Funding veterans benefits is a bipartisan, national issue

As Veterans Day 2013 arrives, there seems to be one thing on which just about all Americans, and even most members of Congress, agree: funding for veterans benefits — for our healthcare, disability compensation and vocational rehabilitation — is not exclusively a Democratic or Republican concern, not solely a liberal nor conservative cause, but rather a nonpartisan, American issue.

According to a recent Pew poll, when asked which of 19 different areas of government ought to be targeted first when facing the meat cleaver of sequestration rather than the scalpel of rational cuts, 90 percent of respondents replied: “Don’t cut veterans.”

Moreover, 53 percent felt that benefits for veterans ought to be increased.

{mosads}We at Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) agree.

The plethora of issues facing America’s veterans (and their families) is much too large and detailed to be discussed here: e.g., homelessness, affordable housing, gainful employment, accessible healthcare, meaningful education and/or training. And we should make clear that funding is not necessarily the single most important resolution to these issues.

But while attention has appropriately been given to veterans of our nation’s recent and current wars, make no mistake: Vietnam veterans still have unmet needs. And we refuse to be passed by, dismissed or forgotten.

For example, not all wounds of war are immediately obvious. Not so evident are the insidious long-term effects of exposures to wartime toxic substances such as Agent Orange — dioxin. And by “long-term effects” we don’t mean only on the veterans. We refer as well to our kids and grandkids. They, too, are wounded by the war in which their mother or father served. Although there has been a paucity of research in this area, we strongly urge both the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to think prospectively, to anticipate and not just react to, the likelihood of similar exposures in future conflicts as part of the true “cost of war” — and the lifelong, even intergenerational, legacies they might generate.

Furthermore, the VA historically has done a paltry job, at best, of reaching out to America’s veterans. Even if a vet goes to a VA medical center or community-based outreach clinic to be treated for a combat-related wound or injury, more often than not, he or she would not be given information concerning health risks based on when and where they served, nor would they be given information directing them to apply for disability compensation benefits through the Veterans Benefits Administration.

It is only in the past few years, it seems, that the VA has begun to take its responsibility for outreach seriously. Nonetheless, the department has an ethical obligation, as well as a legal responsibility, to inform all veterans and their families, not only of the benefits to which they are entitled, but also about any possible long-term health problems they might experience that might derive from when and where they served.

While VA Secretary Eric Shinseki and his team are to be applauded for their initiatives in this realm, their efforts still seem scattershot and limited. We have yet to see the results of the department’s unified strategic communications plan, one that integrates TV and radio ads, billboards, ads and feature stories in select popular publications, and social media. Taken together, these could have a dramatic impact not only in informing veterans — and perhaps most important, their families — about health issues and benefits, but also in reassuring the community of veterans that the VA really is living up to its founding principle, taken from President Lincoln:

“To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan.” 
Vietnam Veterans of America continues to embrace the newest generation of veterans who have served with such distinction in Southwest Asia, for their reception home and for the array of benefits accorded to them. Consistent with our founding principle, we will never abandon any generation of veterans.

But the challenges inherent in veterans’ issues can only be resolved if there is the political and managerial will. They are achievable if we want them badly enough, and if we can marshal our service and veterans’ communities and work in concert to convince our federal elected officials that these veterans’ issues are of the greatest importance for all veterans, their families and survivors.
We served with honor and with pride — and we are asking only for our just rewards, nothing more, but nothing less, and we are asking, as well, on behalf of all veterans who have served honorably.

Rowan is national president of the Vietnam Veterans of America.