Download PDF of this full issue: v5n5.pdf (8 MB)

Editorial

By VVAW

The VA has done it again! Now it's out of money. If you were waiting for a GI bill education check on the 9th of June or after, forget it--there's no money in the account. According to the House Appropriations Committee, a supplemental appropriation of $425 million has been approved, but because it is tied up with a larger appropriations bill, and because there is one section of that bill where the House and Senate don't agree, the whole thing is entangled in a web of Washington bureaucracy and red tape.

It's hardly the first time that vets have been screwed by governmental red tape--remember the lines we stood in in the Army, or the job assignment we were promised before being sent out as a grunt in Vietnam? More red tape. With a $15 billion (!!) budget, the VA don't manage to do what it's supposed to do. Of course the salaries of the VA bigwigs will keep coming in all right--it's vets who will get no funding and VA workers who face cutbacks and layoffs until the hassle is resolved. The VA has never shown much concern for the needs of vets in the past; there's no reason to expect that it will now or in the future.

For vets trying to get by on the GI Bill, it's hard enough to make ends meet. With a family it's almost impossible. But, with enough scrimping, the checks just last until the next check. When the checks suddenly stop so that Congress can play its silly games, what is the vet supposed to do then? VVAW/WSO's answer is clear. Unite to fight. Don't let the VA get away with another blunder; demand the checks. Expose the VA for what it is--a part of the system which works against the interests of working people in order to serve the rich.

Vets on the GI Bill may find a way to survive until the red tape is untangled. No untangling of red tape will help one vet: Erwin A Pawelski of Chicago. Pawelski, an unemployed vet, was taken to the Hines VA Hospital in Chicago on April 9th after suffering a blood clot, the result of a fall. On May 1, suffering from a stroke, and strapped in a wheelchair unable to move or speak, he was wheeled into an elevator to be taken for therapy treatment. For the next 27 hours he was "lost"--travelling up and down in the elevator with no one in the hospital able to answer his wife's frantic questions about his whereabouts. He died three weeks later after an operation. According to the VA, there was not connection between 27 hours in the elevator and his death. May be, but is sure as hell didn't help any. No VA investigations are going to help him.

VVAW/WSO's War on the VA intensifies. And these are just a couple of the reasons why. As long as the VA is part of the system of government which serves the rich instead of the people, it will never do what it is supposed to do: help meet the needs of vets. Buts we can force the VA at least to stop killing its patients, and to pay the benefits we were promised.