[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 86 (Thursday, June 12, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H5355]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             BUSH ADMINISTRATION STRIPS VETERANS' BENEFITS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STRICKLAND. Mr. Speaker, these are difficult days for our 
country. The war is not over. We continue to have young Americans 
killed, almost on a daily basis in Iraq, and that country is very 
unsettled. But that is not why I rise to speak tonight. I rise to speak 
about soldiers of wars passed.
  Just this past weekend in Marietta, Ohio, I attended a meeting of the 
Purple Heart Association; and later on that evening I spoke to a group 
of veterans who had served on the LST ships, those large ships that 
transported cargo and goods and soldiers, landing them on the beaches 
of Normandy and elsewhere; and I was struck by the fact that these 
veterans are full of goodwill and wonderful stories about their lives 
as members of the United States Armed Forces. They went through some 
hellish experiences, things that we can only imagine, I guess, in our 
darkest moments.
  But I am concerned, Mr. Speaker, that this country, as rich as we are 
and as willing as we are to take care of the well-off among us, that 
this country is failing to live up to its obligations to our Nation's 
veterans. I would just like to share some of the actions that have been 
recently taken by the President and this administration that I think 
are so harmful to veterans.
  Approximately a year and a half or so ago, the VA made a decision 
that they were going to increase the cost of a prescription drug that a 
veteran would have to pay from $2 a prescription to $7 a prescription, 
and I thought that was outrageous at the time, and I introduced 
legislation to roll back that decision. But the matter has gotten 
worse. In the President's budget which he sent to us a few months ago, 
in fact, the budget that he sent to us in January at the very time when 
we were preparing to send our young men and women into harm's way in 
Iraq, the President sent us a budget that asked that the cost of a 
prescription drug be increased, the copayment, not at $7, but that that 
be increased up to $15 a prescription. I felt like that was a shameful 
act. But the President also asked in his budget that the cost of a 
clinic visit be increased from $15 to $20. The President asked in his 
budget that there be an annual enrollment fee of $250 imposed upon 
Priority 7 and 8 veterans. It just seems as if it does not stop.
  Then, Secretary Principi created a new priority group of veterans, 
which is now known as Priority Group 8, and these are veterans who do 
not have service-connected disabilities and are considered higher-
income veterans. So the decision was made that these Priority 8 
veterans simply could no longer enroll in the VA health care system. 
Now, how much money does one have to make in order to be considered a 
higher-income Priority 8 veteran? Well, in my district and in other 
parts of the country, one can make as little as $22,000 a year.
  Now, Mr. Speaker, those of us who serve in this Chamber make over 
$150,000 a year, and maybe we just cannot understand what it is like to 
make $22,000 a year. Maybe we just think if one makes $22,000 a year, 
one is going to have all one needs to pay their bills and support their 
families and so on. But, quite frankly, I think it is shameful that at 
a time when we are giving huge tax breaks to the richest among us, that 
we would impose a $250 annual enrollment fee on veterans who have 
honorably served this Nation, whose incomes are as little as $22,000 a 
year.
  Well, I do not know what the solution is. I know some of my 
colleagues in this Chamber say, well, we are never going to have these 
requests that the President has made passed into law; but just this 
week, I am on the Committee on Veterans Affairs, and just this week we 
had representatives from the Veterans Affairs Department before our 
committee. And I asked them if it was current administration policy to 
pursue these efforts to increase the cost of prescription drugs to 
impose an annual enrollment fee on veterans, and to exclude Priority 8 
veterans from even participation in the VA system. I was told that it 
continues to be the intention of this administration of the President 
to pursue these efforts.
  There is something else I would like to mention tonight. About a year 
or so ago, the VA put out a memo to all of its health care providers 
around the country, a memo which consists of, in my judgment, little 
more than a gag order. The memo basically said, and I am certainly 
paraphrasing, but what I am saying is true to the spirit of the memo, 
the memo said: too many veterans are coming in for service. We do not 
have enough money to provide those services, and so you are no longer 
able to actively pursue the dissemination of information to our 
veterans.
  So, Mr. Speaker, these are troublesome things, and I would just ask 
that my colleagues in this Chamber rethink the direction in which we 
are going.

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