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No VA Cuts: Decent Benefits for All Vets!

By VVAW

"The government says cut back/ Vets say Fight Back!" You name the vets program and Reagan will show you how it can be cut back—this has been the history of vets in the past couple of years.

Out campaigning Reagan was clear that vets benefits were among his untouchable as far as the budget was concerned. Once in office the story has been entirely different. In the midst of cutbacks in almost every useful social program, vets benefits have also seen the Stockman axe. A cutback in hospital beds. A cutback in burial benefits, to the point that 14 bodies were stacked up at the VA in Los Angeles because there wasn't the money to bury them (a local Vietnam vet businessman finally provided the necessary funds).

And perhaps even worse than the programs being cutback are the programs not being started. Scared to death that an influx of World War II vets, now approaching the age of 65, will flood VA hospitals, the VA is working out ways to avoid having to deal with them. Millions of dollars could be spent treating victims of radiation, so the VA drags its feet on that. More money will have to be spent on Agent Orange victims, so the government tries to pretend it's a non-existent problem.

The newest budget calls for only a few cuts in vets benefits like eliminating disability payments to the families of vets who are 40% or 50% disabled. But that's one more step. Unless vets say STOP, the cuts will continue.

No vet went off to Vietnam, to Korea, or to World War II asking to have his body blown apart, his mind disturbed, or himself and his family exposed to the lethal effects of radiation, Agent Orange, or whatever other atrocity the U.S. government may come up with next. These same vets do ask—and more ask, demand—that these problems now be dealt with.