For the past four years, every veteran’s organization in America has been disseminating information about Veterans Affairs (VA) being under funded.

Since the megalomaniacal Mayberry Machiavellis in the White House and Congress kicked off their war of aggression in Iraq, the VA has been overwhelmed with new veterans back from Iraq with myriad physical, mental and emotional problems—over 103,000 so far. However, the Bush administration has not seen fit to even remotely come close to the proper funding, and the veterans from this latest war in Iraq are now joining with the rest of us from wars gone by in the fight for veterans’ fair and just treatment. Or should I just say treatment—as that is what is lacking across the board. 

As the Christian Science Monitor notes, “With nearly 240,000 employees, the VA is larger than all other federal departments except the Pentagon. But even before the 'war on terrorism' began, it had to scramble in dealing with the needs of 7.5 million enrolled vets, including a large number of homeless - 33 percent of homeless men in the US are veterans.”

To make matters worse, if that’s possible, the appointment of the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, Jim Nicholson, as the head of the VA pretty much sealed the fate of veterans needing health care. Nicholson is an ideologue intent on promoting the Bush administration's position. When he appeared in front of congress, Nicholson stated that “health care for our veterans is not being affected by the VA shortfall.”

Nicholson knew in April of this year that the VA had run out of budgeted money, yet he wrote Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, telling her and the Veterans Committee that the VA was fine and did not need any supplemental money. Fact has been replaced with ideology, which today includes calling payments to veterans a “threat to our national security”, as stated by David Chu at the Pentagon. So much for supporting the troops; so much for supporting anything but the current ideology of “profits over people” and “perpetual war for perpetual peace.”

Defending new tax cuts during a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Chu said that funding for programs like veterans’ education and job training, health care, pensions, VA housing and the like are “hurtful” to national security.

VA funding was shifted from the subcommittee that includes housing and NASA programs to the subcommittee on military quality of life and VA related agencies, which forces the VA to compete for limited funds with such programs as Defense Department health care, military cemeteries and military construction.

Bush administration policies and votes in the House and Senate suggest that the GOP (as well as the Democratic Party) does not view the care of veterans as a continuing cost of war. Both parties have over the years been asleep at the wheel when it comes to properly funding the VA.

Every year on Veterans Day or Memorial Day or the Fourth of July, there are parades and speeches extolling the sacrifices of those that went to war. But the day after the speeches, for the veteran, nothing changes. Bodies are still broken; minds are still tormented and haunted by nameless faces in the night.

A young man returns form Iraq missing both legs. After discharge from the Army he ends up having to live in his car—where is the “honor our veterans” for this young man?

Stu, a 25-year old Marine, is in an auto accident within 24 hours of his discharge but has to go to a civilian hospital for treatment and surgery. Why? The VA told his family he did not qualify for VA care.

Josh, another 25-year old Marine, suffers psychological problems while still in Iraq. Instead of the Marine Corps trying to treat his multi-symptomatic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, they put him in jail for 5 years.

How does any of this show honor to those that have given their all? It would be easy to dismiss these men as imaginary people, but they are real as are their stories The worst of it is the simple fact these three are not atypical.

One generation of veterans after another have been asking this nation to live up to the agreement, the promise, it made to veterans—simply to provide mental and physical healthcare in an timely manner by qualified medical personnel, to provide disability compensation for those that are unable to work due to their disability, and to stop pitting one group of veterans against another in a fight for decreasing funds.

If this nation cared about honoring those that have borne the cost of battle, it would make the VA budget a mandatory budget line item instead of what we have today. Right now, the amount of money for the VA is up for grabs from year to year—but it's uncertain if there will even be a budget for the VA in the future.

According to Veterans for Justice: “As the cost of the Iraq War blunder continues, costing America's Tax Payers billions, and billions, of dollars every couple of months to set up a puppet government in Iraq, our own government is in danger of following in the path of the Soviet Union and falling due to the massive debt, and out of control spending by the Bush Administration… Unpatriotic President Bush, and the extremely unpatriotic Republican Party has schemed and set up a Veterans Disability Benefits Commission with the goal of finding ways to get our disability checks.

"One of their schemes is to take claims already decided and review them. This means that some poor Veteran that already fought 30 years for his disability may have it arbitrarily taken and have to start fighting all over again. Keep in mind that even though it is President Bush, and the Republican Party mainly behind this present scheme AGAINST America's Veterans that the Democrats have not been much better when they had power.”

Lip service isn't enough. This lack of across-the-board care and concern over the health care needs of this nation’s veterans must end. The cost of war for those who come home from fighting it does not end when they return—it goes on and on and on. Take the first step: please contact your senators today, for the sake of America's veterans.
 

Jack Dalton is a disabled Vietnam veteran and writer living in Portland, Oregon.