| Friday, November 11, 2005 |
| Happy Veterans Day -- now kindly go away |
For the first time in 55 years, America's veterans will not be afforded the opportunity to testify before a joint congressional committee to explain their priorities and tell Congress where services may be falling short. Read on:
WASHINGTON, Nov. 10 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The Chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), announced plans to eliminate annual congressional hearings for Veterans Service Organizations. Under Buyer’s plan, The American Legion and other Veterans Service Organizations would no longer be afforded the opportunity to present testimony before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees.
"I am extremely disappointed in Chairman Buyer's latest effort to ignore the Veterans Service Organizations. Eliminating annual hearings before a joint session of the Veterans Affairs Committees will lead to continued budgetary shortfalls for VA resulting in veterans being underserved," said National Commander Thomas L. Bock.
Chairman Buyer announced this change at a "Veterans Summit" he hosted at the Carlisle Barracks, Pa. The American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars were unable to attend. Although The American Legion was not in attendance at the meeting, National Commander Bock spoke to Chairman Buyer by phone today and expressed strong opposition to the Chairman's proposal. "While I am grateful for the Chairman's phone call, I failed to understand the logic behind denying veterans service organizations their voice before the very Committees charged with ensuring the care and well-being of America’s veterans," stated Bock.
Traditionally, Veterans Service Organizations have presented not only their budgetary recommendations, but also their overall legislative priorities to the members of both the Senate and House Veterans Affairs Committees during the annual joint hearings. These hearings provide the single opportunity for the leaders of the veterans community to directly address the members of the Committees that have jurisdiction over the programs created to serve America's veterans. To deny that opportunity is to deny this nation's veterans. Why would the GOP want to do such a thing on the eve of Veterans Day? Hmmm... Could it have something to do with not wanting to give veterans -- including OIF veterans -- the chance to talk about -- and get media coverage for -- the failures of the Bush administration and Republican congress on subjects like veterans healthcare, issues over compensation for PTSD for troops coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, job losses and financial crises for those returning from the wars, continued equipment problems in Iraq and more of the stuff you can read about here, but not, say, here or here?
The chairman of the Veterans Affairs committee, Republican Steve Buyer, tried to put a positive spin his decision to yank the VSOs testimony in his own release, but by putting off the veterans groups until just before the presient submits his budget to Congress in February, Buyer has basically frozen the groups out of the process, limiting their ability to influence the president's budget before it gets to Congress. And of course, he's dodged one heck of a bad publicity bullet.
Happy Veterans Day, indeed.
Tags: veterans, Iraq, Military |
posted by JReid @ 9:54 AM   |
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