More Yellow Ribbons, Please

For several years now, those of us who have opposed the war in Iraq have been accused of many things, among them a treasonous lack of support for the troops engaged in the fight. An article in yesterday's Sacramento Bee demonstrates who really is spitting on the troops.

The Bush administration's budget assumes cuts to funding for veterans' health care two years from now - even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

Bush is using the cuts, critics say, to help fulfill his pledge to balance the budget by 2012. But even administration allies say the numbers are not real and are being used to make the overall budget picture look better.

...The proposed cuts are unrealistic in light of recent VA budget trends - its medical care budget has risen every year for two decades and 83 percent in the six years since Bush took office - sowing suspicion that the White House is simply making them up to make its long-term deficit figures look better.

"Either the administration is willingly proposing massive cuts in VA health care," said Rep. Chet Edwards of Texas, chairman of the panel overseeing the VA's budget. "Or its promise of a balanced budget by 2012 is based on completely unrealistic assumptions."

A spokesman for Larry Craig, R-Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, called the White House moves another step in a longtime "budgeting game." [Emphasis added]

The article points out that the Bush White House will probably restore funding to the VA in its next budget, which means that there shouldn't be quite the short-fall the cuts implied in this budget forecast won't happen. If that is the case, however, the deficit will rise more than the White House claims.

Either/or, this administration is callously using wounded soldiers as pawns in a truly disgusting political game.

And this is not surprising at all.