[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 19]
[House]
[Pages 27076-27077]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     CUTTING BENEFITS FOR VETERANS

  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, soon we will be observing Veterans' Day 
in our Nation; and there will be parades, pictures will be taken, and 
flowery speeches will be made. But I want to just point out to my 
colleagues here in the House and to those who may be watching what the 
record is in terms of veterans and veterans funding and veterans health 
care.
  In 2002, the Veterans Administration decided that they were going to 
raise the cost of a prescription drug that a veteran would have to pay 
from $2 to $7 a prescription. At the time I thought that was 
outrageous, because many of the veterans that I represent take 10 or 
more prescriptions a month; and I felt like that was an unnecessary 
burden, financial burden, to place upon our veterans.
  But there is a pattern of actions that have been taken by this 
administration that I think I would call shameful as far as the 
treatment of veterans is concerned, because following this increase

[[Page 27077]]

in the cost of a prescription drug, the VA issued a gag order. They 
literally changed VA policy. They sent out a memo that went out to all 
the health care providers across our country, the doctors and nurses 
and social workers who work in our VA clinics, and they forbade them to 
continue to pro-
actively inform veterans of what benefits they were legally entitled to 
receive. The memo was very specific. It told these health care 
providers that they could no longer participate in a community health 
fair, they could no longer send out newsletters informing veterans of 
the benefits that they were entitled to, they could no longer make 
public service announcements.
  Now, think of that. Here is this agency of the Federal Government, 
under this President, an agency that is supposed to be looking out for 
the welfare of veterans, literally forbidding the health care providers 
in our VA facilities from informing veterans in a proactive manner of 
the benefits they were entitled to receive under the law.
  Well, not long after they issued this gag order, the VA made a 
decision that they were going to exclude an entire group of veterans 
from VA health care. They called this new category of veterans Priority 
8. You can be a Priority 8 veteran and be a combat-decorated veteran; 
but if you have an illness that is not service-connected and if your 
income is deemed to be too much, and in this case it can be as little 
as $24,000 a year, you are told by the VA, you are out of here. We do 
not want you coming to us for medical care. You are excluded. You are a 
Priority 8 veteran. Pretty pathetic. All of this is happening, by the 
way, under the Presidency of George W. Bush.
  Then in January the President sent his budget to the Congress, and in 
his budget he asked that the cost of a prescription drug be increased 
from $7 to $15 a prescription. Think of that. At a time when we were 
getting ready to send our young men and women into war, the President 
wants to increase the copayment for a prescription from $7 to $15. His 
budget also asked that a new first-time enrollment fee be imposed upon 
veterans, Priority 7 and 8 veterans, an enrollment fee of $250.
  You can see the pattern. It is a pattern of neglect and, I believe, 
abuse of veterans.
  Then we could talk about the disabled veterans tax. The country is 
becoming aware that if a veteran has served 20 years, he or she is 
entitled to a retirement benefit; and if they are injured as a result 
of their military service, they are entitled to disability benefits, 
but they cannot receive both.

                              {time}  2030

  But they cannot receive both. Now, if they were in any other part of 
the Federal Government, they would get both. But if you are a veteran, 
for every dollar in disability benefit you get, you lose a dollar in 
pension. In other words, veterans are being required to fund their own 
disability compensation. We tried to correct that in the House and 
Senate, but the President put out a veto threat that if this was in the 
bill, if this correction was in the bill, he would veto it.
  Then there is a matter of VA funding for this year. It is $1.8 
billion short of what this House promised. We need $1.8 billion 
additional dollars in VA funding simply to maintain the current level 
of VA health care services, but the Republican leadership and the 
President say no. So the Senate, just last week, passed an amendment to 
increase VA funding, not by the full $1.8 billion, but by $1.3 billion, 
and they wanted to take it out of that $87 billion that is being 
provided for Iraq. The same day, the White House put out a statement 
saying they oppose this.
  I think the veterans of this country are coming to understand that 
they are being treated in a shabby and a shameless manner.

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