By Tom Zampieri
More Budget Woes
When is a budget increase not really a budget increase?
Here it is November and once again, for the fifth consecutive year, Congress has been unable to finish the appropriations process on time. VA is operating on another continuing resolution. This problem seems only to get worse each year. Congress wastes time in the early summer months naming post offices. Then there is an autumn rush to try and spend billions in budgeting for all of the federal agencies.
Matters are quickly becoming worse this year after many hard-fought battles took place during the summer. The battles were aimed at convincing Congress to provide supplemental funding that would compensate a shortfall that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) initially denied and then later admitted to. Even after all the conflict, House and Senate members are now attempting to cut off some of those funds.
The Senate appropriations bill for Fiscal Year 2006 provides $23.308 billion for VA medical services. The House budget bill for VA is more than $2 billion less ($20.995 billion). The leadership in Congress and the Bush Administration wants to cut spending on all domestic federal agency discretionary programs to pay for hurricane emergency funding. The House goal is to cut $50 billion off all spending while retaining tax cut legislation that would provide for $70 billion in permanent cuts.
This current plan has some moderate Republicans worried about how voters will perceive this, especially when VA is facing 123,000 new Iraq War veterans coming into the system. Thousands more National Guard and Reserve forces will also be returning home and looking for health care from the VA system.
Since any reductions would leave VA under funded as FY 2006 begins, BVA and other Veterans Service Organizations (VSOs) oppose these decreases. We believe that discretionary funding models used by VA and Congress do not work, and that some sort of assured funding must be passed so that veterans are not constantly left with insufficient funding for their health care. Waiting times will again increase, staffing shortages will occur, and veterans who want access will be kept out of the system. In a time of war, with more than 15,700 wounded and thousands more requiring help with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), it is wrong to use budget models that clearly don’t work.
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