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What's really on the table when it comes to redefining a veteran and available benefits? Buyer says, "I think everything should be on the table."
Everything! Buyer is even suggesting that service-connected disabilities be combat-related only. This would eliminate treatment and compensation for injuries received while on active duty but not directly related to combat.
Buyer also took aim at the veterans' service organizations, saying their view that all veterans should have access to VA healthcare abandons values like duty and sacrifice. He chided the service organizations for using inflammatory rhetoric. "I asked them to be very careful with the words they select because ... they have an impact all over the country. It is upsetting to me when someone refers to veterans as whiney," Buyer stated.
Well, there you have it in his own words. The chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee calling our service organizations "whiney" and accusing them of abandoning values like duty and sacrifice.
It would be easy to dismiss Buyer as part of some lunatic fringe on Capitol Hill trying to stick it to veterans. But that is not the case. Buyer speaks for the majority in Congress who speak for the current administration.
And, Buyer is the one guilty of inflammatory rhetoric. Demeaning our service organizations and their attempts to preserve veterans' benefits is a slap in the face to ALL veterans. Our service organizations have, in the past, often done too little too late. Sometimes we wondered where they were as the VA budget took hit after hit. Now they find themselves in the position of doing what they were meant to do and being castigated for it.
Fellow veterans, if this is not a call to action, I don't know what is. We cannot allow Congress to redefine who is a veteran. We cannot allow Congress to restructure veterans' benefits and reshape the definitions of disability. We have worked too hard for too long to not receive proper recognition for our service to our country.
It's time to put severe pressure on Congress. Recently 400 disabled veterans did just that when they jammed Committee hearings, booing and jeering Buyer and others who want to cut benefits. This new level of activism must increase if we are to preserve our benefits and guarantee a properly funded VA for the veterans of the future.
In 1789 President George Washington said, "The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional as to how they perceive veterans of earlier wars and how they were treated and appreciated by this country."
If we do nothing now we will only be able to say that we did nothing.
