What does veterans legislation mean if there is no funding attached?

by Tom Barnes, Staff Writer

If there is no money attached, how important is it? For years Congressmen and Senators from both parties have, in my opinion, passed pointless legislation concerning veterans that were ‘feel good’ things that cost essentially nothing. And look at the mess we are all in now.

We don’t need more testimonial and ‘patriotic’ legislation coming out of Washington to help us feel wanted. We need legislation with teeth in it (that means with buckets of money attached to it) that actually changes our lives for the better.

In my opinion, we neeed to refocus our efforts as veterans and disabled veterans on the meat and potatos of all issues. Money.

Since we are essentially and primarily a veterans website and it is now more than obvious that the Department of Veterans Affairs is a loose canon that essentially does whatever it wants no matter who is in office, the House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committees are really our primary targets for all efforts to change our lives. They are the only ones who can change things for us because they vote on funding for the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (DVA).

I suspect that the REAL scoop here for veterans and one that needs to be verified is that the entire DVA is embedded deeply with ultra conservative right wing so-called "Republicans" who have silently agreed that they will keep spending down, no matter what, no matter what the laws say, no matter how they need to obfuscate or lie to anyone or everyone to keep these damned veterans from getting any more entitlement money than they are already getting. THAT is the real issue for us and one that is maddeningly difficult to get a handle on.

I know dozens of these people. They are much more friendly to the entitlement cutting crowd than they are to us. In a very real sense, we have had the foxes watching the hen house since probably about WWI. This is a very old but very crucial problem for us. We get penty of praise, but historically, we must fight for every dime and we always underfunded.

In the past twelve years I have literally had dozens of face to face encounters with virtually all levels of veterans affairs components. Even the Democrats are not all that willing to spend great deals of money on us because we are not normally a Democratic Party constituency. Trust me, they are very aware of that. They will help us out in an election year and make quite a big fuss over it. Then they walk away from us. I have seen this too many times to trust them either.

My heart and soul is engaged truly in breaking open this "Open Secret" in D.C. We are truly red haired step children. No one wants us. We are too damned expensive. But they are stuck with us. From my pt of view, the GTMO thing is a tragic and unjust ancillary issue. The real issue for us is just ‘who’ are our enemies, where are they located, how do we dislodge them from power and influence and who can we count on to help us do this? These are very difficult questions to answer.

The DVA is a freaking hotbed of anti-veteran sentiment and action. Their record has proven over and over and over in my lifetime that they serve the needs of the moneyed elites over the needs of veterans. For every dollar that is spent on us and our entitlement programs that is one less dollar that can be funneled into the investments of the elites, and that usually means defense spending.

This is the heart and core issue I would like us all to focus upon. Why is the DVA our only source of solace and so incredibly difficult to enlist in our fight against slowly wasting away while Rome burns? This is not a federal agency gone mad. This is deliberate obstructionism across party lines to hold veterans expenses down at all costs. It is really the platform issue that keeps us all together. It is our common pain.

This is really what I think we need to focus upon at all times.

 CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)