Jane On Veterans

From Jane Mitakides' campaign website:

America must say to our veterans: "We made you a promise, and we are going to keep it." It's time to stop deducting disability benefits from the retirement pay of any veteran. Veterans should never again have to wait months or years for the health care they earned in the service of our county and the defense of freedom. Unlike my opponent, I would never support the 2005 budget that not only underfunds veterans' medical care next year, but cuts funding below current inadequate levels in the four years that follow. It is a budget that the Veterans of Foreign Wars calls "a disgrace and a sham." We need to end cuts and caps right now.

When elected to Congress, I will work to:

* Fully fund veteran's services, to assure we can provide not only for our current veterans, but for the 150,000 soon to join their ranks

* End the deduction of disability benefit from retirement benefits

* End lengthy waiting periods for health care benefits and determinations

* Help the 250,000 homeless veterans in America today

As with the last update, this one is a bit short on details. Here's the thing though, Jane seems to think that veterans are somehow getting the shaft in regards to benefits, but that just isn't so...

Funding for veterans is up 27%, yet Jane and other more prominent Democrats continue the charade of a "cut." But don't take my word for it, here's FactCheck.org:

In Bush’s first three years funding for the Veterans Administration increased 27%. And if Bush's 2005 budget is approved, funding for his full four-year term will amount to an increase of 37.6%.

In the eight years of the Clinton administration the increase was 31.7%

Those figures include mandatory spending for such things as payments to veterans for service-connected disabilities, over which Congress and presidents have little control. But Bush has increased the discretionary portion of veterans funding even more than the mandatory portion has increased. Discretionary funding under Bush is up 30.2%.

If this is an argument you keep hearing from our liberal friends, you should arm yourself with the facts from the folks at Annenberg.

Just because veterans groups didn't get everything they wanted doesn't give Jane and her friends the right to distort the record.

I think we'd all like a reduction in "lengthy waiting periods for health care benefits and determinations." Is Jane advocating privatizing these functions? If so, I applaud her, but I don't think her Big Government friends in the Democratic Party are going to like that idea. We all know that the only thing government excels at is bureauocracy.

The plight of the homeless is tragic, especially for veterans; but help is already available. What is Jane proposing here? I don't know. But it sounds good.

Once again, Jane is high on style, low on substance. If she has real ideas worth exploring, she doesn't seem to want to let anyone know what they are...

Jane On...

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