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(Nov 3, 2007) Senator Patty Murray urged President George W. Bush to approve legislation he has threatened to veto that would pay for veterans’ programs including treatment for war wounds and mental health.

Democratic lawmakers, ignoring the president’s veto threat, plan to send a $750 billion appropriations bill next week to the White House that will include $65 billion for veterans’ affairs. Veterans Day is Nov. 11.

“It’s wrong to ignore these needs and neglect our veterans,” Murray, Democrat from Washington and head of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said in the Democratic Party’s radio address today. U.S. troops “deserve better than to have the president block this bill to make a political point.”

By combining the bills into one measure, Democrats are forcing Bush to accept a $10 billion increase in domestic spending for education, health care and job training or veto legislation benefiting active and retired military personnel.

Bush has called the Democratic plan a “cynical ploy,” and congressional Republicans have said it would delay funding for the Veterans Health Administration.

“This is no time for Congress to hold back vital funding for our troops as they fight al-Qaeda terrorists and radicals in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Bush said in a Nov. 1 speech at the Heritage Foundation, a policy research organization in Washington.

The Bush administration has under-funded veterans’ programs, leaving “thousands of troops” returning from Iraq and Afghanistan “stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare” and lacking the “health care they need,” Murray said in her address today.

Congress hasn’t approved any of the annual spending bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. The government is being funded by a stopgap spending measure until Nov. 16.

By Gopal Ratnam – link to article

Posted on November 5th, 2007 by admin
Filed under: Veterans Legislation