No Va Budget!--thanks To The "cut & Run" Congress!

[Gimpy]

REP. CHET EDWARDS SAYS THIS "CUT & RUN CONGRESS" LEFT TOO MUCH UNDONE -- Calls actions "unconscionable," especially on the issue of VA funding.


The story was published here... http://www.wacotrib.com/news/
content/news/stories/2006/12102006_wac_unfinishedbiz.html

I have copied and pasted it here below.

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Edwards: Too much left undone

Lawmaker calls Congress' behavior 'unconscionable'


By Dan Genz
Tribune-Herald staff writer

Congress left behind billions of dollars in unfinished business when it closed shop last week, leaving nine major spending bills unsettled heading into 2007.


That means many local priority projects, including a study of post-traumatic stress disorders that figured heavily into the successful effort to keep the Waco Veterans Affairs Hospital open must wait for approval next year, under a new Congress.


"For Congress to go on a three-week vacation without taking care of veterans or military families is nothing short of unconscionable ," said U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco.


Eight McLennan County projects worth $5.5 million could be lost while spending to launch the new Center of Excellence for Mental Health at the Waco VA Hospital will be delayed by several months.


Edwards blasted the Republican leadership for letting important business wait while they allowed the U.S. Postal Service to rename more than a dozen post offices around the country.


While Edwards saluted last-minute work to pass a $1 billion tax cut for Texans by extending the policy that allows taxpayers to deduct sales taxes from their income tax returns, he was largely critical of the session's last gasp Friday in a teleconference with Central Texas media.


Politics, not policy issues delayed the work, Edwards said.


He compared late Senate efforts to pass a veterans' spending bill late Wednesday with a student starting to study one second before a huge test.


"It's too late," Edwards said. "We should have stayed in session until this Congress ends on January 3rd if that is what it took to do right by our troops and vets, especially during a time of war."


Lawmakers approved a series of continuing resolutions to keep the government running, but only at the current year's spending levels.


That means the VA nationwide will be running $750 million below its expected levels for 2007, and programs will not receive additional money until the new Congress approves the package. The budgets for agriculture, natural resources, urban development and education also are among the incomplete measures that await resolution.


dgenz@wacotrib.com
757-5743

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Nothing new about this latest bit of dishonorable conduct coming from the republican controlled Congress, it's been going on for more than 6 years now.-----GOOD RIDDANCE to these jerks!


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VETERANS SUFFER AS "CUT & RUN" CONGRESS DRAGS FEET -- Late passage of spending bills means VA lacks time to spend money on care.

Late passage of spending bills means VA lacks funding to spend on care.

By CORY REISS
H-T WASHINGTON BUREAU
reissc@nytimes.com

WASHINGTON -- Anyone who thinks Congress is out of step with regular folks need only look at the calendar.


The rest of us get 12 months in a year, but Congress only gives its federal agencies seven to 10 months, fiscally speaking. That's because lawmakers, who are accustomed to working three-day weeks, chronically fail to pass all of the annual spending bills on time.


Some critics might call this a bureaucratic snafu. But for military veterans needing health care, the foot-dragging can have real consequences.

Veterans hospitals returned about $46 million in mental health funding to headquarters in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 because they didn't have enough time to adequately plan for and hire qualified personnel for new programs to treat post-traumatic stress disorder and other problems afflicting veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.


The Department of Veterans Affairs never even distributed another $42 million, despite surging demand, and it had similar troubles in fiscal 2005. The Government Accountability Office reported those findings last week.


Veterans groups and VA officials lay most of the blame on Congress, which was two months late in passing the spending bills for both fiscal years that began Oct. 1 in 2004 and 2005.


The delays gave the department, at best, 9 or 10-month windows for spending what it planned over the course of an entire year to meet demand for new mental health programs, especially for recent combat veterans.


At the end of each fiscal year, unspent money for such new programs is returned to VA headquarters, where the department often uses it for other purposes. When that happens, the programs originally intended to receive the money can suffer.


After whistling more than two months past the end of the 2006 fiscal year, Congress punted most of its 2007 spending bills until mid-February, including the VA's legislation. The agencies are running at 2006 funding levels until then. Well below projected levels of operation.


Congress was expected to allow the VA to borrow about $700 million from construction and other accounts to beef up its health care spending for the next three months, but critics said the VA has been applying such patches on its own for years and is still suffering because of it.


One way or another, the VA will have about seven months instead of a year to spend about $3 billion in anticipated increases for health care over fiscal 2006 levels, once the final spending bill is passed.


Many other agencies are in the same boat, but the plight of veterans offers a clear picture of the consequences .


"It's difficult for them to provide the services in the interim period, and then all of a sudden they get this huge infusion of money and they can't spend it adequately enough," said Joe Violante, legislative director for the Disabled American Veterans. "The appropriations process isn't working."


Veterans groups and VA officials say the delays make it tough for departments to plan and hire, which is especially difficult in a health care setting that requires highly trained professionals.

Democrats, who will take control of both congressional chambers in January,(THANK GOD!-----GIMP ) say they will run a tighter ship. They will, for example, schedule work for five days a week instead of the three-day weeks that have become customary under Republicans in order to, among other things, complete annual appropriations bills.


The GAO report faulted the VA for failing to live up to promises that it would spend much more on implementing a comprehensive mental health plan launched in 2004. The VA intended to spend an additional $100 million on new mental health programs in fiscal 2005, but didn't distribute about $12 million of that.


The department planned to spend an additional $200 million in fiscal 2006, but didn't distribute $42 million of that money either.

Moreover, of the $158 million that the VA did send to medical centers and clinics for the new programs in fiscal 2006, about 30 percent was returned because time constraints prevented it from being spent by the end of the fiscal year.

The department also couldn't prove it actually used much of the money it did spend on mental health initiatives as promised.


These amounts are small relative to a budget of $2 billion for mental health, but the promises reflect the toll of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on veterans and the department.

About a third of the veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who have sought medical care at VA facilities have shown signs of mental health problems, the VA has reported. Moreover, a VA memo written in July and recently made public showed that 153,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan had filed disability claims.


A letter this month from Rep. Michael Michaud of Maine, the ranking Democrat on the Health Subcommittee for Veterans Affairs, to VA Secretary Jim Nicholson about the report said the department has seen 17,800 new cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among Iraq and Afghanistan veterans this year. That's six times the number the VA had predicted in February.

The GAO also found that the VA failed to track what it did spend, making it likely that money intended for new and enhanced mental health programs went to other purposes. The VA said it has implemented better monitoring. (Yeah, right----sure it has!----Gimp.)

A VA official, who asked not to be named, acknowledged that the late appropriations from Congress have been a factor in the department's inability to meet its goals.


"Ample time often is almost as important as ample funding when it comes to implementing new programs," the official said. (NO SHIT---SHERLOCK!----GIMP )



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[Robert Ryan]

So what else is new from a Congress that is only concerned with their own political agendas. Surely hope that the new Congress will take the action needed to get the VA what they need. What the VA really needs is a new Secreatary who is a Veteran and knows Veterans needs.

[Gimpy]

with you Robert, Jim Nicholson is nothing more than a political 'lacky' serving his political masters misguided agendas!

[Gimpy]

don't think enough folks have seen this yet!

[Packo]

Gimpy...

I've seen it TOO MANY TIMES! Makes me sick everytime. Keep posting though....all need to see.

Pack