Why we deny our Veterans healthcare

Alec Dea

 

            I recently came across a video that contained clips of CNN anchor Chris Cuomo talking about the senate striking down Bernie Sanders’ Veterans’ Bill in February 2014.  Veteran Cory Remsburg was applauded at the January 2014 State of The Union address and it is supposedly the longest ovation anyone has ever received at a presidential State of the Union.  Remsburg was shown in the video wearing a cast on his arm and multiple burn wounds were visible on his head and face.   Despite his life threatening injuries, he couldn’t look happier to be at the State of the union representing all of the veterans who put their lives on the line for us.  The video returned to Cuomo who somberly expressed his disappointment with the Senate for subsequently blocking Bernie Sanders’ bill.  The bill “would have provided $21 billion for medical, education, and job-training benefits for the nation’s veterans” (Fram). 

            The video showed a variety of republican senators denouncing the bill at a Congressional meeting.  Senator Jeff Sessions from Alabama claimed he doesn’t think veterans “want their programs to be enhanced if every penny of the money that’s going to enhance those programs is going to be added to the debt of the United States of America.“  Senator Richard Burr from North Carolina slyly used fear mongering to pander to concerned parents.  “The decision we’ve got here… is whether we’re gonna commit to a promise that’s bigger than what our kids can fulfill… It costs more than our kids can afford.”  Burr, while shuffling through some papers, looked very flummoxed as he conceded that Sanders’ claim that most of the Veterans organizations approve the bill is “in fact correct.”  Jeff Sessions comments can be immediately discredited, as he clearly did not do his due diligence in learning about the bill.  It’s so outrageous that Sessions had the gall to use the debt as a method of guilt-tripping the veterans.  The same goes for Burr by invoking the vulnerability of the nation’s children.  Senator Marco Rubio was at least blunt in his disapproval of the bill.  He said the then $18 trillion debt was the reason “so many on his side of the aisle (republicans)” objected to the bill.  After showing these senators object to the bill, the video cut to Bernie Sanders, who was Chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee at the time, blasting the dissenting republican senators. 

            So instead of our children paying $21 billion for this Veterans care bill, they are instead going to pay upwards of $6 trillion for the wars in the Middle East according to Time magazine.  These are the same wars that republicans want to continue to fight.  The hypocrisy is so clear.  If cost and debt is such an important issue, then why don’t these republicans want to stop fighting in the Middle East? Why did they want to go into the Middle East in the first place knowing how costly war is?  Yet, we continuously hear the republican presidential candidates clamor about how we need to rebuild our “weak” military.  Do they not think that adding on to the military will cost money too?  Below is a graph showing how much we spend on our military compared to the strongest foreign militaries. 

  

Based on the graph, I’m not so sure we should focus our spending on the military as opposed to spending on the veterans.  If it costs too much to take care of the veterans then we should not be sending them into wars that cost trillions of dollars. 

http://time.com/3651697/afghanistan-war-cost/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceKSqe_9aGs

https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/us-military-spending-vs-world/