NATIONAL VETERAN SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS TOLD TO TAKE A HIKE
 

Alamogordo New Mexico Newspaper

By:  Paul L. Balaich for the Alamogordo

January 19, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Steve Buyer stood at the Indiana War Memorial in Indianapolis last week and made clear that Capitol Hill just got steeper for military veterans  The incoming chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee practically declared war on veterans groups, suggesting they are part of a Democratic plot to create a universal health care". Some within veteran's service organizations confuse their party politics with how we honor our commitments to veterans," Buyer said at a press conference in his home state. After four years thwarting policy plans of President Bush and winning billions more for veteran's health care and benefits, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and other national groups face a new test of their clout.

It does not just come from Repr. Buyer, whom House Republican leaders installed after removing the former chairman, Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey, who repeatedly sided with veterans groups against the Republican leadership. The chairman of the Senate veterans committee also has been replaced, and Anthony Principi, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs and a friend of veterans groups, has resigned. The result is more than mere uncertainty in a time of change. Replacing Smith with Buyer stripped the veterans lobby of a key ally and installed a longtime antagonist with fundamentally different views of the VA's mission. It also sent a chilling signal to Republicans who have bucked the party leadership.

"They've made the calculation that the benefit to their agenda outweighed the risk of inciting the veteran's public," according to Dennis Cullinan, legislative director for the VFW.  Republican leaders may have reason for that. Exit polls showed 57 percent of veterans voted for Bush even though Sen. John Kerry made veterans central to his appeal and supported veterans groups on their top issues while Bush generally did not. At stake is whether the VA budget is frozen or cut, more veterans are shut out of the health care system, and new fees and higher drug co-payments are imposed based on income. Such changes are possible given past White House requests and the budgetary restraint that Republicans promise this year.

Veterans groups have used their leverage on Capitol Hill to fight many of these efforts in the past. New political realities, however, could force the groups to rely more heavily on their members to apply pressure on Congress from outside the Beltway.  Recently, the nine largest groups representing millions of veterans formed an alliance last year to win mandatory spending on VA healthcare, which would make it an entitlement akin to Medicare instead of subject to the annual budget process.

An aide to Rep. Lane Evans of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the veterans committee, said the veterans service organizations must get aggressive nationally and educate the public. Repr. Lane's office,  said. "Are the Veterans Service Organizations going to stand up for what's right, or are they going to roll over and play dead for the Republican leadership, or are they going to voice objections from time to time and then go away?"

The leadership changes come at a crossroads for the VA. The war in Iraq will make tens of thousands members of the Guard and Reserves eligible for care. The department plans a national reorganization of health care facilities intended to add hospitals and clinics in high-growth states in the South and Southwest while closing others where veterans are scarcer. Record deficits will force tough choices.

Buyer, for one, complains that Congress made a mistake in 1996, when it allowed all veterans to get VA health care regardless of disability or income. Principi in 2003 halted enrollment of higher-income vets without service-connected disabilities, known as Priority Group 8 veterans, because of budget shortfalls, shutting out hundreds of thosands of veterans. Buyer is widely expected to try to expand on those restrictions. He strongly suggested that last week by calling for a return to the VA's "core constituency" of poor and disabled veterans.               

On the other side of the isle, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a moderate Republican, will no longer chair the Senate Veterans AffairsCommittee because he is taking the gavel of the Judiciary Committee. A fiscal conservative, Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, will replace Specter. Jim Nicholson, ambassador to the Vatican and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, will replace Secretary of Veterans Affairs Principi.

The Forum has repeatedly reported the many fiscal shortcoming of the VA's budget in the past. Already, thousands of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans are beginning to show up at VA medical centers and clinics. But President Bush proposed to the VA's 2005 budget request by $1.2 billion, over the objects of the secretary of veterans affairs, and to reduce the number of VA staff who handle benefit claims at the very time when the number and complexity of such claims are increasing.

This is, to put it plainly, outrageous. Our military personnel should not be treated as second-class citizens. Those wounded and disabled while fighting the war on terrorism for the rest of us will need special help to cope with the scars and disabilities inflicted by a savage, amoral enemy. Soldiers who volunteered to leave their loved ones to defend the rest of us deserve better, much better. The new secretary for veterans affairs committee has put it pretty bluntly - veterans programs in his committee will no longer receive top priority under his leadership. Remember the Brown Bag Program - get your letters in the mail to your congressperson on a regular basis.