Bush Claims 'Highest Level of Support' For Veterans in History
Written by Jason Leopold
Monday, 05 January 2009 20:43
It’s not uncommon for presidents to embellish their accomplishments upon leaving office, but George W. Bush, who will exit the White House leaving the country in the worst shape since Herbert Hoover’s tenure, has gone a step further, moving well past exaggeration and straight into the realm of outright lying.
Last month, the White House published two lengthy reports, “Highlights of Accomplishments and Results of the Administration of George W. Bush,” and “100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record” in an attempt to change the emerging historical consensus about a failed presidency.
What stands out among the combined 90-pages of so-called accomplishments in the reports are the extraordinary claims made by the White House regarding Bush’s record on veterans’ issues.
Bush claims he “provided unprecedented resources for veterans” over the past eight years and provided “the highest level of support for veterans in American history.”
“The President also increased the benefits available to those who have served our Nation and transformed the veterans health care system to better serve those who have sacrificed for our freedom,” both reports claim, adding that Bush “Instituted reforms for the care of wounded warriors...and dramatically expanded resources for mental health services.’
That assertion does not contain even a shred of truth. And the evidence that is publicly available to undercut the president’s outrageous claims is overwhelming.
For one thing, before the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003, documents released by the Department of Veterans Affairs said it expected a maximum of 8,000 cases of post traumatic stress disorder.
According to a RAND Institute study published last year, there are now more than 320,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars suffering from major depression, PTSD and/or traumatic brain injury, largely due to multiple deployments, and the VA has been and continues to be ill equipped to deal with these cases when soldiers return from combat. In January 2008, an Army task force report found major flaws in the way the VA treated and cared for veterans suffering from traumatic brain injury.
The VA’s wildly off-the-mark figures about the number of PTSD cases from the Iraq war followed statements by Vice President Dick Cheney that the war would be a “cakewalk,” promises by former Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz that the war would be paid for by Iraqi oil revenues, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's wrong headed claim that the U.S. didn’t need to deploy more than 200,000 ground troops to maintain a post-war Iraq.
Simply put, under Bush’s leadership, veterans’ healthcare has become worse, not better. Of the 84,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans officially diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder by VA, only about 42,000 have had their disability claim approved by VA. Instead of streamlining the benefits claims process, President Bush's political appointees at VA actively fought against mental health claims.
Moreover, President Bush's political appointees at the VA also blocked scientific research to understand the causes of Gulf War illnesses and medical research to provide treatments for the 210,000 Desert Storm veterans still suffering 18 years.
Bush’s Record on VA Funding
Bush proposed a 0.5 percent budget increase for the VA for fiscal year 2006, which amounted to a “cruel mockery” of Bush’s promises to do everything to support veterans and soldiers, Rep. Lane Evans, D-Ill., said at the time. VA officials had testified in 2005 that the agency needed at least a 13 percent increase to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of war veterans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan and others who needed long term mental health care. A Government Accountability Office audit released in early 2006 found that the Bush Administration's budget numbers on veterans' health care were unreliable.
Evans had said that Bush’s proposed budget increase for the VA was “grossly inadequate” and would force the VA to “ration” healthcare for veterans.
Bush also stacked the VA with political cronies, such as former Republican National Committee chairman Jim Nicholson, who as VA Secretary defended a VA budget measure that proposed massive cuts in healthcare staffing, staffing cuts at the Board of Veterans Appeals, reduced funding for nursing home care, and blocked four legislative measures aimed at streamlining the backlog of veterans benefits claims.
In response to complaints that some veterans under VA care were being neglected, Nicholson said in March 2007 that such cases were “anecdotal exceptions.”
“When you are treating so many people there is always going to be a linen towel left somewhere,” he said.
In May 2007, Bush didn’t fare any better in his support for veterans. He threatened to veto legislation that sought a 10 percent—$3.2 billion—increase to the Department of Veterans Affairs budget saying it was too expensive. Bush proposed a 2 percent increase to the VA’s budget, far below what lawmakers and VA officials said was needed to treat a dramatic increase in traumatic brain injury and PTSD cases.
The same month, it was revealed that Nicholson, the VA Secretary, doled out $3.8 million in bonuses to top VA officials in fiscal year 2006 despite the fact that the VA had a $1.3 billion budget shortfall.
Nicholson resigned in disgrace in July 2007.
That Bush threatened to veto legislation to increase the VA budget just two months after the Washington Post published a series of articles documenting the substandard conditions at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, located 4.7 miles from the White House, where wounded vets were housed in rooms with moldy walls, leaky plumage and an infestation of vermin, underscores how out of touch Bush had become regarding the nation’s veterans.
Congress passed the legislation. Bush never followed through with his veto threat but that was largely due to the fact that every Republican in the Senate with the exception of Jim DeMint, R-S.C, backed the measure.
Furthermore, Bush has presided over a Department of Veterans Affairs that has been marred by a number of high-profile scandals, most recently, the agency’s cover-up in an epidemic of veterans’ suicides and attempted suicides.
Last year, internal VA e-mails surfaced that showed how top agency officials tried to conceal the information from the public about the sudden increase in suicides and attempted suicides among veterans that were treated or sought help at VA hospitals around the country.
And last November, internal watchdogs discovered 500 benefits claims in shredding bins at the 41 of the 57 regional VA offices around the country.
Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, the veterans advocacy group that sued the VA in federal court, said attempts by the White House to portray Bush as an advocate for veterans is beyond shameful.
“Bush is the worst failure for our veterans since Hoover,” Sullivan said in an interview. “Veterans for Common Sense is disappointed that President George W. Bush would shamefully continue his legacy of lies to the American people as he and his political cronies are forced to leave office on Jan. 20,” Sullivan said in an interview. “Specifically, when it comes to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), President Bush remains an abject failure.
“President Bush claims that he doubled funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs. However, President Bush failed to disclose that the number of veterans seeking VA healthcare doubled, from 2.7 million to 5.5 million, and that rising healthcare inflation actually resulted in a net decrease in spending per veteran by VA during the past eight years. If not for the intervention of Congress to substantially increase VA funding beyond Bush's inadequate budget requests, especially in the past two years, the situation would have deteriorated from a serious crisis to a catastrophe at VA.”
Sullivan, who worked at the VA for five years as a senior researcher, said Bush failed to implement the VA’s proposed Mental Health Strategic Plan, a program aimed at identifying and quickly treating veterans suffering from major depression and were on the verge of suicide.
“Without implementation, funding, and oversight of the plan, several suicidal Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans were illegally refused emergency medical care by VA,” Sullivan alleged. “Veterans for Common Sense brought this issue to the attention of VA, and VA refused to act. Therefore, VCS sued VA for turning away suicidal veterans. After we filed our lawsuit, and only after we filed our lawsuit, the VA began a suicide prevention hotline. In the first 15 months of operation, the hotline received 85,000 calls and rescued more than 2,100 suicidal veterans.”
As of September 2008, 330,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have filed disability claims against VA, according to the agency. Yet, 54,000 are still waiting for the VA to confirm their claims were received. The average wait for a disability claim is more than six months. Additionally, according to VA's Inspector General, 25 percent of the VA's 5.5 million patients have to wait more than 30 days for a doctor’s appointment.
In the book, "The Three Trillion Dollar War," by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, the authors wrote that “in a 2005 study, the [Government Accountability Office] found that the time to complete a veteran’s claim varied from 99 days at the Salt Lake City Office to 237 days in Honolulu. In a 2006 study, GAO found that 12 percent of claims were inaccurate.”
Homeless Veterans
In another of Bush’s so-called accomplishments highlighted in both reports, the White House claimed that Bush “reduced the number of homeless veterans by nearly 40 percent from 2001 to 2007" and "established VA homeless-specific programs, which constitute one of the largest integrated networks of homeless treatment and assistance services in the country.”
That statement rankled Aaron Glantz, a journalist, author and fellow at the Rosalynn Carter Fellow for Mental Health Journalism, The Carter Center.
“Contrary to his Administration's latest spin, George W. Bush's legacy on veterans is one of shameful neglect,” Glantz said in an interview. “Rather than care for the tens of thousands of American service members wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration has thrown up a series of barriers to prevent veterans from getting the care they need."
Glantz spent three years in Iraq reporting on the war. He recently published a gripping book, The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle against America's Veterans, in which he documented the heart-wrenching stories of homeless Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans and the plight of other veterans who, upon returning home, have been neglected by the country they served. Last week, Glantz published a report, Did You Know 200,000 Vets Are Sleeping on the Streets? that directly contradicts Bush’s accomplishments on combating the number of homeless veterans on the street.
“What kind of President pats himself on the back with 200,000 veterans sleep homeless on the street every night? What kind of Administration puts out self-congratulatory press releases while over 6,000 veterans commit suicide every year? We can only hope that President elect Barack Obama takes a very different course once he's in office. Otherwise, our government will repeat the shameful disgrace that was its treatment of wounded veterans returning home from Vietnam.”
Bush Claims 'Highest Level of Support' For Veterans in History
Monday, January 5, 2009
Bush Claims 'Highest Level of Support' For Veterans in History
