VA Loan Updates

LOS ANGELES -- As election time approaches, both parties are waving the flag and trying wrap themselves in it. But some say proposed cutbacks in veterans' benefits should shame both parties into putting veterans' needs ahead of politics. NBC4's Kelly Mack reported on one California Congresswoman's efforts to do just that. Following is a verbatim script from the on-air report. GALE HULETT, VIETNAM VETERAN: The fees are going up and the co-pays are getting even larger. KELLY MACK: Vietnam vet Gale Hulett is part of a marching team of other vets who, he says, are being shortchanged by the government - through the Veterans Administration HULETT: The coverage is getting less and it's just like eating away at our benefits. I could use some help for eye care and hearing and dental. MACK: Pofilo Asales - another Vietnam era vet - is going blind in one eye because he says the VA has slashed services. ASALES: They said well, this is the only way we can do something with your eye is if you lose sight in it completely - if you become blind in that, then we can do something. But they said it's right now - we can't do nothing. MACK: Asales and Hulett are like millions of vets countrywide who say they worry about the erosion of VA benefits, especially under the VA budget President Bush proposed last February. HILDA SOLIS, DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSWOMAN: He's trying to say that he defends our soldiers, he's gonna do everything he can, but yet when they come home there will be very little for them. MACK: Democratic Congresswoman Hilda Solis represents Asales and Hulett and 19,000 other vets in California's 32nd District. In a recent study she found that 100,000 veterans statewide could lose their VA benefits because of the proposed Bush budget cuts. SOLIS: The budget that the Bush Administration proposed was to cut back at least in this first year under the veteran's Administration about one billion dollars. It will have a devastating effect immediately, as well as on going. And what alarms me is that we have so many of our returning veterans from Iraq and from Afghanistan. MACK: According to her study, the President's budget would keep 30,000 California veterans from enrolling in VA care and would force 89,000 to drop out because of increased enrollment fees and a doubling of prescription co-payments SOLIS: In fact their co-payments are expected to go up almost $250 for a veteran that in many cases in my district is on a fixed income. They can't get their medicine and now they're gonna have to come up with $250. Where is it going to come from? MACK: Solis is preparing legislation to try head off some of these problems. But she says that existing strains on the VA system will only intensify with the return of overseas troops -- coupled with the budget cuts and the increase in needy cases. SOLIS: We're gonna see a bigger backlog and probably more illnesses. We're gonna see reduction in education, opportunities for many of these returning. MACK: And for older veterans, she says, frustration with the VA will only increase. ASALES: There's no way to get hold of a doctor anymore. If you do not have an appointment he's already booked. HULETT: They need the promise, the coverage they were promised when they went into the military. NBC4: Congresswoman Solis says the November elections may make possible a more bipartisan approach to fixing the VA system. Found here. Sphere: Related Content