ACTION NEEDED: House Budget Resolution FY 2004

[MORTARDUDE]

http://capwiz.com/legion/issues/aler...691141&type=CO


( from The American Legion... the Senate still has to vote on this )


ACTION NEEDED: House Budget Resolution FY 2004
Contact your Representatives and discuss the issues with them!







Congress is in the midst of formulating a budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2004. The House's version of the budget resolution proposes reducing both mandatory and discretionary spending for veterans' programs and services by $15 billion over the next 10 years. Especially appalling is a proposed 1 percent cut in mandatory spending, including veterans' disability compensation and pensions, which is the main source of income for many service-connected veterans, indigent veterans or survivors.

The monthly compensation for 3.3 million veterans and survivors increased just 1.4 percent this year. That is the smallest cost-of-living adjustment in three years. Now, with soaring energy costs driving up prices for other goods and services, it is callous and indefensible to propose slashing these benefits.

Please discuss the following issues with your Representatives:

What would the $844 million mean to veterans' health care?
* Congress would have to seriously consider the new co-payments and enrollment fees proposed by the Bush Administration in order to keep the system operating in the next fiscal year. This means:
* New Priority Group 8 veterans would remain ineligible for VA services.
* Priority Group 7 and 8 veterans would have an annual enrollment fee and increased co-payments for pharmaceutical drugs and primary care.

* There would be serious funding shortfalls to implement the Homeless Veterans Comprehensive Assistance Act to work toward the goal of eliminating chronic homelessness in a decade.

* The current Capital Assets Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES) program that VA is undertaking to assess the best use of its physical infrastructure will become a de facto closure commission with no ability to respond to veterans' needs for primary care, long-term care, and mental health projected by its own models.

* Congress would have to seriously cut the benefits paid to men and women who are disabled as a result of military service. Cash benefits paid to veterans who have disabilities incurred or aggravated during military service comprise the vast majority of VA's budget for mandatory programs. Ninety percent of the mandatory spending the Budget Committee proposes to cut is from cash payments to service-disabled veterans, indigent wartime veterans and survivors.

* Other programs funded with mandatory spending are the Montgomery G.I. Bill education benefits, vocational rehabilitation and independent living programs for service-disabled veterans, subsidies for VA home loans and insurance for service-disabled veterans and funds to provide headstones, markers and flags for deceased veterans.

* Even if all burial benefits, including flags and markers were eliminated to meet the Budget Committee resolution, funding for benefits for living veterans would need to be dramatically cut.

* Last year, the cost-of living increase paid to service-disabled veterans was only 1.4 percent. In order to meet the Budget Committee criteria the Committee on Veterans' Affairs could propose a cost-of living decrease of 1.4 percent and no increase for FY 2004.

As the Nation stands on the verge of war, certain to result in disability and death for young Americans, the Budget Committee's proposal requires the Committee on Veterans' Affairs to make permanent cuts in the benefits paid to those disabled by virtue of their service to the Nation.

There must be a better way to produce a budget without trying to balance the budget on the backs of service-disabled veterans and their widows and orphans. The proposed House budget resolution poses serious threats to the stability and funding of programs fundamental to the core of veterans' benefits. Congress must rethink its commitment to veterans before it adopts onerous measures that put in peril the compensation, pension and healthcare benefits to those who sacrificed there health and wellbeing in service to this Nation.

This bill may reach the House floor by March 20, 2003.

[chilidog]

I got this answer from my rep. the Honorable Richard Baker.

Chilidog