EDITORIAL
Congress must keep up vet benefits pressure
Our lawmakers in Washington are maintaining the pressure to fund acutely needed mental-health services and long-term care for veterans. That's encouraging. We'll need every bit of that resolve and more since demand for veterans' services are likely to mount steeply, and in short order.
A $20 million construction grant for the long-awaited state veterans nursing home in Hilo is being released, enabling groundbreaking to proceed as scheduled in August. The Bush administration has sought drastic cuts to the operational allotment for the home, but, thankfully, the House of Representatives so far is holding firm.
And in the U.S. Senate, the Veterans Affairs Committee is considering a slate of bills that would accelerate assistance to the thousands of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan who must cope with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental-health problems. One welcome bill, sponsored by Hawai'i Sen. Daniel Akaka, would require VA spending on mental health to keep up with inflation and at least 90 percent of the VA clinics across the country to provide mental-health services.
According to a clinician's guide published by the National Center for PTSD, "the new Iraq War entails more stereotypical exposure to warfare experiences such as firing a weapon, being fired on ... witnessing injury and death, and going on special missions and patrols that involve such experiences, than the ground war offensive of the Persian Gulf War. ... Veterans of Operation Iraqi Freedom are likely to have been exposed to a wide variety of war-zone related stressors that can impact psychological functioning in a number of ways."
The long line of veterans in need has only begun to form. This is likely to be an extremely prolonged engagement.
Elected officials deserve kudos for meeting the Bush administration's shortsighted budgetary approach on this front with equal force — a force they will have to sustain if veterans are to emerge with at least some of the benefits firmly in hand.
