Deficit cuts to veterans long-term needs will hurt them.

[sad sally]

The President wants the Afghanistan War to continue into 2014. The Vice-President called Maliki on Wednesday to pressure Iraq to allow the US to leave a much bigger force there past December 2011. We don't know what demands the civil war in Libya are, nor how long it will last, nor what other secret wars our armed forces and CIA members are involved in.

US military members have serious wounds, both physical and mental, from almost 10 years of continuous fighting. The United States of America is a very waring country, that obviously has a disdain for seeking peace in the world.

Senator Patty Murray has fought long and hard for veterans benefits and rights; however, with the President pushing for huge deficit cuts, veterans - men and women - who have volunteered to fight these never-ending wars, may end up not getting the care they're entitled to.

Many of us are strongly opposed to the Bush/Obama wars and believe they should end much sooner than the President says they will. Writing to my Senators and Congresswoman haven't led me to believe they will support a quicker end to the wars.

I'm angry and concerned about the deficit cuts being talked about. They'll mostly affect and hurt those most venerable - the elders, the sick, the homeless, the poor, the middle-class, the children of these groups of people. As much as I hate war, cuts to veterans benefits, especially wounded veterans, isn't right. If you contact your members of congress, please include veterans in your list of concerns. thanks...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/28/us/28veterans.html?_r=1?du

Cost of Treating Veterans Will Rise Long Past Wars
By JAMES DAO
Published: July 27, 2011

By one measure, the cost of health care and disability compensation for veterans from those conflicts and all previous American wars ranks among the largest for the federal government — less than the military, Social Security and health care programs including Medicare, but nearly the same as paying interest on the national debt, the Treasury Department says.

Ending the current wars will not lower those veterans costs; indeed, they will rise ever more steeply for decades to come as the population of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan expands, ages and becomes more infirm. To date, more than 2.2 million troops have served in those wars.

Studies show that the peak years for government health care and disability compensation costs for veterans from past wars came 30 to 40 years after those wars ended. For Vietnam, that peak has not been reached.

In Washington, the partisan stalemate over cutting federal spending is now raising alarms among veterans groups and some lawmakers that the seemingly inexorable costs of veterans benefits will spur a backlash against those programs.

-snip

Moreover, nearly one in five service members returning from deployment are thought to have symptoms of post-traumatic stress or major depression, according to a study by the RAND Corporation. A similar number are thought to have sustained traumatic brain injury. Though not all seek help, a significant percentage are expected to receive care from the veterans system, in part because of efforts to reduce the stigma of mental health problems in the military.

Further adding to strains on the department, more young veterans have been seeking care from the system than had been anticipated, possibly because they do not have private health insurance. Outreach efforts by the veterans department and veterans groups may have also increased enrollment, experts say.