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Paul Vitello: 'A warm hand cools quickly'
Posted on Sunday, April 06 @ 10:03:52 EDT
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By Paul Vitello, Newsday

At about 1 a.m. on March 21, soon after the start of the war, members of the House of Representatives gave our troops a warm hand in the form of a resolution commending their bravery in launching Operation Iraqi Freedom.

At 3 a.m., however, by a narrow margin, the Congress flipped the finger at the future of those same troops - in the form of a budget resolution that cut $14 billion from veterans programs over the next 10 years.

In all, 215 House members voted to cut veterans' benefits, and 212 voted against it. It was part of the huge House budget resolution for 2004, and it came up at 3 in the morning because ... to tell you the truth, I don't know why it was 3. I guess the members have a lot of work to do during the day, saluting the flag, reciting the pledge, attending funeral services for constituents killed in the war.



Anyway, the main feature of the 3 a.m. budget plan was a proposed $1.4-trillion tax cut - the backbone of the Republican vision for a future of economic health, faith-based social services, privatized national parks and prisons, and more wealth for the wealthy.

The cuts in veterans benefits would be a sort of collateral damage in the service of that objective.

Other programs that would be damaged included Medicare, Medicaid, school lunches, student loans, disability compensation, environmental protection. But in the context of the then-2-day-old war - the sandstorms, the 100-degree fighting in chemical suits, the dying - it was the veterans benefit cuts that must have caused a pause among even the most radical tax-cut loonies in the House.

House members voting in favor of this resolution - and to be completely fair about this, they were all Republicans, all beholden to the tax-cut fundamentalists who hold leadership in the House, and all pretty sure their lunacy would be checked and balanced by the Senate, which has since already passed a smaller tax cut with far fewer cuts in services - knew perfectly well they wouldn't be featured on the morning news shows that day for this, um, hypocritical and slimy mugging of veterans.

There was a war going on. Every talking head, and every front page in the country, would be all war all the time. And sure enough, the House budget resolution of March 21 has received about as much attention during these weeks as the weather on Mars.

Except among those who know war. Those who know what happens to warriors after war.

"We have a history in the military of never leaving our wounded behind," said Fred Denninger of Rocky Point, one of 15 local veterans assembled Friday by Rep. Tim Bishop (D-Southampton) for a meeting about the impact of the budget resolution on veterans benefits. "But we bring them back for what? To be thrown out of the VA hospital when they get old?"

As it stands, the House budget would cut about $1 billion in medical benefits for veterans in 2004 and tighten income eligibility requirements for veterans receiving the services that remain.

Drug benefits are cut. Disability benefits are cut.

In a speech defending a $265-billion package of service cuts that included the veterans-program cuts, Rep. Jim Nussle, the Iowa Republican who chairs the House Budget Committee, denounced Democrats who opposed it for being unwilling to confront "waste and abuse in this government."

Veterans groups have organized to restore these programs of "waste and abuse" that may mean medicine for an 80-year-old World War II vet or drug treatment for a 23-year-old Iraq war veteran next year.

"Cutting already under-funded veterans programs to offset the costs of tax cuts is indefensible and callous," Edward R. Heath Sr., national commander of the Disabled American Veterans organization, said in a statement last week. The Senate already has passed budget measures that would increase some veterans benefits - measures that must be reconciled with the House bill. And so, it will probably end up in a draw.

Bishop told the veterans Friday that if they mobilize - "get your posts to send letters ... " he told them, most of them VFW and Legion post commanders - the Congress probably would not cut veterans benefits $14 billion over the next 10 years.

Well, hallelujah. Maybe it will even restore benefits in the year of the war, and then bleed them off a little at a time when there is less attention being paid. Hardly anyone notices, for example, that the VA Hospital in Northport has closed one wing after another over recent years; hardly anyone notices except people who can calibrate the loss.

"I'm one of the [Northport] VA Hospital's success stories," said Jim Vaughan, a Vietnam combat veteran who attended Friday's meeting with Bishop at the American Legion Hall in Patchogue, and who credits the VA's detoxification unit and in-patient alcoholics' treatment program with saving his life in 1989. Both units have since closed. "They still have outpatient treatment," he said. "But if you go in for detox and they discharge you at night and tell you to come back the next day ... I don't know about anyone else, but if that was me I would have headed to the nearest bar."

What do you call it when political leaders hype war at every turn, but dis the warriors when no one is watching?

They call it supporting the troops.

You also can call it supporting those very wealthy campaign contributors who paid for their tax cut and want it now, dammit, to hell with everything and everyone else.

Reprinted from Newsday:
http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-livit063208858apr06,0,3773532.column