Redefining Veterans
Redefining Veterans
Over the past few months, this right-wing’s handling of Veterans issues has gone from bad to worse.
January: House Republican Leaders remove Rep. Christopher Smith from his chairmanship of the Veterans Affairs Committee after he repeatedly asserts his independence from Leader Hastert. Most major Veterans organizations are outraged.
February: The proposed 2006 budget only included a very small increase — even though there will be a huge increase of service members who are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan injured, and it would require Veterans to pay $250 a year to use the VA health services.
March: Hundreds of disabled veterans descended on the House Veterans Affairs Committee as it was holding hearings, to protest the 2006 budget.
And, now, Smith’s replacement, Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) wants to dramatically overhaul the Veterans Administration. Where does he start? By redefining what a veteran is. To cut costs, Buyer wants to reshape benefits and VA programs so that they are only available to a very specific group of veterans. Hastert has also recently announced the formation of the Veterans Disability Benefits Commission. Buyer wants them to consider offering one-time payments to some veterans with disabilities, preventing them from ever pursuing any additional claims — even if they have a degenerative disease that gets worse with age.
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F—wads. Can you hear me Dr. Chu, are you really just an ordinary guy? Chu says veterans benefits, like education, are a risk to national security! Keep on writing Think Progress. We need to archive all of this stuff for ‘o8.
April 6th, 2005 at 9:52 pmTaking Care of Veterans
April 7th, 2005 at 7:31 pmSeems the Republicans may not actually be as supportive of our vets as they suggest they are.
Should anyone be suprised at Buyer’s treatment of Vets. Does anyone remember when Buyer called the actives “pantywaists” if they wanted to enroll in college?
April 15th, 2005 at 12:16 pm[...] Listing every example of Republicans screwing the troops would fill a weighty volume, the type of volume the president would laughingly claim to have read this summer, just after those “three Shakespeares”. Think about it. You’ve got an administration that sent the troops to Iraq based on a pack of lies, only to deny them the proper equipment, serving them spoiled food and contaminated water once they were there. You’ve got a president who has set the all-time record for a vacationing Commander-in-Chief, yet who still hasn’t attended his first military funeral. You’ve got the Secretary of Defense who jokes about not providing our men and women with the proper equipment, yet can’t be bothered to personally sign the condolence letters resulting directly from his and his administration’s misguided foreign policy. For the ones lucky enough to return home alive, you’ve got Republican leadership that cuts their benefits while seeking to redefine what actually constitutes a “veteran” in order to further cut costs. To be more concise, however, I’ll condense the administration’s terrible record with a few memorable examples. [...]
September 1st, 2006 at 2:35 pmI don’t understand why veterans organizations are not speaking up about this sabatoge of veterans bennefits or the attempt to cut them. Bush and company are going arround and speaking to them,and they seem to just sit there and listen to all there b.s. Pleas somebody tell me what I can do. I am a veitnam vet.
September 2nd, 2006 at 1:58 pm