WASHINGTON IN BRIEF

Defense, VA Team Up on Care

The departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs signed an agreement yesterday to provide "federal recovery coordinators" to shepherd seriously wounded service members and veterans through their long-term rehabilitation, the Pentagon said yesterday.

The agreement follows a key recommendation made this summer by the President's Commission on Care for America's Returning Wounded Warriors, co-chaired by former senator Robert J. Dole and former health and human services secretary Donna E. Shalala.

President Bush appointed the panel in response to reports that many service members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan have been mired in military medical bureaucracy.

"This agreement will help ensure our nation's wounded warriors and their families receive the care they need and deserve at the right time, right place, and by the right person across the continuum from recovery through to their reintegration into their communities," Michael L. Dominguez, principal deputy undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said in a statement.

The first 10 coordinators, who are to be provided by VA and trained by January, will be assigned to major military health-care facilities, including Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, according to the statement.

A report from the Government Accountability Office last month questioned whether VA had the resources to support such a program.

-- Steve Vogel

Veto Threat Riles Grassley

President Bush drew unusually blunt criticism from a senior Republican senator for threatening to veto any expansion of children's health insurance that contains a tobacco tax increase.

"They're throwing cold water in my face," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (Iowa), a strong advocate of the measure to add coverage for an estimated 4 million lower-income children to an existing health insurance program.

"The president's making it so central to the debate really is a shock to me," he said in a conference call with reporters from his home state.