American Legion speaks out!

[Gimpy]

Below is the latest press release from the American Legion regarding the VA budget fiasco in Congress.
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Guest Editorial: Veterans health care funding slaughtered in rush for pork
By Ronald Conley


Printable Version

July 28, 2003 - On July 25, the U.S. House of Representatives broke faith with our nation?s veterans by removing $1.8 billion from the VA medical appropriations bill it had agreed to in April.

At a time when our nation is engaged in a worldwide war on terrorism, and 200,000 veterans from previous wars are still standing in line for medical care, the Congress of the United States decided that funding 1,000 pork barrel projects was more important than ensuring that veterans receive timely, quality medical care. Where in the name of God are their priorities?

We have money to pay for a statue of the Roman god Vulcan in Birmingham, AL. We have money to pay for a bike trail in North Dakota. We have money to fund a Nevada helicopter company that performs Elvis impersonator weddings. We have money for a tax cut that benefits mostly the wealthy in this country. And yet we have neither the heart nor the will to ensure that all United States veterans receive the medical care they earned and we owe them. This is outrageous and I can not believe the American people will stand for this.

During the past year, I?ve visited more than 60 VA hospitals. Last month I visited a military hospital in Germany that was receiving three plane loads of wounded veterans a day. Last week I visited several hundred more wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC. I have never met such patriotic, dedicated and committed young men.

To a man, each wanted to be back in Iraq with his buddies, with his unit. One young man from Micronesia, who had lost both legs and a arm, was just staring at the ceiling, obviously wondering how he would be able to cope with living. Another young man from Pennsylvania wasn?t staring at anything. He was blind. One leg had been amputated and his arm mangled. Another had his leg crushed by a tank.

Each of them, like thousands of their brothers and sisters in previous wars, was passing through Walter Reed on their way, eventually, to a VA hospital, joining those in the long, long line waiting for care because the system is desperately under funded.

I suggest that Congress make a point of visiting Walter Reed and the local VA hospitals in Washington ? they?re right up the street from where they voted yesterday to decimate the VA medical budget. These men and women are not merely numbers; they?re not merely statistics. They are the human toll taken by war, and we owe them first priority in any budget decision made on behalf of the American people.

The inevitable result of Congress ignoring its duty and breaking its promise will be deprivation for those who have paid the price for freedom. I can?t help but wonder what is happening to the moral fiber of our country when those we have elected turn their backs on the bravest of the brave.

In 2004, the United States will be dedicating a memorial to the 16 million men and women who fought in World War II. We already have memorials for the 15 million who fought in Korea and Vietnam. Today, we have soldiers in more than 130 countries waging a war on terrorism whose end is not yet in sight.

During the past 60 years, nearly every family in America has sent one or more of their sons and daughters to fight somewhere in defense of freedom. Don?t you think that the very least we owe them is adequate medical care provided in a timely manner?

No community is untouched by war. Somewhere in your neighborhood there flies a Blue Star Banner, or Gold Star Banner, signifying a sacrifice made by a family on the altar of freedom. Do you think that these families ? do you think that these Americans -- will stand idly by while Congress refuses to fully care for those who bore the battle?

I don?t think so. America will not accept this VA budget. We will take this fight directly to the people and there will be no armistice until every veteran, everywhere, receives the medical care so richly deserved.


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The writer is national commander of the 2.8-million member American Legion, the nation's largest veterans organization.

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[Gimpy]

VFW OPED: Quit Rationing Veteran's Health Care


On behalf of the 2.6 million members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States and its Ladies Auxiliary, I would like to make you and your readers aware of a crisis in the veterans' health-care system.

Unfortunately, access to VA health care is controlled by available dollars, not our veteran's health-care needs. As a result there are currently more than 150,000 veterans waiting six months or more for a first-time or specialty-care appointment. Further, this de facto rationing of health care has led the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to even deny care to certain veterans by suspending their ability to enroll in the VA health care system altogether.

How have members of Congress, whom I am sure do not have to wait six months to see a doctor, responded to this crisis created by a lack of funding? On July 25, 2003, the United States House of Representatives passed the VA-HUD Appropriations bill for FY 2004 that they will tell you contains a $1.4 billion increase for veterans' health care. What they will not tell you is that this amount represents a $2 billion cut from the congressionally approved FY 2004 budget resolution and a clear betrayal of the assurances made to America's veterans earlier this year.

Without this needed funding, over 1 million veterans will be turned away or pushed out of the VA health care system. Is this what our returning heroes, from Afghanistan and Iraq, can expect from their elected officials as they seek health care for their painful injuries sustained in the line of duty? Over 200 years ago, George Washington stated: "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 the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their nation." Those words still ring true today!

I encourage you to ask your member of Congress how he or she voted on the FY 2004 VA-HUD Appropriations bill. Those who voted for the bill cast a vote against veterans by approving a wholly inadequate budget. Please have them explain how they plan to provide adequate health care to our nation's veterans. Those who voted against the bill deserve our gratitude for holding out for the needed additional funding. Please ask them to continue to stand with us so that no veteran is ever left behind.

We call on Congress to do the right thing and restore the $2 billion cut when the conference committee on VA-HUD funding convenes this fall.

Thank you for your consideration of this important issue.
Ray Sisk
Comander-in-Chief


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[Gimpy]

Restore the $1.8 billion in VA FY04 budget for Veterans healthcare.
House Republicians broke their promise.

On July 25, the House voted 229 to 196 not to include the additional $1.8 billion in funding for VA healthcare and voted 316 to 109 on final passage of H.R. 2861 the VA-HUD FY04 appropriations bill. The House appropriations bill as agreed upon by the members only provided an inadequate amount of $1.4 billion for the VA to provide health care to sick and disabled veterans.

See roll call votes 450 on additional funding and 456 on final passage.

The Senate will take up the funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs when they reconvene in September. The House did a dis-justice to our Nations Veterans and broke its promise to provide adequate healthcare funding. It is now up to the Senate to correct this wrong and honor that commitment. by restoring the $1.8 billion stripped out by the House in H.R. 2861.

VVA is requesting that you immediately contact your Senator by phone, e-mail, personal contact, VVA legislative Action Center or fax and request that they restore the $1.8 billion in VA FY04 funding for health care.



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[xgrunt]

I've kepy up with this as it's being done and it makes me so enraged that I feel like my head is going to explode. It would be very interesting to se how many of Congress's children and grand children are currently in the service and where they are stationed. I bet I could count them on the fingers of my hands and I only have 9 fingers. Pay off favors, enrich themselves, and stay in office is the only agenda polticians have today. Help themselves and screw the People. When the Bread and Circus's run out[just like in Rome} thern the risk of a second American Revolution looms larger. You don't think that the Patriot Act was aimed just at Muslim's now do you?

[BLUEHAWK]

I've been with two American Legion Posts thusfar... in both places the great majority of members are over age 65, hundreds dying every year. VERY few Vietnam, Desert Storm or other younger vets join up.

It costs less than $15 a year.

[Gimpy]

GRUNT I sure don't! I know what you mean old friend. I had to go to an EXTRA anger management session this week just because of those assholes! Need to go to some more next week cause it AIN"T WORKING!

PS--BLUEHAWK, I know what you mean as well. These "younger" fellas better hurry up and get off their asses and "join" up to help out ASAP or THEIR freakin "earned" benefits are gonna be GONE before they get a chance to start trying to get them!

[Arrow]

Gimpy,

I don't think anything is going to get done until the service organizations stop preaching to the choir and start a nationwide campaign in newspapers large and small all over this country.The VFWOPED wasa beginning but how many readers are going to see it? I wish they would all come together and speak with one voicejoined with a couple of millionVeteranswithfriends and familes on the Washington Mall.Don't go withoutprotective head gearthough. Remember the Bonus March....

[MORTARDUDE]

Sis ...

Now you are talking...when the service organization realize that their clout is slowing slipping away, and the numbers of veterans is dwindling each year...they will start doing what the civil rights organizations have done for so long...unite and protest...until the government does what it says it will do....otherwise ...we are all just spinning our wheels right into the grave.

Larry

[BLUEHAWK]

Folks -
All these last posts are right on the money, literally! Coming from people like you who have a lot of time-in-grade and standing on this web site means a great deal.

There is not one politician alive who has not given a speech or attended an American Legion or VFW event, before being elected or while in office. We see it on TV where sitting Presidents or those running for the job DO NOT FAIL to show up for national conventions... just like they do for AFL-CIO and NAACP conferences. They give patriotic speeches, and then go back to minimal or zero action... a lot of eyewash lip service.

Why is it then, that those last two groups get so much clout with elected leaders, and we get basically zip! I don't mean to upset anybody, but sometimes I think it's because service organization leadership is just too obsequious to commanders-in-chief... maybe letting patriotism and loyalty cloud their understanding of veteran needs and their own overwhelming power to make significant and immediate changes at the VA, for example... if they really WANTED to get p----d off about it! I know we do our part in Post newspapers and national magazines, but that ain't enough. Heaven knows if it weren't for us there'd be damn few buried vets whose family would even be told that our Nation IS Grateful...

We've been having too many dances, too much bingo, too many breakfasts, too many social hours, buying too many hat pins and not enough action taking. Larry pointed out that there are more than 23,000,000 living vets, too dang few of which are members of AL or VFW. As one of the few under age 60 who attends, it's like being part of the "Last Man's Club", and I do not see any people my age joining, like I said earlier. I do bring stuff up in meetings, but being junior grade my elders don't seem to be hearing what I say, or I don't say it right and haven't got the votes.

Since the ones who are not members can be basically written off as "disgruntled veterans" (when they write or call politicians), looks to me like we really have GOT to see that AL & VFW membership grows and becomes confrontational, if necessary, in Washington.

Say what anybody likes, but Vietnam Veterans Against the War played a big role in bringing our problems to public attention... it's been a long long time since american vets had anybody doing that kind of agitation, and I believe it'd be better for AL & VFW to be doing it anyway (if they had done it in the 60s, then V V A W probably never would've formed up). Imagine AL, VFW, our auxilliary groups and ALL special unit groups that exist (like Garry Owen, Pearl Harbor, MIA etc.) getting together...on a single battle like we have now.

I've written it before, but if I'm not mistaken it was because of Revolutionary war vets being very angry about not being paid that there even WAS a Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia!

[judyvillecco]

One reason I didn't join was they refused to help me with my claim. As a matter of fact they did everything they could to confuse and delay in St. Pete and the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. It is an ole boy's club not for female vets (at least this one) I got a good attorney who finally after 3 years of being jerked around by these organizations got the thing rolling. No thanks they have the wrong agenda. I think many of them are in bed with VA