Obama busy

[LTC]

On February 7, 2005, the Bush Administration announced their 2006 Veterans Affairs Budget Proposal.  Veterans were promised and earned the right to be treated at a VA Hospital, but provisions in this proposal greatly effect this benefit.

During a time of war when this President is asking more from his troops, he proposes to ask even more from their wallets.  In the President's VA Budget proposal, there are provisions that greatly affect Veterans.  They are proposed as follows:
 
1.) Begin charging the veterans in Priority Groups 7 and 8 an annual VA benefit usage fee of $250;
 
2.) Double the cost of pharmaceuticals for these veterans. Their cost for a single 30-day prescription would increase from $7 to $15;
 
3.) Establish a priority system (similar to the current VA Priorities 1 - 3 & 4 for only the catastrophically disabled) for veterans receiving care in state veterans homes.  Funding for such programs under the Bush budget would be cut by $351 million for veterans residing in VA-operated nursing homes, in private facilities that contract with the VA, and in those operated by states that the VA helps fund.  This means closure of MANY state homes in which 28,800+ veterans depend on for care and residence.

ALL proud Americans should step up and write to their elected officials, to oppose the Administration's budget and to provide the funding for the health care that was promised to our veterans.

http://www.mcleague.com/mdp/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=15

VA Budget Inadequate
Sgt. Shaft | December 27, 2005
Dear Sgt. Shaft:

What are your feelings about the 2006 Veterans Affairs budget? I am not happy with the way veterans are being treated by our government.

Terry J.
Vietnam 1970-71, Northern I Corps

Dear Terry:

I wholeheartedly agree with you and with the veterans service organizations that are spearheading the Veterans Affairs independent budget project.

As the veterans service organizations argue, "The fiscal year 2006 budget request recently released by the president follows a script military veterans have seen before from administration budget hawks: meager increases, new user fees and an attempt to help offset the nation's budget deficit by shortchanging disabled veterans."

The administration proposes a VA health care budget of $28.1 billion for fiscal 2006, an insufficient increase given the influx into the system of new veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In contrast, the independent budget -- a comprehensive budget policy document co-authored by Amvets, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Veterans of Foreign Wars -- recommended $31.2 billion in funding for veterans' health care during 2006. This suggested funding increase of $3.5 billion is designed to meet realistic inflation and health care demand increases. This increase does not include onerous enrollment fees or increased co-payments for prescriptions put forward by the administration.

Discounting the projected additional revenues from an annual $250 enrollment fee, and more than doubling prescription co-pays for thousands of veterans, the administration's health care funding increase provides new appropriations of only $111 million. This is an increase of 0.4 percent over last year's appropriation, which falls far short of meeting veterans' needs.

Each year, the veterans groups that create the independent budget petition Congress to sufficiently fund VA health care and other vital programs. But VA remains underfunded and unable to provide timely access to quality health care to many of our nation's veterans. This annual budget crisis requires a fundamental overhaul of the budget and appropriations process for veterans' medical care.

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,83887,00.html

[Sasquatch]

A great tactic by democrats (and republicans) is to attach addendums to a bill in order to get their pet projects (pork) funded. If you research various veteran's bills, you will see addendums that keep the original item from going through "cleanly" if at all. You will also see things taken completely out of context, or told as an out and out lie. This is then portrayed as "Bush vetoed veteran's bill", or "Bush doesn't want the funding to go to veteran's". I have attached examples of such things. Could Bush have done more for veterans? Sure. I will be interested to see how Obama "does" versus what he "says".

Bush Backs Bigger GI Bill

The administration's aim is not only to improve veterans' benefits in wartime but to derail a far more costly GI Bill reform package that Democrat Jim Webb (Va.), in just his second year as a senator, is shepherding toward likely enactment with tenacity and timely compromises.

Webb added a provision to entice private colleges to accept more veterans.

Rep. Harry E. Mitchell (D-Ariz.) introduced a companion bill, HR 5740, on April 9. Before a week had passed, it had attracted 196 co-sponsors

Regardless, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) will allow Webb to clear conventional funding hurdles over entitlement spending by attaching his bill an amendment to the wartime supplemental budget to be taken up by the Senate at the end of April.

http://www.military.com/features/0,15240,165937,00.html

Marching On

Howard Dean has said that Bush wants to cut 164,000 veterans off their health-care benefits.

Here's the background: For 80 years, the rule was that the VA would take care of veterans with medical problems related to their military service or veterans without the means to purchase their own health care. In the mid-1990s, Congress decided to open the VA health care to all veterans, prompting a flood of new entrants into the system. Today, the VA treats a million more patients than it did three years ago, for a total of about five million. This sure doesn't sound like cutting veterans off benefits, but maybe they reckon such things differently in Vermont.

Dean's charge does have a wisp of a connection to reality. Because the VA system was overwhelmed by a flood of new patients—many of them relatively well-off—it established a new rule saying that veterans with no medical problems relating to their service and an income above a certain threshold are not eligible for VA care. The rule affects an estimated 164,000 people. These are Dean's 164,000 veterans "cut off" from benefits.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OTRiYjRiMzBkYmZhYjE5NzAzMzkzYTVhZWZhNGFkMGQ=