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Why Veterans get Second-Class treatment

The scandal at Walter Reed is the tip of an iceberg. Veterans’ Day, and as the Senate considers the nomination of a new Secretary of Veterans’ Affairs, is a good time to think about why veterans often get second-class treatment.

Veterans are not the first priority in the organization that has control of their lives and futures. The Department of Defense (DoD) dictates care of wounded warriors long after they are actually veterans and no longer properly kept under the control of the active-duty military. The confusion over disability ratings, critical to a wounded warriors future, is because The Department of Defense insists on dominating the process. Budgets, not the future standard of living for the wounded, are what that insistence is all about.

Similarly, Defense controls the funding for the education of veterans after they have left the Service. In other words, the nation’s promise of education in return for military service is in the hands of an organization the veteran no longer works for, and that organization has to fund the education in competition with the needs of the men and women who are still working for it.

Warfighting is and should be the first priority of the Department of Defense. It should strive for first-class treatment of those serving warfighting missions. This is difficult enough. Defense has its hands full.

It is ridiculous to expect that first-priority advocacy should be given to a second-priority constituency. No one should fault the Department for keeping its priorities in order. Active duty personnel must come first in DoD.

Veterans need to be placed where they are first priority: The Department of Veterans’ Affairs. That Cabinet Department was created precisely to bring the advocacy for veterans out from under the shadows. Unfortunately, inertia and powerful Defense interests, including those on Capitol Hill, have been reluctant to yield the funding and control necessary to make this a reality. In many important respects, the Department of Veterans Affairs has not acted as a Department at all: it is still a sub-Cabinet entity under the effective control of OMB and the DoD, just as it was when it was the ineffective Veterans’ Administration.

It is time for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs to step up and be the advocate for veterans that it is intended to be. The nation has made promises it must keep. It has solemn obligations to those who gave far more of themselves than most citizens. A new Secretary should understand the need for a Cabinet Department that behaves like a Cabinet Department and should be prepared to play the role.

Steve F. Kime

This article appeared on Newscomet.com

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