Senate blocks veterans’ health care bill

When Senate Republicans defeated an amendment this week to make health care funding for all veterans mandatory, they rejected one of the highest priorities of veteran service organizations across the country and handed Democrat John Kerry ammunition to use in his presidential campaign.

The amendment to the $447 billion defense authorization bill would have provided a 30 percent increase in funding for fiscal year 2005 and in subsequent years assured adequate funding levels to meet the needs of a growing number of veterans seeking health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The measure was co-sponsored by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and led by Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D.

The Senate approved the full bill Wednesday night without the mandatory funding measure, which Republicans believed was too expensive, Murray spokesman Mike Spahn said.

“Today, we had an outstanding opportunity to make a landmark commitment to the veterans who’ve served us so well,” Murray said in a statement after Wednesday’s vote on a procedural issue raised by the Senate’s Republican leadership effectively blocked the amendment.

The Democrats mustered 49 of the 60 votes needed to bring the measure to the floor even without the presence of Kerry, who took time off Tuesday from campaigning to vote on the measure.

Wednesday, Kerry blamed partisanship for delaying the vote and thus denying him the chance to show support for the issue he has long championed.

It is an issue that resonates with veterans, including those in Washington state.

“The VFW has been pushing hard for mandatory funding for veterans, and we will continue to push for it,” said Ron Fry, past junior state commander of the Washington chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

Fry, who as state VFW commander fought vigorously against a Bush administration proposal to close the VA hospital in Walla Walla, was recently named Eastern Washington coordinator for the Veterans for Kerry campaign.

“The Bush administration has not been supportive, and the Republicans in Congress are going along party lines and not supporting us,” Fry said.

The mandatory funding amendment is supported by the Partnership for Veterans Health Care Budget Reform, comprised of all leading veterans’ organizations, including the Vietnam Veterans of America, which has made “obligatory, or assured, funding” for veterans health care its highest priority.

“The debate of the past several years has been whether to fund the veterans’ health care system at a very inadequate level or grossly inadequate level,” the VVA said in a 2003 position paper.

“This debate has to end. We must give more than lip service to the health care mandates set forth in law, and the will of the American people, to care for those who have borne the battle.”

Veterans groups, including many VFW members attending their state convention in Yakima last weekend, were incensed by an Office of Management and Budget memo leaked to the Washington Post the week before that showed the VA should expect $900 million in cuts in 2006 unless offset in other areas.

The VA’s enrolled population has grown 134 percent since 1996 while appropriations have grown 44 percent, according to data provided by Murray’s office.

This year, the Bush administration has proposed budgeting Veterans Affairs in 2005 at $1.2 billion less than VA Secretary Anthony Principi said was needed.

In January 2003, faced with the growing number of veterans seeking VA health care, Principi suspended further enrollment of Priority 8 veterans (those with nonservice-connected disabilities and whose incomes are above the regionally adjusted means test).

Daschle’s amendment would have removed veterans’ health from the annual politics of appropriation, Murray said. It would have funded the VA like any other vital government program, such as military retirement or Social Security.

This approach has been endorsed by a presidential task force and the bipartisan leadership of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, as well as every major veterans group.

“We have to have that amendment passed,” Fry said.

“Until we do, bureaucrats will be able to manipulate the funds anyway they want, regardless of the impact it may have on veterans.”