The Bush administration plans to cut funding for veterans’ health care two years from now — even as wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.
Bush is using the cuts, critics say, to help fulfill his pledge to balance the budget by 2012.
...The proposed cuts are at odds with recent VA budget trends — its medical care budget has risen every year for two decades and 83 percent in the six years since Bush took office — sowing suspicion that the White House is making them up to make its long-term deficit figures look better.
“Either the administration is willingly proposing massive cuts in VA health care,” said Rep. Chet Edwards, a Texas Democrat, chairman of the panel overseeing the VA’s budget, “or its promise of a balanced budget by 2012 is based on completely unrealistic assumptions.”
Edwards said that a more realistic estimate of veterans’ costs is $16 billion higher than the Bush estimate for 2012....
....The number of veterans coming into the VA health-care system has been rising by about 5 percent a year as the number of people returning from Iraq with illnesses or injuries keep rising. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans represent almost 5 percent of the VA’s patient caseload, and many are returning from battle with grievous injuries requiring costly care, such as traumatic brain injuries.
The VA expects to treat about 5.8 million patients next year, including 263,000 veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan....
Is this anyway to support the troops? Let Deborah Pryce know that you are not happy with the administration's plans to balance the budget by sacrificing veterans' benefits. And while you talking/e-mailing her, let her know that you are extremely dissatisfied with her vote against the recent Iraq resolution. The only way to get Pryce to support an end to the war in Iraq is to continue the pressure on her office. If we don't contact her, Pryce will continue to vote like a robot with her Republican leadership.