The U.S. Senate Votes To Improve Veteran Administrations Health Services

The U.S. Senate approved a Veterans Administration health care bill 93-3.  The bill would expand for Veterans health care services including private doctors, shorter wait time and a multitude of other health services that have been in the news lately.  The CBO estimates the bill will cost $35 billion over the next ten years and maybe more.

Republican representative Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Veterans Committee said the republicans will want offsets in the budget (cuts in other programs) to pay for the bill.  The people should remember that it was President Bush who started the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq while the republican party controlled both houses of congress and paid for those wars with deficit spending and not budget cuts.  They also passed a prescription drug benefit that they said would cost no more than $400 billion over 10 years but has already cost double that amount and was also paid for by deficit spending and not budget cuts.

The war in Afghanistan has already cost over $1 trillion and still counting.  The war in Iraq also cost over $1 trillion.  One war, the former was justified, the other was an unnecessary war over WMD that did not exist.  Those two wars have placed 2 million more veterans into the VA system according to democratic U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, who said our job is to make certain that every veteran in the country gets quality health care in a timely manner.

President Bush and the republican party saw no obstacle in spending over $3 trillion on the above wars and prescription drug benefit financed by deficit spending but now republicans in congress want budget cuts to fund a VA bill that is estimated to cost $35 billion.  It is just another way for the republicans to obstruct needed legislation concerning the problems with the VA and confirms their unAmerican ideology of the double standard they practice.  The democratic party has demonstrated in the past that democratic administrations are best at controlling federal spending, lowering the federal deficit, balancing the federal budget and the Obama administration is doing just that.


This commentary written by John Lucia.