Download PDF of this full issue: v10n3.pdf (6.7 MB)

VA Budget vs. Vets' Needs

By VVAW

No matter how you look at it the Carter economy is in a mess. Whether you're hit by inflation or recession or, like most people, by both at the same time, it's clear that the situation is bad now and has every possibility of turning into a full-scale disaster at any moment.

To be fair, the inflation is not all Carter's fault—he suffers from the economic problems too; so serious are the problems that Jimmy and Rosalyn slipped out of the "worth over a million dollar" class, a problem that a large majority of the American people would certainly like to share. While we may all be in the same boat, a very few are "suffering" in the first class cabins, while all the rest of us are stuck away so far under deck you'd never know it was the same boat. And we sure don't have much input into how the boat should be steered!

While the galloping inflation is not solely the fault of the President, he certainly has done nothing to stop it, outside of occasional sermons. However, the rapidly approaching depression (one which is already here for millions of American ex-workers) is more directly the result of the Carter policies. But for either problem—recession or inflation—or for the combination of the two, the solution offered is always the same: push the burden of the problem on to those who can least afford to bear it. Cut off welfare. Cut food stamps. Slice pensions. Tax social security payments. Slash away at unemployment benefits. And, of course, cut the budget for the Veterans Administration, which is sorry enough already and which will only get worse.

Prospective V.A. budget figures for the next fiscal year (starting on the 1st of July), as put out by the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee total $21, 585,335,000. That's a lot of bucks, and a lot of our taxes go into those bucks since, as we all know, it isn't the President or Congress who finance all the things they decide we need.

Among the proposals made either by the President or the Senate Committee in this V.A. budget are: disability "cost of living" increases of 13% (compared with an inflation rate of at least 18%); end of correspondence courses under the GI Bill and an end to flight training; a proposed increase in GI Bill benefits ( 10% in Carter's proposal, 15% in the Senate version, but in either case not much of an increase since the last raise was in 1977); postponement of new hospital construction (to save $236 million), while putting out another $6 million for Vietnam-era veteran outreach centers; $5 million to study the effects of Agent Orange with the money spread over a three-year period of the V.A. study; and elimination or cutbacks in a number of other, smaller programs such as the present system of dental care for service-connected dental problems (to save $32 million) or the direct loan program for GI housing (to save another $59 million).

$5 million for Agent Orange research! $6 jillion for Vietnam era vets outreach centers! These are two of the V.A. programs which have the greatest potential for providing some real aid to Vietnam vets. $5 million is a lot of money, but hardly when set against a budget of $21 billion! Nor is it all that much when you see that the American Battle Monuments Commission is down for a shade over $9 million.

And all of these figures were out before Carter's latest budget-chopping fit; as his whole program to "balance" the budget sloshes around between the House, the Senate and the White House, we can count on more programs being slashed.

And vets are a long ways from being the only group hit by the cuts. Look at welfare, or food stamps, or aid to dependent mothers or unemployment compensation, or federal school funds, or a huge list of programs which are needed by people for whom this system can provide no useful work. Right down the line, these are targeted for cutbacks. And while these programs are cut, Congress has no problem at all in approving money for the registration of 19 and 20 year olds; 2 times as much $ for draft registration as for research on Agent Orange!

And Congress has minor problems coming up with incredible amounts of money for the Defense Department, no doubt so they can concoct whatever will be the Agent Orange of the next war they're plotting.

As the economy heads into its tailspin, Vietnam-era vets will be hit harder and harder. Many of us, because we spent our time in the military, don't have the seniority to protect us against layoffs, like the 10% cutback recently announced by General motors. The system that sent us off to war and used us in every way it could to protect and expand its profits, is not getting ready to throw us into the trashheap once again.

What's the solution? A freeze on wages, rent, prices, profits,etc would be a start, though no real solution. It would sure beat the present program where Carter can try out his 9% guideline for wages while inflation speeds along at 18%: that's simply a wage freeze without freezing anything else(except the people who can't afford their heating bills). We need no more of a situation where wages creep up (if you aren't laid off), while prices and profits gallop ahead: we can only keep falling further and further behind until the "American Dream," where we can afford to do more for our children than our parents could afford to do for us, becomes a nightmare.

A longer-term solution is more difficult. One example, however, suggests some possibilities: in the first quarter of 1980, profits of Exxon were up 102%: shell, up 66.5%; Occidental Petroleum, up 236.4% Standard Oil of Ohio, up 17=69%. Yet almost everyone agrees that our dependence on oil and oil by-products must cease. But at the same time, if the producers of power had found a way to charge the consumer for solar power had found a way to charge the consumer for solar power or for wind power, we would long ago have stopped being so depended on oil. In short, we live under a system where profit is king and the rest of us are not much better than serfs.

Veterans have a long history of dealing with problems like those of today. During the Depression, in 1932, veterans marched on Washington, 25,000 strong, in what became known as the Bonus March. And while the government of Herbert hoover finally brough out the troops to chase the vets our of the Capitol, veterans won most of what they went to Washington to get. Veterans marched against the Indochina War, and vets have united—and hit the streets—time and time again around issues that affected us and others. Vets can be counted on to fight the "solution: to the economy that will come from our politicians—that we need a war to stimulate the economy: we're not about to sacrifice our children to the profits of a few huge corporations. We've seen enough of that already!