) to help veterans of Lebanon, Grenada, Panama and Korea. This bill will make these combat veterans eligible for the VA non-service-connected disability pension. It is only paid when a veteran becomes permanently and totally disabled and has limited or no income.
We commend Rep. Nick Rahall for introducing this bill for us. Congressman Rahall testified in support of HR 1901 on the House floor on April 19, 2007. He again testified before the House subcommittee on veterans affairs on July 31, 2007, along with representatives from the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans and the Paralyzed Veterans of America.
We asked Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, to sponsor the bipartisan bill, and her response was, "Should this bill reach the House floor, I will be sure to keep it in mind."
On more than one occasion, we asked Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a member and former chairman of the Senate Veterans Committee, to join Congressman Rahall in introducing a companion bill in the Senate. Sen. Rockefeller's responses were, "HR 1901 is currently pending with the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, and I will certainly keep your concerns in mind if it is brought before the Senate for consideration," and, "The tremendous deficits faced by our country are making it difficult to expand veterans benefits as much as we would all like to see."
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When I read what they say or watch them speak when they are covered by CSPAN, I cannot believe the audacity of these people. While they talk about the great debt we owe those who serve this nation with one breathe they then turn around and speak of deficits in the budget. The only deficit they should be concerned with is the morality they are lacking.
How can they say whatever money Bush asks for to continue the occupation of Iraq without any form of accountability and results, turn around and whine about the money it will cost this nation to care for the wounded they demand the right to keep producing? It makes no sense at all.
Had they not been so inclined to ignore the hundreds of millions of dollars that vanished in Iraq, the cost-plus contracts the defense contractors received or the money Bush keeps asking for aside from the budget on "emergency" spending requests, there wouldn't be such a huge deficit. The wounded are part of the costs of conducting two occupations producing more and more wounded on a daily basis. They are part of the emergency they need to pay for but they cannot see it that way. They would rather see the veterans as a burden to the tax payers while conducting the occupation no one wants has no limit to the amount of money they are willing to pay.
The veterans of today and tomorrow are no less and no more worthy than those of yesterday. They are just in addition to them. It's time to fully fund the VA so that there is no more separation of indebtedness. It cannot be one group of veterans being pushed aside to make room for another group because there is a budget deficit. Why is it that politicians seem to have little problem finding money to wage war and a gigantic problem paying for the results of those wars?
Already we have seen veterans coming back and told they have to wait as their claims fall into a huge pile so deep it depends on the day and the reporter using the data provided on that day. What happens is a report will ask about the number of backlog claims and they are told what the person answering the question wants to tell them. A report came out last month addressing the cut back in IT workers stating the backlog of claims was over 800,000, yet another article will be written days later putting that number back around 400,000. Does Congress ask what that cause of the discrepancy is coming from? Do they even notice the huge difference in what they are being told by different people?
This entire subject is not just absurd, it's disgraceful.
Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
http://www.namguardianangel.org/
http://www.namguardianangel.blogspot.com/
http://www.woundedtimes.blogspot.com/
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington
