Funds for Health Care of Veterans $1 Billion Short

American Legion National Commander Thomas P. Cadmus countered that nearly $1 billion of the $1.6 billion increase would be achieved by cutting other medical accounts: $533 million from the medical administration account, $417 million from medical facilities and $9 million from medical and prosthetics research.

Yesterday, Buyer called on the Senate to "drill down" into VA money problems to determine the legitimate needs for fiscal years 2005 and 2006.

In addition to their unhappiness with spending levels, veterans groups are bitter over the changes initiated by the Republican leadership in the jurisdiction of appropriations subcommittees. VA funding was shifted from the subcommittee that includes housing and NASA programs to the subcommittee on military quality of life and Veterans Affairs and related agencies, which forces the Veterans Affairs Department to compete for limited funds with such programs as Defense Department health care, military cemeteries and military construction.

"The American Legion is not about to write Congress and say 'take away from DOD heath care' [in order to boost VA funding]. That's completely unacceptable," Robertson said.

The veterans lobby has already beaten back two controversial Bush administration proposals: a $250 enrollment fee for veterans joining the health care system and an increase in the prescription co-payment, from $7 to $15.

Leaders of the American Legion, the Paralyzed Veterans and the Disabled American Veterans all noted a striking partisan division in Congress on veterans issues, with Democrats giving them much more support than Republicans.

Traditionally, Violante said, "Republicans have been supportive of defense," but he said Bush administration policies and votes in the House and Senate suggest that the GOP does not view the care of veterans as "a continuing cost of war."

In the 2004 election, exit polls showed that voters who had served in the military were decisively more Republican than those who had not. President Bush carried the one out of five voters who had served by 16 percentage points, 57 to 41, while Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) barely won those who had not served, 50 to 49.

The Bush administration's priorities are "a little bit different now and veterans aren't a priority," Violante said. He described this as "terrible -- I think it's unconscionable."