Threat to veterans’ care seen
The United States may be on the verge of breaking its promise to care for the troops who come home from war in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said Wednesday as she met with veterans groups in Spokane and Walla Walla.
“We promised those soldiers two years of health care when they returned,” Murray said during a morning interview. But the federal budget doesn’t have the money to pay for that care.
Many of the troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are suffering from the effects of combat stress, Murray was told during a meeting with veterans and their advocates at Spokane Community College.
“We should remember that the war does not end when we get on that C-130 for home,” said Washington Army National Guard Sgt. Robert Kauder, of Spokane, who recently returned from Iraq.
As an infantry squad leader, Kauder said he saw firefights, as well as rocket and mortar attacks, and believes some soldiers handle the stress of combat better than others. When they return to the United States, guardsmen just want to get home and are not thinking about what kind of health care they may need from the VA in the future.
A recent study of Iraq and Afghan veterans reported in the New England Journal of Medicine estimates that nearly one in five Iraq veterans suffers from major depression, generalized anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
“We are starting to see Iraq veterans come back,” said Anna Roney, the Veterans coordinator at SCC since 1985. “They seem fine until I ask them how they are sleeping.”
Many veterans have trouble acclimating to civilian life, she said. “Some say they will never be like other people.”
Roney called for more veteran outreach centers for rural areas without access to regional VA hospitals like Spokane.
While the VA says it wants more community-based clinics, it doesn’t have the money in the budget to build them, said Murray who lost two bids this spring to add at least $2 billion to the VA budget.
Most recently she tried unsuccessfully to include money for post-traumatic stress disorder, extra personnel and VA facilities in the special spending bill for Iraq and Afghanistan, and for the South Asian tsunami relief. Changes in the congressional appropriations process will make it harder to add that money later this year, she added.
Before meeting with veterans groups, Murray told The Spokesman-Review editorial board she thought Fairchild Air Force Base and other military installations in Washington state are in strong positions as a panel prepares a list of bases recommended for closure. But no one will know until the list is released later this month.
“I’ve heard … it’s not going to be as draconian as a lot of people predicted, simply because the military needs are so high, but whether people are just being hopeful, I don’t know,” she said. If Fairchild or one of the other bases does end up on a list for closure or reduction, state and local officials are “ready to go to fight for keeping them open.”
She also predicted President Bush will not be able to move a proposal to change Social Security through Congress if it includes private accounts. Democrats have said they will not discuss that option, but told the president “if he took privatization off the table, we’d look at what we need to do to keep Social Security solvent in the long term.”
Bush’s push for Social Security reform and the Senate’s “nightmare debate” over possible changes in the rules on confirming federal judges was getting in the way of a much more important issue, health care reform, Murray said.
She defended the Democrats’ use of the filibuster to block seven federal judges out of 213 Bush has nominated, saying a federal judge gets a lifetime appointment and should receive at least some support from both parties. “The filibuster is one way we have to make sure everyone’s at the table,” she said.