The Congress is beginning to work out the nuts and bolts of the 2007 budget. It is similar in many ways to that of 2006 - long on talk and tax cuts and short on delivery of service to those fighting at the Nation's behest.
Congressional Quarterly reported that, while monies were added above the levels of 2006 (which left over a billion dollar shortfall), the amounts are still far short of that needed.
"Democrats also complained that the VA health budget, while a major increase, would likely fall short of demand. In each of the past two fiscal years, the VA experienced multibillion-dollar medical budget shortfalls, some of which VA officials blamed on a surge in demand.
The bill approved by the House committee would provide a total of $77.9 billion for the VA, about what Bush requested and 10 percent more than fiscal 2006.
Democrats offered amendments that would have paid for increased spending by repealing some tax breaks for individuals with incomes exceeding $1 million a year."
The process will start out with a 735 million dollar hole left when the House couldn't bring itself to add additional Tri-Care fees. Rather than address this or scale back the bonus paid to millionaires - the appropriations committee just left the hole to be worked out later. Small money bet that either the Veterans or our grandchildren will pay for this in the end. Quoted in CQ was Representative Chet Edwards, long a friend of Fort Hood and the armed services in general, who said "We ought to solve that problem now, not five months from now."
One of the ways that is calculated to reduce the budget needs is by limiting the amount of people in the system. Even before the war in Iraq was launched, the administration was scaling back the amount of intake counselors and outreach efforts that the VA conducted. This saves the system money by reducing new entry into it. It also helps propagate the homeless Veteran population and leaves injured Soldiers serving on active duty. With the current environment in Iraq, with Saliors and Airmen being retrained for ground duty, and with new recognition of the symptoms and effects of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); this is no time to raise the bar to admission into the treatment system.
Yet a new GAO report finds exactly that. Troops returning from Iraq and identified with PTSD symptoms are not all getting treatment in good order.
"Nearly four in five service members returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who were found to be at risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were never referred by government clinicians for further help, according to a Government Accountability Office report due for release today."
In some cases this may be due to stigma that troops perceive from seeking mental health treatment, but in my experience at Fort Hood, the leadership has worked to de-stigmatize that. My guess is that many young Soldiers are resistant to treatment for their own reasons and those units just run out of time. This is an often underemphasized factor in many things dealing with military life. Units are so busy trying to clean up and perform maintenance, complete a host of mandatory training and tasks, and complete training - all while preparing to deploy for a second, third, or fourth time. This leaves the leaders with little energy to follow up on their troops that should have gotten treatment and I think that, at the end of the day, many shrug and think - he must be okay. This just leaves a festering wound that will some day cause more trouble than it would if it were treated properly and early.
Kind of like this budget.