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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E who wrote (127172)	3/23/2004 7:54:39 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

OT? According to Mary Ellen McCarthy, a staffer for ranking House Veteran' Affairs Committee member Lane Evans, D-Ill., a GOP-controlled Congress is readying to slice $14.6 billion from veterans benefits over the next 10 years. Yes there are "different ways of parsing any budget", but its simply not true that billions will be cut from benefits. In reality billions will be added. It can be argued that the benefits for each individual will go down a little as the spending increases don't keep pace with the increase in the number of veterans, but there has been no $14.6bil slice. This controversy reminds me of early claims that the GOP was cutting benefits (for other groups besides veterans) when the cut was a cut in growth from something like 10% to something like 9%, except in this case there has been no cut in the growth rate either, even if it might turn out that the growth rate doesn't equal the rate of increase in the number of veterans. This graph expresses the overall spending trend very simply. Every year spending is higher then the year before. factcheck.org For 2005 Bush is seeking a record increase in spending on Veterans Benefits. The VFW might complain about specific changes in policy, and due to the new number of eligible veterans that we will probably soon see it is not totally unreasonable for them to ask for an even bigger increase, but I don't see the claim that the budget request is a "disgrace and a sham" could be considered reasonable. The money will come from funding for treatment of service-connected injuries and pensions for low income vets. My understanding is that there would be a slight increase in co-payments for middle income and higher vets, not a cut in treatment for anyone or a cut in funding (or higher co-payments) for low income vets. Tim