Democrats Demand an End to Empty Rhetoric When President Bush Addresses VFW Convention

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — As President Bush
prepares to address the 108th annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign
Wars in Kansas City tomorrow, Democrats today called on the President to
offer more than the same empty rhetoric and broken promises on the issues
that matter to America’s veterans and military families. Despite years of
promises, on President Bush’s watch the Administration has allowed
conditions at VA hospitals and medical centers like Walter Reed to
deteriorate to appalling levels, has failed to accurately project the cost
of treating thousands of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, and
has jeopardized the personal financial information of America’s 26.5
million veterans. Worse, the President’s budget proposals have consistently
shortchanged the VA, with his 2008 budget including a two percent cut.
By contrast, Democrats in Congress have kept their promise to make
taking care of our veterans and military families a top priority by giving
our fighting forces a hard-earned and well-deserved pay raise, passing the
largest increase in veterans’ health care funding in our nation’s history,
and working to force President Bush to change course in Iraq. Democratic
National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and DNC Veterans and Military
Families Council Chairman Don Fowler today issued the following statement:
“Every year, President Bush and representatives from his Administration
head to the VFW convention to shower convention-goers with empty platitudes
about standing up for our veterans, but when they return to Washington
their actions never match their rhetoric. It is not enough for the
President to talk about improving health care and benefits for veterans and
military families. Veterans confronting traumatic brain injuries,
post-traumatic stress disorder, mental health care issues, long backlogs
and waiting lists, and a host of other challenges deserve resources, not
rhetoric. That’s why Democrats are fighting to fully fund veterans’ health
care services, end backlogs for veterans seeking care, and fix VA hospitals
and medical centers. The time has come for President Bush and the Bush
Republicans in Washington to join Democrats in making veterans issues a
true priority, not a talking point.”
While Democrats Stand Up for America’s Veterans and Military
Families…

Democrats Pass Largest Increase In Veterans Health Care In History.
Democrats passed the Fiscal Year 2008 Military Construction and Veterans
Affairs appropriations bill [H.R. 2642], which includes the largest
increase in veterans healthcare in history. It increases funding for
veteran’s health care by $4.4 billion, which will allow the VA to treat
more than 5.8 million veterans, including more than 260,000 veterans of the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It includes $600 million in new funding for
mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and $66 million
more for medical and prosthetic research. To eliminate the 400,000 benefits
claim backlog, H.R. 2642 provides $1.6 billion in funding to hire enough
1,100 new claims processors for the VA system. [Office of Rep. Kirsten
Gillibrand, Release, 6/18/07]

2007 Emergency Supplemental Adds $1.8 Billion in VA Funding. The 2007
Emergency Supplemental bill allocates nearly $1.8 billion in funds to the
VA, not requested by the President, to accommodate the increasing number of
new veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, improve mental
health and readjustment counseling services, and fund new polytrauma
centers for the severely injured. These funds are critical to ensuring that
the VA has the capacity to care for the increasing number of veterans who
suffer from traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder.
[DPC Fact Sheet, 6/21/07]

Democrats Add $3.5 Billion in Veterans Funding to Bush FY 2008 Budget.
The Senate’s 2008 Budget Resolution allocated $43.1 billion for veterans,
which is an increase of $3.5 billion over the President’s request. This
amount represents 98 percent of the funding level requested in the
Independent Budget, a plan developed by four leading veterans’ service
organizations. The resolution also rejected the President’s proposal to
impose new fees and higher co-payments on certain veterans, which,
according to veterans’ service organizations, would have driven an
estimated 200,000 veterans to leave the system and discouraged more than
one million veterans from enrolling in VA health care. [DPC Fact Sheet,
6/21/07]

Democrats Pass Wounded Warriors Bill. Senate Democrats passed the
Wounded Warriors Act, which provides resources to address:
– The substandard facilities at Walter Reed and other military hospitals;
– The lack of seamless transition when medical care for troops is transferred from the Department of Defense to the Veterans Administration, which often leads to diminished care;
– The inadequacy of severance pay to help those who have sacrificed so much already support their families while they recover;
– The need to improve sharing of medical records between the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs;
– The inadequate care and treatment for traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) by authorizing $50 million for improved diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation; and
– The challenges facing wounded troops whose health insurance programs, like the Tricare program for retired veterans, have allowed gaps in coverage and medical treatment.

…The Bush Administration Fails Our Veterans

Acting Surgeon General Admits Medical Care For Wounded Troops Lacking.
“As troops come home from Iraq and Afghanistan, there aren’t enough nurses
and mental health specialists to meet their needs. That assessment today
from the Army’s acting Surgeon General, Gale Pollock. She was given the job
after Kevin Kiley was forced to resign amid the scandal over poor treatment
of the wounded at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Pollock told a House
Armed Services subcommittee the original war plans didn’t take into
consideration how long the fighting would last. And she said ‘we have not
been able to do the hiring’ of needed personnel.” [AP, 3/27/07]

Veterans’ Administration Not Ready And Did Not Plan To Handle Flood Of
Returning Iraq War Vets. “A NEWSWEEK investigation focused not on one
facility but on the services of the Department of Veterans Affairs, a
235,000-person bureaucracy that provides medical care to a much larger
number of servicemen and women from the time they’re released from the
military, and doles out their disability payments. Our reporting paints a
grim portrait of an overloaded bureaucracy cluttered with red tape;
veterans having to wait weeks or months for mental-health care and other
appointments; families sliding into debt as VA case managers study
disability claims over many months, and the seriously wounded requiring
help from outside experts just to understand the VA’s arcane system of
rights and benefits … as the number of veterans continues to grow,
critics worry the VA is in a state of denial. In a broad sense, the
situation at the VA seems to mirror the overall lack of planning for the
war. ‘We know the VA doesn’t have the capacity to process a large number of
disability claims at the same time,’ says Linda Bilmes, a Harvard
public-finance professor. … She projects that at least 700,000 veterans
from the global war on terror (GWOT) will flood the system in the coming
years.” [Newsweek, 3/5/07]

Bush’s 2008 Budget Proposes 2 Percent Cut For Vets. “This failure to
prepare to treat the wounded is of a piece with the conduct of the Iraq war
itself, when civilian policymakers launched a war with inadequate troop
strength and then failed to provide enough security forces to maintain the
peace once fighting ended. In other words, a disastrous mistake from
beginning to end - all at the expense of the brave men and women in the
armed forces. To top off the charade of empathy, the latest budget estimate
from the Bush administration proposes a 2 percent budget cut for the VA in
the 2008-’09 budget year and freezing the budget at that level for the next
three years. Coming at a time when VA medical services are breaking down
under the strain of Iraq War casualties, reducing the agency’s budget is a
cynical mockery of the public facade of concern for returning veterans.
‘Support Our Troops,’ indeed. A more accurate slogan for this
administration would be ‘Ignore Our Troops.’” [Bradenton Herald, Editorial,
3/1/07]

Veterans Administration Falling Behind In Providing Disability
Benefits. “The Department of Veterans Affairs is falling behind in its
efforts to provide prompt disability benefits for veterans nationwide, as
its backlog of cases continues to grow, new reports show. In fact, the
department’s performance slipped in the past year even though its workload
was lower than anticipated. … In testifying to Congress in February that
the VA was ‘focused on delivering timely and accurate benefits,’ Secretary
Nicholson and other VA officials said the department expected to receive
910,126 new claims and complete a decision on 838,566. Instead, the VA
received far fewer claims — 806,382 — and it produced a decision on
774,378, or 8 percent fewer than expected, VA data show. As productivity
dropped, the VA’s closely watched backlog of claims went up, and has
continued to rise since the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30. It now tops
400,000.” [McClatchy, 12/1/06]

Walk-In Veterans’ Treatment Centers Can’t Keep Up With Caseload. “A
network of community-based walk-in veterans’ treatment centers is under
increasing pressure as more and more former troops who served in Iraq and
Afghanistan have come looking for help. A report to be issued Thursday from
the House Veterans Affairs Committee’s Democratic staff says that nearly a
third of all Vet Centers have seen the demand rise for outreach and other
services. … It found that the number of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who
have sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) doubled - from
nearly 4,500 to more than 9,000 - from October 2005 through June 2006. The
number of veterans with other types of possible mental health and
readjustment problems also doubled, and in some cases tripled, the report
said. Half of the Vet Centers sampled reported that their expanding
caseloads have affected their ability to treat their current clientele.
‘The administration’s failure to increase staffing and other resources for
Vet Centers has put their capacity to meet the needs of veterans and their
families at risk,’ the report said.” [McClatchy, 10/18/06]
Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee,

SOURCE Democratic National Committee

Comment: Ok Democrats. Demand all you want. But, what are you actually going to do about it?