We Support Troops: Until They Get Home And Need Our Help

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We Support Troops: Until They Get Home And Need Our Help
By John Young, Editorial Writer
By Permission of the Waco Tribune-Herald

Forget "light at the end of the tunnel." Forget "war to end all wars."

Bullets are flying. People are dying. And House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has uttered words to enshrine among battle cries divorced from reality:

"Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes."

Really.

The sad thing is that, in so many words, he was speaking for the president.

He and fellow House Republicans passed a $726 billion tax cut urged by President Bush at a time when the deficit is ballooning and costs of war are only starting to trickle in.

When $74 billion is just a down payment, you have a costly incursion. Hearing that 4,000 smart bombs had been expended on Baghdad in 14 days, one observer calculated and sighed, "There goes the cure for AIDS."

Of course, bombs are only part of it. Add U.S. occupation, and rebuilding. And some in the administration are urging health care for all Iraqi citizens post-war. If we cripple the infrastructure that keeps innocents alive, we owe no less.

OK, so what about health care for U.S. veterans? Congressmen carrying water for the president voted to cut $28 billion in veterans` health care and disability payments over 10 years.

By review, veterans are what today`s honored troops become when they return.

"Has Congress no shame?" wrote Edward Heath, national commander of Disabled American Veterans, in a letter read on the House floor by Texas Congressman Chet Edwards.

"Is there no honor in the hallowed halls of our government," wrote Heath, "that you choose to dishonor the sacrifices of our nation`s heroes and rob our programs . . . to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy?"

I wonder if, as the commander wrote those words, he thought some comfortable son of the trickle-down brotherhood would accuse him of "class warfare." We`re waiting.

"Class warfare"-what a convenient term. It is as divorced from reality as the honorable Mr. DeLay. It implies that we have all this money floating around to return to the taxpayers-money unobligated, bills paid. And so why shouldn`t every man get his share? Stop beating up on poor, defenseless multimillionaires, you bullies.

It doesn`t imply a federal debt of $6.4 trillion and a national deficit exceeding $400 billion. It doesn`t imply sloughing costs such as homeland security onto cash-starved states. And it doesn`t imply fiscal realities under which we say, "Sorry, veterans, we just don`t have the money."

Many will wonder what motivates Congress to cut veterans benefits. The reason is that lawmakers have less wiggle room when cutting the budget than many people want to believe.

Veterans` services happen to be in the increasingly small slice of the non-defense federal budget that is discretionary. They are not entitlements. They are at the mercy of each Congress. They are something Congress can control.

This budget would cut each category of veterans programs-mandatory benefits and discretionary funds for health care. The House voted for these cuts only hours after approving a resolution to support America`s troops in Iraq.

So as we make more combat veterans, we curb services to them at home. All in the name of delivering to the president the tax cuts he craves.

Fortunately, the Senate voted to slice those tax cuts in half, zapping the provision to end taxes on stock dividends. But Team Bush isn`t` giving in. Key corporations are hammering at Republicans who defected from the fold on dividend taxes.

Meanwhile bullets fly and people die. When it`s all over, the people who set these priorities will say, "For these freedoms, thank a vet.